Within Reason - #54 The Cultural Tutor - Why Is The Modern World So Ugly?

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Sheehan Quirke is known online as the Cultural Tutor. With over 1.6 million followers on X, he writes daily threads about art, architecture, and history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Try again. Tomorrow and tomorrow. And tomorrow creeps in. Creeps in. This petty pace from day to day. I don't know it, man. You've got a far better memory for quotes than I do. I actually only know it because it's in Hamilton.

I've never seen Hamilton. Gosh, we have to make a trip. To Hamilton. To Hamilton? Do you want to see Hamilton? Yeah, why not? Do you like musicals? Yeah.

Oh, I adore them. I mean, I like La La Land. Have you seen La La Land? I haven't seen that actually. But I have danced in the jazz club where it was filmed. In L.A.? In Paris. Is this in Paris?

I mean, I haven't seen the film, so I don't know, but they had a bunch of signs on the wall that said that anyway. If not, then that's a great marketing ploy. Well, there is a scene where they sort of go to Paris, but how do you sort of go to Paris? Well, you need to see a film by Dame Riesel, and then you'll understand. Fine.

I guess no spoilers. No, indeed. She and Quirk, welcome to the show. Mr. O'Connor. The cultural tutor on Twitter, 1.6 million followers. Description. a beautiful education what does that mean what do you think it means i suppose an education in beauty or an education that's beautiful i suppose that's the question that i'm asking

i think a beautiful education is um When the words first came to me, beautiful education, you know, in the early days of my Twitter X account, my bio was something like arts, architecture, history, literature, dot, dot, dot, you learn about all of these if you follow me, something along those lines. Obviously, that was a bit wordy, a bit of a mouthful, and I think I realized that that'd be beyond all these specific disciplines or areas of study of thought, architecture, art, literature, poetry, philosophy, music, law as well. What underlies everything, I guess, is education, which is kind of a dry word, I think. When you hear someone say, oh, you know, that you should try and become educated.

It sounds like, you know, you need to go and read a load of books, go to university, become an academic or something along those lines. But that really isn't the case. And I suppose, to me, beautiful education is about, you know, the whole Renaissance humanist idea. Where education wasn't this sort of boring word that we associate with school and A-levels in Jesus. He's education was this beautiful, incredible gift to humanity. It was a thing by which humans, you know, we were, we are, I suppose, in some sense, monkeys. and yet from the soil, we've created Bluetooth and we've gone to the moon with nothing but the dirt that we found and the ore in the mountains, in the mines. How did we go from that state

of being these creatures which were, I guess, indiscernible from the rats and the mice and the bees and the fish to flying to the moon? Well, I guess it was through what I would call education. And calling it a beautiful education is the emphasis, I suppose, being on the fact that it is beautiful. And I don't wish to say that the point of life is beauty. I'm not sure if I can really qualify to say what the purpose of life is. But a life without beauty in it is surely not worth living. And who's to say what beauty is precisely? It's not up to me. We all may have a slightly different view of it. And it's those two things combined, I think, which kept the spirit of what I'm doing, what I'm writing about. And I think one of the reasons my work

has been successful, if I can call it that. I mean, it's odd. I sit there behind my laptop and I have a load of books and I've been thinking about things, looking at things, then open my laptop and I type about it. And then the numbers on the screen change and it's 1,000 followers, then it's a million. These all are apparently real people if the internet is to be trusted. but being serious, why has it succeeded? Why are there millions of people apparently who do want to read about Johannes Vermeer and his use of colour, or who do want to read about particular subtypes of Gothic architecture? I suppose because of the internet, especially Twitter or X as it's now called,

it's full of politics and hatred and division. And if not that, you know, people arguing, then at least it's going to be some sort of mindless content, perhaps something genuinely meaningless, perhaps something funny. You know, you know, somebody's made a joke or there's a meme that there's a video of whatever it is, frogs, you know, how fighting with, who knows what sort of thing. I mean, I like memes and funny videos as much as the next person, but it does seem that people want more from their life and want to engage with more than mere politics, than mere content in a mere entertainment.

And, you know, some of what I've written is perhaps just content. And yet people, despite what some may think about the modern world, being, you know, full of greed and narcissism, seems there is a yearning for something, something more history, culture, education, whatever the hell you want to call it, that's where my work comes in, I guess. And that sort of beautiful education was always about bringing. this to the internet. The internet is an incredible resource. I mean, you know, what the hell would Erasmus have made of the internet? You know, one of the, as far as I'm concerned,

he's a hero of mine, that this man was a force for literacy, for reason, for peace, in, in dark days in Europe. And he believed in the power of literacy and of thought and of writing to elevate humankind, right? But he was working at a time just after the printing press has been invented, which made a hell of a difference. But even so, most people still couldn't read, and certainly books weren't cheap. Now, for free, well, I suppose you have to have a phone or a router or borrow someone else's Wi-Fi. You can access every book ever written, like that. The Internet has this capacity to transform human kind.

It already is doing, I suspect. But of course, the way it transforms it, will it be for good? Will it be for bad? We don't know. But we can try and do something about it. my sense was the internet could be the greatest thing that has ever happened to humanity. Could also be the worst, right? Because, I mean, one of the most common observations about the internet is precisely this. What would our ancestors have thought, you know, we've got the

entirety of human collective wisdom at our fingertips and we use it to look at videos of cats, as people like to say. I don't understand, I mean, your sort of optimism here when, I know we're at the very beginning. We are right of the revolution. Which is one thing we've tend to forget. It's been around for, what, 30 years. Yeah. And, I mean, it takes quite a long time for technologies to kick in and really change.

