Episodes & News
Episode 20: Alone At Last: Privacy and the Country House
These days, privacy is high on the agenda. There are huge concerns over data, images, digital identity and personal space, all of which should be kept private.
Episode 19: Hot History: The Great Fire of Northampton
Everyone has heard about the Great Fire of London – but what about the Great Fire of Northampton…or Marlborough…or Blandford Forum?
Episode 18: A Royal Romanian Affair: Why Charles III Treasures Transylvania
The then Prince of Wales first came to Transylvania in the late 1990s on an official visit. It’s the only time he’s come on business.
Episode 17: Lutyens and Wren
For the first time in the history of this podcast, Your Places or Mine has gone on location.
Episode 16: Sovereignty in Stone: The Kings of Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle has been imbued with symbolism since William the Conqueror founded it after the invasion of 1066. He took the name of Windsor from an existing Anglo-Saxon palace which stood on a different spot.
Episode 15: 12 Crosses That Remember a Queen (With History Alice)
This week YPOMPOD is joined by Alice Loxton — History Alice to her many followers — to discuss the extraordinary series of crosses that King Edward I built in memory of his queen, Eleanor of Castile in the 1290s.
Episode 14: The Dollar Princesses Who Revolutionised the British Country House
The American girl was a phenomenon, charming, sporty, better educated than her European counterpart. talk on a wide range of subjects.
Episode 13: Ramsgate: The Marseille f the South East
In this summer episode of ypompod, we got to the seaside – to Ramsgate, beloved of Queen Victoria and now home to the biggest Wetherspoon’s (in an elegant neo-Greek building called the Royal Pavilion of 1913) on the face of the planet.
Episode 12: Ewelme: A Village and its Vanished Medieval Palace
Where is Ewelme Palace? It was one of the most splendid houses in the country when it was built in the 15th century but nothing of it now remains. There are, however, some of the ancillary buildings and monuments that went with a great medieval estate. Its chatelaine Alice, Duchess of Suffolk, is remembered by one of the most beautiful tombs in the country.
Episode 11: National Gallery: The Sainsbury Wing and a New Chapter
The National Gallery, now 200 years old, occupies one of the most famous buildings in London, on the north side of Trafalgar Square.
Episode 10: Mediterranean Caprice in Snowdonia: The Story of Portmeirion
In this episode, Clive and John discuss the holiday village of Portmeirion, an improbable, festive vision of the Mediterranean built on a wooded peninsula of Snowdonia, whose centenary falls this year.
Episode 9: Castle Howard: Vanbrugh’s Palace Redisplayed
Castle Howard in Yorkshire is one of a select group of country houses which must be seen as complete works of art.
Episode 8: Glyndebourne: The House that Gave Birth to the Opera Festival
Picnic hampers, black tie, world-class opera — it’s the season for Glyndebourne, the festival that sired the happy, uniquely British phenomenon of country house opera.
Episode 7: The Tower of London: The Most Notorious Castle in England
The Tower of London is one of the great sights of the capital, a place that is as steeped in history as it has sometimes been, through the numerous executions it has witnessed, drenched in blood.
Episode 6: A Marriage of Opposites
In his mid 20s, Lutyens fell passionately in love with Lady Emily Lytton, daughter of the Earl Lytton, a diplomat and Viceroy of India who had really wanted to be a poet.
Episode 5: Huddy and Ned
Sir Edwin (Ned) Lutyens’s old friend Edward Hudson founded Country Life in 1897. A London printer, he was not a countryman, but commissioned three country houses as well as the Country Life office in Covent Garden.
Episode 4: Home and Garden
The first of a series on the early-20th-century architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, this episode examines the relationship between the young Ned — gangly, witty, shy — and the craftswoman turned gardener Gertrude Jekyll, his senior by 25 years.
New Book: King Charles III: 40 Years of Architecture
King Charles III’s affection for architecture is well-known, but the extent of his engagement has never been fully presented to the public.
Episode 3: Medieval Majesty at the Heart of Parliament
Clive and John discuss one of the most spectacular medieval buildings in Britain, Westminster Hall. Originally built by William the Conqueror’s heir, the voracious William Rufus, it was a structure of immense ambition — said to be the biggest hall of its kind north of the Alps.
Episode 2: A Royal Passion
One of the greatest of HM the King’s many enthusiasms is architecture.