But if there's a direction that it's moving in, it seems not to be this positive direction towards, I mean, accounts like yours are wonderful anomalies, but I think they are just that anomalies. And most of the time that people spend on the internet is looking at, should we say, less valuable content. Like your videos, for example. Like my videos. I'm only joking. But I take your point. I think there's a hell of a lot to say here. There's an exciting time.

I've got a hell of a lot of time. Indeed. I think we may be suffering. I suffer from this as well. I mean, who doesn't? From this tendency to, you know, it's when you look back at the past, do you think things weren't like this? You can see it with more clarity.

When you're in the thicker things, you have no idea what the hell is going on. We don't have the benefit of hindsight here. And we say, people aren't using the internet as well as well as they could be. But I think we're also failing to see what good it has already done for the world. You know, at least in statistical terms, materially, the world is better than it has ever been by every single metric, as far as I'm aware, in terms of, you know, poverty, hunger and mortality rates across the board. And I think it's safe to say the internet has played a role in this. But is that what people care about in that of course people care about being able to have a shelter and food and this kind of thing? But it seems that when we measure the success of a society in terms of its material prosperity, that really should only count, I think, beyond a certain baseline.

I mean, obviously, if you can take a society from abject poverty into the majority of people having food to eat and having shelter over their heads, that's great. But once you give everybody sort of a baseline, you know, Maslowian providers, it seems that people have this tendency to say that society is better today than it was 10 years ago because of technological progress or because people are richer. And like I say, to a certain degree, fine. But there comes a point when it becomes almost a truism of gaining wealth that it does not actually bring about what people really care about, which is happiness. and that people are sort of misaligning their goals. And so, I don't know, there's got to be a limit to this. And it seems like this exponential expanse of the power of the Internet is only going to make what's already destroying us worse.

I mean, I don't know a single person who is happy about their relationship with social media that enjoys the amount of time they spend on their phone that says, yeah, no, I think I use Instagram just about the right amount for me. Nobody's doing this. And I know some people who really value, you know, their students and they really value that they can use the internet to read a book. But I think that the time spent lamenting the negative consequences of Instagram far outweigh the time spent celebrating the positive influence of being able to, you know, read a book on Gutenberg.com. Yes, indeed. Well, I mean, okay, you said quite a lot of many things there.

First, quickly on your point about, you know, materialism, basically. I think that's a very fair point, you know, if all you, if you measure the worth of a society success by its material gains by technology, how much land it has, how much gold it has, or how many cattle, one has, of course, what is valuable changes over time, you know, in Mesopotamian mythology and in the Bible, they seem to care in the Old Testament, at least cattle is what really matters. And then, you know, it becomes gold. And these days, I guess it's machines. and bombs.

Yeah, you might as well be playing Tetris, right? I mean, what is the nature of Tetris? You can't win. You can only keep playing and keep building more and more and more until you lose. So I think that's a fair point, but I don't know how much that really relates to this more fundamental thing about the internet we're getting at. Sure, people say they're not, you know, people perhaps are more often complain about the internet than praise it. But as it ever was, I mean, when in history, if you found people praising, you know, the printing press, there were voices who said this is a blessing, a boon for mankind, as has happened with the internet. And certainly, you know, it was slightly before our time, I guess. But from what I've been told and what I've read, you know, you can go and read articles from the 90s or even still in the early 2000s. The excitement about what it could do for humankind was there. Now perhaps it's worn off. But that's the nature of that. That's the human condition. We were born to find problems with whatever situation we're in.

You could give a person anything, and after enough time, they will get bored of it. That seems to be hardwired into us. And sure, we moan about it, but I guess maybe there's a difference between our perception of the internet and what it's actually doing. And this is really important. So, you know, who the hell are you? You know, how did you get here? Why are you in this room? People, you know, come up to you in the streets.

Oh, Mr. O'Connor, you know, Cosmic Skeptic, formerly. your work has changed my life. But how has that happened? I mean, through the internet, right? I mean, that's what I've done as well. But I suppose you don't go around everyday thinking, wow, you know, thank God for the internet. Right.

You just get on with this. It's just what, it's there and it's happening. It's always easier to complain than it is to be grateful. Yes. Yeah, I suppose it's, I don't know if it's easier. Comes more naturally, perhaps. Maybe I'm just a bit of a cynic. Perhaps, but, but you see my point.

people take what they have and they don't think about it. But when you do, perhaps the internet is doing more good and then we give it credit for. And as for it's evils, you mentioned an interesting point. I think I can't remember the words you used, but essentially you were saying how it, perhaps it is exacerbating the issues that are already there. This is interesting because we say the internet has made, for example, the issue of disinformation, alternative news, fake news. this is a modern problem, seems to be the perception, but that certainly isn't true.

I mean, not even remotely. I mean, just open any history book, and you'll find countless examples of disinformation and misinformation. That was the currency the world has traded on for a very, very long time. The amount of, say, kings who have been deposed, because while they were away, someone said they were dead. And therefore, you know, they triggered a race for the, you know. Was it Thomas Jefferson who called John Adams, a hermaphrodite, or was it the other way around? I can't remember. I'm not familiar with American history.

There's plenty of examples. Yeah, but you see my point. And so the internet, has it caused the issue of fake news? Or is it to blame for the fact that we are drawn to things that we already agree with? No. Has it made it worse? I'm not sure about that either. That's like what they say about alcohol.

It's just sort of intensifier. It doesn't really change who you are or the way you behave. It just sort of turns it up and removes the filters. And I suppose that's what social media. does too. I mean, people often, I don't know, I don't know if I've told you about this idea before we might have spoken about it where people always talk about how inauthentic our ages. You know, we're living in the most inauthentic age that there's ever been, everything's fake, everything's manufactured, everything. And I think the opposite's true. Have I,

have I talked to you about this? No, not at all. I think the exact opposite is true. I think we live in the most authentic age ever. It's just that people are sort of accidentally authentic. The reason, the reason for that is because, look, if you're writing, a treatise in the 1800s, you can, you can sort of lie or you can sort of slip in bits about your reputation, you can try and perfectly curate it, and it sort of, and it goes out. And that's it, that's what you know of a person. All you know is what they've written, printed, and that you've gone and got sort of bound in a nice leather casing and brought back and put in your bookshelf. Today, sure, I can, I can sort of take a selfie and I can change my hair a bit.

I can, you know, change the angle. But if you do that every day, if you share absolutely everything, it's inevitable that you'll be able to read through the lines. Things will slip through the cracks. You know, I can say of like, you know, an old friend from my primary school, they're like mum's friend. Just because I have them on Facebook for some reason, I can, I know that they are, you know, a nervous, slightly anxious, self-conscious person that tries to put on a display that this is who they want to be, but this is who they actually. I can just, I can just tell what kind of person they are because of the things they choose to post, because of when they choose to post, because of how they choose to frame it.

And although every individual thing is sort of curated and artificial, put that all together and you get a picture of the person. I mean, you can know more about this random stranger, essentially, than you can know about your favorite writer a hundred years ago. And I think it's making things much more authentic. It's just that you sort of doing it by accident, you know. If you listen to enough of my podcast, for example, if you listen to a bunch of Joe Rogan, he might not do a podcast on I don't know hunting or something I mean I know he has but if he doesn't

you're just listening to enough of him you just get the vibe of the kind of person he is you know that he's a gym guy he likes hunting he likes eating meat this kind of stuff you might get an idea for what kind of music he listens to without him ever really explicitly like addressing it it just kind of slips through the cracks because you've got hours and hours of conversations I mean people feel like they know the guy right indeed and I just think that that that inevitably happens when you're posting every single day a picture on Instagram, you're sharing your story. And so I think that it's the most authentic time that we've ever lived in. I mean, I look, I don't know what you want me to say about that. Sure, maybe. I guess the question is, what does it mean to really

know a person? But I think when people talk about the inauthenticity of our rage, let's say, I think they're probably more affluent the fact that you can project a certain version of yourself online that a lot of people end up believing in. Although thinking about it, as you made the point, just a moment ago, when was that not the case? You know, if all you ever see of, you know, George I first is his portraits. If you're Henry VIII and all you ever see of Catherine of Aragon is a painting of her, then that's all you have to go on, right? And now essentially we've just got more content and thanks to the nature of this technology. as in a photograph versus a painting as in a video and a recording versus something that's been written down

even seeing them on a video versus hearing by radio we we get we make we get more of it um in which case i mean that seems to go against what you're saying this is this is a good a bonus of the internet as it were what it depends how much we want that because people don't want too much of themselves to be put out online and that's actually i mean it sounds good that everything's authentic but But when that's sort of done by accident and not on purpose, then you have no choice but to sort of display yourself naked to the world. You know, it's like you're wearing clothes, but they're essentially translucent and people can see through them

if you're out there long enough. Well, I mean, you can just not use the internet. That's the thing. Of course you can. I mean, plenty of people I know, I mean, you can still, it's hard to not use it if you want to, you know, certain lines of work you essentially have to. But how much, precisely, or, you know,

but you don't, no one's forcing you to upload pictures to Instagram. That's right. Well, selfies of, of yourself. But like I say, nobody, like, a lot of people just do it. I mean, it's, it's basically an addiction, right? You have the social media addiction. Indeed. For some people it's scrolling.

For some people, it's posting for the validation. Sure. I mean, look at me, I'm probably addicted to writing on Twitter, on X at this point. And it is an addictive force. But, I mean, I suppose dragging this back, back to the broader point. And again, something very perceptive you said is I think it is exacerbating issues that were already there, which is what technology tends to do. It either does something for us that we used to have to do ourselves

or it allows us to do something that we couldn't previously do. And in some cases, simply takes who we are and sort of magnifies it, all the flaws and all the benefits as well. Because I made the point that you wouldn't be here without the internet. I mean, as we speak right now, there are people, let's say, having meetings, meetings with colleagues from, four different continents that they're on Zoom or whatever and and maybe it's one of those

pointless meetings probably most meetings in the world every day are pointless but no doubt some of them some good work gets done sharing resources sharing knowledge um I do realize I'm being very optimistic here but I think it's important to realize what a blessing the internet is and what a force for good in the history of humankind it can be um that's I guess where I'm at and it brings it back to the question you asked about about a beautiful education um which strangely enough ends up being tied to the internet, even though the things I write about are in some sense timeless. The times I'm writing him right now,

I can't ignore the fact that the internet is here. I mentioned Erasmus. If he was around today, I don't know if he'd be tweeting or he might be a YouTuber, perhaps, but he would surely be on the internet because that's where information is shared now. That's where businesses transacted. That's where our ideas are shared and where ideological battles are fought on the internet.

All it's done is is replace what existed previously, you know. Why is the modern world so ugly? Gosh, that's a hell of a question. Do you think it's ugly? I think so, yeah. And I know that I think you're a bit more of an optimist about the state of architecture, for example. But, you know, walking around London, it's very difficult not to notice that every time I look at a building and think, wow, that's something special. It wasn't built in the last 50 years. And most of the more well-known buildings of our modern age, the Gurkin, the walkie-talkie, even the shard, I think, is maybe not as ugly as the other ones, but insofar as it imposes itself on everybody who can see it. in London, I don't like it, is what I mean to say.

And I don't think that, although that's a subjective assessment in my view, it seems to be one that people tend to share. Yeah, I think it's certainly fair to say that, I mean, statistics and polls have shown this to be true, that people on the whole don't much like what we broadly call modern architecture. So why is this happening if nobody likes it? Uh-huh, indeed. Well, well, I mean, I guess the place to start is, is. To ask simply this, when was the world not ugly?

Do you have an answer to that question? Yeah, no, I see. I'm not sure. And thinking about asking this question to you, that did cross my mind. I thought there have always been ugly buildings and there have always been ugly cities. And I suppose there's a sense in which when you do get these rare glimpses of beauty, they just get retained because they're beautiful. And that's what's remembered.

I mean, I think the most, this is a wonderfully fascinating and really important topic. I think architecture, let's say, is maybe the most important form of art. I think it is a form of art. It doesn't have the same capacity, perhaps, to move and to send messages that other forms of art do as poetry or literature or cinema, even music. But what architecture does do and what it can. that none of the others can do, by its very nature, is that it imposes itself on us. We don't have a choice, right? I don't have to listen to music if I don't want to. Like I might hear it in a cafe or, you know, when I'm walking down the streets, or you don't

have to read novels. You don't have to go into a gallery and look at paintings, but you have to live in a building, right? If you want to get a job, you're going to have to go to work. You have to get on a train or a bus or in your car or walk, drive and travel past all these buildings, live in one, work in one. So architecture is everywhere. It is in some, you know, it's been there since the dawn of human civilization. As soon as architecture ends, that's the end of human civilization, right? From the moment, the first cave man or whatever, however many thousands of years ago, set up a tree stump and then another tree stump, you know, and maybe shave them down a bit and put wedges in them and then notches in them rather and placed another stump over

the top to form, you know, post and lintel, ever since that day we've had architecture. We have to build shelters. We have to live somewhere. So the potential of our architecture, therefore, to shape our civilization, to shape our every day, right, you know, to either oppressors or uplifters, to oppressors or inspire us to make your every day just a little bit less unbearable or to make a good day even more beautiful is immense and is also a well-known fact. fact, the studies have shown what we all instinctively know to be true, that architecture affects

how you feel and how you think. And therefore, along with everything else that results from the state of the human mind and soul and heart, happiness, psychological health and physical health, even. But back to the point, if you ever read what people in the 19th century said about their architecture, you'll find that they said more or less, exactly the same things that we're saying. Now, I'm not disputing necessarily that parts of the world are ugly, but you find in 1877 William Morris giving some lectures, and he describes it as an anti-architectural age. He talks about the hideous streets of London, the ever-increasing shadow of ugliness. He uses those words, a shadow of ugliness, or maybe the darkness of

ugliness that has been cast over London. He said that in the 1870s at a time when, When the modern architecture, in his case, was things like St. Pancras train station in London, the Middle and Grand Hotel, or all of these high Victorian buildings, which are now praised as perhaps they should be. These beautiful works of architecture. Why can't we build like that anymore? The strange thing is, the people at the time hated those buildings. They thought they were ugly and cheap. I mean, you know, Paris, you've been to Paris. You love Paris. Yeah, yeah, yeah, why? It's beautiful, right? It's a gorgeous city

It can be Does it have nice architecture? Sometimes Sometimes But yes Yeah Absolutely You've walked down

It's boulevards And you've looked up You know Latin quarter You know Indeed When all those buildings Were being built

In what the 80s The second half of the 19th century I think emperor Napoleon the third Basically He said He decided that That he needed to sort out

Paris Right This was a stinking Filthy Overcrowded dirty Miserable medieval city full of disease with narrow streets, open sewers. And with the help of, well, he appointed this chap called Baron Hausman. Well, he became Baron Hausman, this sort of young and very ambitious

urban planner. He made him prefect of the Sen and gave him essentially free reign to demolish and rebuild Paris, which he did over the course of 25 years. And he was sacked in the end, Houseman, because of, because people didn't like what he was doing. In any case, they're tearing down medieval Paris building up new buildings in their places, laying down sewers and doing all sorts of things like this. And the critics at the time, especially a lot of poets and artists and such like, they said, what is happening to Paris? The beautiful medieval Paris of all, the Paris of Hugo and the Paris of 1848

and the Paris of 1789, this is disappearing beneath the, well, I don't think they have bulldozers, but disappearing beneath, you know, the, The hammers of housemen's renovation of Paris. And yet, 150 years later, the things that they said about Paris, for example, decrying literally its modernity, they said this cheap, this ugly, this artificial modern architecture. I mean, they were speaking in French rather than English, but I think that's a fairly reasonable translation of what they said.

Jules Ferry, I think, who was a particular. perhaps the mayor of Paris at some point in that period. He said that 150 years later, it's laughable. The idea that Paris is filled with ugly modern architecture, right? I mean, this sounds literally ridiculous for me to say that. Well, the buildings that you're talking about, certainly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then there are places in Paris that are just sort of these utilitarian

towers. What's the tower called? The one that sort of looks on to Montparnasse. Montparnasse, just this sort of, it seems like they've sort of built one skyscraper and then decided that it was so ugly that they don't want to build another one. You're kind of missing the point. As I said, that would be a very strange thing for me to say to you. You'd laugh.

Yes. But it's 150 years old, right? So there's a shard, the gherkin, you know, the walkie-talkie you've just been hating on, perhaps fairly. I mean, in 150 years, I think it's probably very likely that Londoners, of the future will be saying, God, modern architecture is crap. Why can't we build like we did in the 21st century, the early days? Look at the shard. Isn't it, isn't it glorious? Isn't it beautiful? Things along those lines. We have every reason to believe that people will be saying that

purely because, and this strangely touches on where we began with the internet. People are just never happy with what they've got. No one's ever happy with their own architecture, or indeed their own times more broadly. You know, it's not just the Victorians, pretty much every age you find people moaning about architecture saying that is ugly and that in the past it was better and why is the world become so ugly. And also, I should say more to the point, maybe even more importantly. I mean, look, I'm hardly a disciple of modernism in architecture. I like brutalism. I think that is good architecture. But a lot of our modern architecture, I do think, is fairly careless and thoughtless and has created cities which aren't built on a human scale and which don't do is any good.

I think people all around the world feel this to be true. We've got to remember, though, that that shouldn't lead us to conclude that it was better in the past and that we've lost our way. Those towers, you know, you mentioned Montparnasse, but, you know, you go through London, any big city anywhere in the world. Inevitably has high-rise towers, you know, big concrete blocks of, which at least from the outside look fairly miserable. There's all of a miserable, mundane architecture. boxes with squares in them. And we think, look at this. This is awful. Why can't we have, you know, Gothic cathedrals anymore? But of course, it wasn't the case that these concrete high rises replaced cathedrals, what they replaced were, for example,

there are these wonderful, well, wonderful isn't the word, they're certainly very instructive photographs from the outskirts of Vienna after the First World War. In the 20s and 30s, there were people, Viennese citizens and some of them refugees had moved there, I think there's about 200,000 of them living in these sorts of shanty settlements around Vienna. They were living in essentially boxes of corrugated iron, in mud huts without running water, families of 10 or 15 in there, and the disease is rampant in these towns. And the same in London. Recently, I read a book by a chap called George Godwin. It's called Another Blow for Life. It's called Another Blow for Life. It's called, it describes in detail.

He went and surveyed London in 1864. Described what he found on the streets of London, the streets around us right now, perhaps even on this very road. What he found wasn't beautiful architecture and people living in beautiful homes. He found the vast majority of the population living in cellars and in grottie little rooms

in buildings that were perhaps 100, 200 years older, newer. there was no running water there were pools of stagnant sewage on the floor of these cellars and families of mother or father seven children they've had 14 children but seven of them have already died

unbelievable unbelievable material misery in suffering and squalor that was what most architecture was like in the past and it's that architecture that I think a lot of what we call our ugly modern architecture has actually replaced

it was misery that these concrete towers replaced rather than, you know, Baroque palaces. I said you did a wonderful thread about this where I know that Twitter accounts that have statues for a profile picture and talk about architecture

are often more on the pessimistic side about the state of modern architecture. And I don't know if you did this as an intentional protest against that sort of culture of Twitter Or if you just sort of thought this anyway, but you did this thread and saying the leading image was sort of a cathedral or something turning into the barbican with a big cross through it. And underneath is the picture of like London after the blitz and then, you know, some horrible bruseless building that to indicate that that's not where it came from. It's not like people are knocking down Gothic cathedrals and turning them into broochelist blocks.

But it still seems to me, and I think that's a wonderful point, and I think people really need to reflect that. I mean, I did see once somebody tweeted a picture of these horrible, brutalist towers and said, is there anything worse than left-wing architecture? And somebody responded and said, like, homelessness or poverty or something, which is, which is much of the point. But it doesn't seem to me impossible to make these buildings a little more beautiful. Okay, now, but this is where it gets interesting. I mean, look, the sort of the culture you refer to, the heart is in the right place. I mean, I think it's perfectly reasonable to look out at some of these buildings. I wonder why in the past we could build in a particular way.

We're not able to anymore. But this isn't really about the past. It's about the present and about the future. And it's not about whether or not the past was better or worse. It's simply whether it be the case that models to be emulated of beautiful architecture, that people like, if they've been preserved and passed down, then perhaps we could learn something from them. And despite everything I have just said,

it is also clearly the case that we don't build like we used to in particular circumstances, one being, for example, train stations, right? If you go to the King's Cross or indeed St. Pancras. King's Cross is not particularly certainly compared to some Pancras. It's far more austere. But you go inside, you know, the great big train shed, that the Victorians built there it's an impressive place

and if that's I mean when I first arrived in London when I was you know I came here for the first time when I was only a teenager came to the big city I thought wow I mean I thought what an incredible city this must be if this is the train station you arrive at these great big soaring

arcades of brick you know were with the iron girders painted I guess I can't remember exactly what color of the painted at King's Cross. The pun is it inspired you, but now the train stations we build now, are they the same as that? Not awful.

Yes. Yeah, they're fairly, it's immoral, the architecture of modern train stations. I mean, you came to Oxford not long ago, and I remember you making some comment when you arrived about how God awful the train station is. Yes, well, you know, Oxford has this reputation for being a beautiful city. Yeah. and the first thing you see when you get there by train is it's a really um it's like it's like a bus stop it's not yeah it's like a bus stop but it's also devoid of imagination or character yeah i mean in terms

of it's car i mean you go to a bus stop and then at least a modern bus stop which is this sort of plastic you know structure with plastic windows and horrible sort of blue curvy pillows on and so it's that it's that kind of that kind of vibe i mean yeah i think there's a route to go down here but there's something maybe more, something useful I can say, at least, and which may be useful for you to hear. Or you may have already know it if you've been reading my work. But I think when it comes to architecture, there's a lot of forces of work. And we tend to perhaps attribute more credit to architects and to movements and to conscious design choices than perhaps we should. So if you've ever been to the countryside, you know, you'll see some nice old

cottages. We don't have as much medieval architecture in this country as we should, but if you see a nice old thatched cottage, you know, there's big thick walls, a little chimney, a nice big wind, you know, a thick slab of stone as a windowsill. I think, God, what a romantic, beautiful little cottage that is that you see somewhere, you know, in the Lincolnshire Wolds or in the Yorkshire, why was this cottage built and why does it look that way? That's not a rhetorical question. I should invite you to answer it. Presumably, for function.

Yeah, yeah, yes. Which is a fascinating point. As in why did people use to thatch? Like, we think of thatching as it, and I agree, it's absolutely gorgeous. Aesthetic choice. But it was, right? This is what I suppose they used to call it. well, not what is called, what is called vernacular architecture.

So architecture, which is what most architecture for all of human history has been, it wasn't designed by professional architect or even an engineer necessarily of any sort. It was simply what people built where they could and with what they could in order to do what they needed it to do. So people fatched their roofs because there were reeds readily available. They weren't expensive. They didn't have to travel far to get them. and if you wove them properly, it made a roof which kept out the water, kept out the snow, kept in the smoke, kept in, or sorry, kept in the heat, rather. The point is it did its job. And that instinct for us to build with whatever materials we have available, you know, everywhere in the world, this is true, like, why did architecture used to look different? If you're going to any old town in England, an old town in Italy, an old town, somewhere in Latin America or an old town saying, yeah, Yemen, an old town in China, Japan, anywhere in the world, architecture, you know, go back

two or three hundred years, it looks different everywhere. I mean, even within England, you sort of have regional differences. Go to Wales, you know, to South Wales, the houses look one way, the buildings look one way, go to North Wales, they look a different way. Why is this? For a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being, people could only build with what they had locally available. You know, you couldn't import concrete or steel from the other side of the world. You have slate, you build with slate. You have mud. You make mud bricks and you build with them. If you're lucky enough to have marble, as the Greeks did, then you can build with some marble. And this instinct to just use what we have available has continued. We now have

concrete. It's cheaper and more readily available than, you know, timber or limestone, as far as I'm aware. Anyway, and certainly you can build bigger things with it. And so it's not so much that we've changed in the way we think about building, perhaps. It's just that the conditions in which we find ourselves have changed, and therefore, so of our buildings, look at air conditioning. You know, who's more important in the history of architecture? Is it Vitruvius? Is it Lucobusier?

You know, is it Violet Laduke? Is it any of these great names of architecture, or is it the invention of air conditioning? Right? Because what did it do? It meant that you no longer had to build with taking climate into consideration. And Vitruvius wrote in Indi Architectura, and the only surviving architectural treaties from the ancient world, which either, you know, it's survival, depending on your point of view,

is either a blessing or a curse for mankind, and that depends on how you feel about classical and neoclassical architecture. But in any case, he makes the point, this is speaking 2,000 years ago, that houses in Spain, houses in Italy, houses in Britain, not only will they look different because of different materials, but they have to be literally designed and built differently because of the climate, right? The same house you would build in the south of Italy

isn't the same house you'd build in England, is it? You know, of course, because it's bloody freezing here. And now we've got air conditioning. What does that mean? It levels the playing field. Everywhere in the world, you don't need to build in a way to take account of the particular heat or the cold of those areas.

And so what we have is this weird position where anywhere in the world, the conditions, which give rise to, architecture are the same we've got the same materials and we've got the same um let's say problem to be solved which which is we just need to build something they don't need to worry about other issues so much so the the playing field has been leveled and perhaps it's dragged us down to the lowest common denominator to do what we can be we build as cheaply and as quickly as we can and what do you get you get a you get sort of sort of big boxes really well arguably you

get ugliness. Yeah, sure. And like you said a moment ago, the thing about architecture is it's the only kind of art that does impose itself. And so this is something I was talking to Jonathan Peugeot about. Like perhaps there should be some kind of rules and legislation that if you're going to create something that other people have to look at, it should conform to more widely accepted standards of beauty because otherwise you can get, I mean, he was talking about the concept of architectural trends. The idea that there are such things as architectural trends is kind of horrifying. Really? But how so? The point of a trend is that it comes and goes. And I don't think architects are intentionally, you know, aware of being part of a trend, let's say, but there

are architectural trends. And if they come and go in terms of their fashionability, to have fashion in something that's permanent or you know it's close to permanent as a bit of art can be really that seems like that seems like a huge problem well but i suppose all i'd ask is but when was that not the the case i mean is it the architecture has always changed and developed over time you know go back to the 16th century every decade there's a new fashion you know donata bromante when he designed this house um in venice i think and he and he he has established a trend for a way to build houses. He sort of had this rusticated lower story.

They're done with kind of pilasters of the, um, anyway, anyway, the point is. Sure, yeah, things change, right? But, but, but, but, but, there seemed to be, I suppose, it, it seems strange to me that, you know, architectural trends of the past. Yeah. You can still look at today and think, think, think, think, uh, quite beautiful. Where as an artist who sort of creates, what's that horrible, you know, museum in Paris, that ridiculous building? Yeah, yes.

That I'm sure, you know, whoever's designing this thinks there's some kind of creative, artistic genius, this is great, this is new, this is fresh, but give it 20, 30 years and it's just, it's disgusting. Well, a lot of people like the Pompe do centre. And we've got to reconcile with the fact that not everyone shares your taste, you know, I for what... That's the point is that, like, sure, not everyone shares my taste, but because not everyone shares my taste, but because not everyone shares, That's my taste. Like, you're forced to look at my taste even if you don't like. Indeed, indeed, indeed. Well, I suppose what I will say is this.

I'm not sure about, I mean, you mentioned you have this conversation and what he suggested that there should be rules saying. Well, no, I sort of suggested tongue-in-cheek. There should be legislation. But you know what I'm saying. Yeah, no, yeah. Well, really, I think what I was going to say will come to that. which is, you know, the whole, all that nonsense I said about air conditioning and, you know, local materials and the effects of globalisation, I think perhaps painted a fairly deterministic view of architecture, that we have no control over it and we just build what all the systems around as leaders to build.

I think that's true up to a point. And yet, obviously, it's not like we can just decide to build whatever the hell we want. and it has happened as well. The best example I can give you is, well, there are many, many, many examples. Dresden destroyed during the Second World War, firebombed, a catastrophe, the city laid to ruin, including the frown Kershia, this kind of lovely, I mean, it's not my favourite style, but sort of this, you know, German Baroque church with a great big dome. This was bombed as well.

And it laid in ruins since 1945 for 50 years. along with large parts of the old town in the middle of Dresden, the old market. But now in the last 20 to 30 years, the whole thing is being rebuilt. And this Baroque church has been rebuilt stone for stone as it was, you know, stucco for stucco, cherub for cherub on the walls, all those hideous baroque cherubs or whatever looking down at you. It's been rebuilt. That's one example of thousands.

around the world of historic buildings that were destroyed, burned down, for example, by accident, in war, and which have been rebuilt. So it does seem to be possible drawing towards what you're saying to build in styles which have now become historic or, you know, quote, unquote, traditional. So it's clearly possible, but then how do we do it? Well, buildings don't just appear. Someone has to build them, someone has to pay for them. I suppose if a university decides to build a new building, I do wonder why.

They, you know, my old university, they spent $40 million on a new sort of set of lecture theatres and study rooms. And it's one of the most, the most hideous thing I've ever seen. And I thought, gosh, well, you know, this is a place of education. Students coming here, paying through their teeth to come here. certainly. And what should a universe to be, if not a place where people are uplifted and led to believe that education, as I said at the beginning, it is something to be overjoyed about. And it's a great responsibility. The future's in your hands as a student. You know, you want to be

uplifted. And yet this building a bill was just literally looked like a prison. I mean, it is unfortunately the case. Occasionally does go viral online. sort of a game, you know, two images, which one is the prison and which one is the school. And it's hard to tell. I mean, educational architecture in particular, schools and universities are some of the ugliest, I can't see in the world, but certainly in this country, and in other countries I've been to. And that is concerning. How do we change that?

I don't know. I'm not sure if laws saying you must build in, you know, according to the rules of Andrea Palladio or Peter Parlor would be the solution. Maybe it's further upstream of that. If people don't want beauty and they don't believe it's worth pursuing, then you won't get it. Maybe there's a deeper problem. These kids need a more beautiful education, in other words. Perhaps because the point is One final

I'm sort of jumping around a little bit here But I am of course like Petrarch Neither yes nor no rings clearly in my heart As he said It's funny that's exactly what I was going to say Was it? Well there we go The words out of my mouth As meatloaf said

Yes Yes I know that one actually Is it more expensive to build say a gothic style school than a modernist style school perhaps I don't know but all it takes is a little bit of imagination and you can turn something fairly dull into something fairly fantastic and beautiful it doesn't take much

sometimes it just takes a little bit of proportion but that's the thing that's the question is why is that not happening I don't want to speak out of term I haven't I don't know enough, I suppose, about the actual systems by which modern architecture, by which buildings in our days are built. So I think it would be wrong of me to say too much about it without knowing. But what I can say is this, and it kind of echoes what I mentioned earlier, you don't get something unless you want it, unless you believe that it's worth having. So the part of Westminster, the House of Parliament, you've seen them, presumably.

Do you like Big Ben? Do you like Big Ben? Sure, yeah. I mean, I do. I've always thought that the Palace of Westminster is one of the sort of most testing forces against the idea that beauty is subjective in architecture. Sure thing. You do get the feeling if somebody looks at that palace and says, that's a disgrace, it's ugly, it's horrible, that some things may be going. going wrong. But I mean, I mean, okay. But yeah, okay.

Two things say about that, first of all, perhaps. You're about somebody that you hated. No, no, I'm not. I adore it. I think, I think it's an astonishing building, although I can see why its critics have voiced their criticisms of it. John Ruskin, I think, among several others, weren't the biggest fans of it because the particular style of Gothic that it used. This thing was built in what? In the 1840s, it took about 30 years, designed by Charles Barry, Pugian helped. It was designed in what's called the Perpendicular Gothic, which is a very unusual sub-form, sub-genre of Gothic architecture,

which appeared in England and only in England, in Britain, I should say, sort of in the second half of the 14th century, continued through to the 16th. You think of the chapel at King's College in Cambridge. That's another fine example of perpendicular Gothic, with a real emphasis on verticality. you'll notice there are lines always running from the very bottom of say the walls all the way to the top uninterrupted look at the windows the window tracery rather than the flowing lines of earlier gothic tracery you've got vertical lines going all the way from the bottom to the top yeah it sort of looks like it's made out of matchsticks or something indeed indeed right and you can see that in the part of westminster yeah and there are people who said this is they chose the wrong kind of gothic because they said it's not it's actually a pretty miserable form of gothic architecture um which is just it's not a trivial point at all, oddly enough. Can you imagine the Palace of Westminster, newly finished, inside as well, you know, it's got great big painted vaults and the statues and the staircases

and people look at it, go inside it and say, no, this is ugly, this is a disgrace. People said that about the Palace of Westminster. And the reason I keep bringing us back to this point is purely because we are doing the same thing with the shard or with the Gurkin, with whatever building it is. And I do wonder, despite everything I'm saying, I do wonder if we are just sort of on this treadmill. We're playing architectural Tetris. We build things. We hate them. They survive. People, people love them. But more to the point. Accepting that the place of Westminster is indeed a wonderful building, where did it come from? Because for the past 300 years, a little less than that in England, people had only been building classical and neoclassical architecture. Ever since the Renaissance,

from Italy, spread across Europe, either like, you know, the light of day or the dark of night, depending on your views. So you've got the, you know, the ionic columns, Doric columns, corinthian columns, pediments, pilasters. All of this crap is how everybody's building. Proportion. We've got to have the right proportion round at arches, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Medieval gothic architecture disappears. So why in the 19th century did the Victoria, Well, I suppose it's just before Victoria became queen that it really started. But why did that generation decide, hold on a minute, we're going to stop building this classical architecture, which had become Georgian.

And a lot of Georgian buildings are pretty simple. In fact, on the street alone, a lot of 18th century, early 19th century architecture, which is classical isn't really particularly complicated, but people find it very, very beautiful. I'm going on a small tangent here, by the way. we mentioned earlier that nice architecture isn't complicated. I think Georgian architecture is a good model for that. Because when you think of these sort of Georgian terraces in London, they're not covered in ornament and statuary.

They don't have great big marble columns. You know, they're relatively simple, but all they have is maybe a pediment here, you know, a nice doorway, the windows are proportioned, and it's painted white, maybe. and it looks very... What's an example of it?

If I think of Downing Street where the Prime Minister leads, right? Right. You wouldn't say, wow, what a gorgeous building, but you'd say it's charming. You know, it's just neat, it's tidy, it looks right. That's like a good example of Georgian architecture.

Sure. And that perhaps could be a model for a modern architecture because it shouldn't be too expensive to make new builds in that way. And in fact, some new builds are indeed based on Georgian architecture, called mock Georgian.

Anyway, that was a brief tangent because I suddenly thought of that point about Georgian architecture. But that's how we were building. Imagine it, you know. Think of St. Paul's Cathedral. You know, as Baroque as it gets in England, a great big dome, all those columns, everything, everything that you could possibly think of that would define classical, neoclassical Renaissance baroque architecture. Let's put them under the same roof. That's how we were building. And suddenly the Victorian say, no, we're going to build a Gothic palace. How did that happen? They weren't forced to do it, but by any of these other conditions that I've been speaking about. It wasn't to do with technology, as far as I'm aware.

It wasn't to do with economic systems or any of that sort of thing. They weren't forced into it, nor did it merely just happen. They decided that there was a movement, you know, the Gothic revival, they call it. It wasn't just in architecture. it was also a broader kind of socio-cultural literary autistic movement. People started paying more attention to the Middle Ages, helped by the likes of Pugent and after him, more than anybody else, perhaps by John Ruskin. And they wrote these books, they shared these ideas, people started to agree with them, and suddenly architecture changes because we chose to change the way that we designed

our buildings. And because of that, we have the pass of Westminster, there's Tower Bridge, in any number of other buildings. And the Gothic Revival wasn't just an English thing. It was across Europe. And even in the States, you know, look at something like the Woolworth Building or the Tribune Tower in Chicago, the Gothic Revival lasted to the age of skyscrapers. There were Gothic skyscrapers in the 1920s. All of this coming back to what you were saying, really just kind of, kind of, disputing what I've already said myself, which is that perhaps we can just decide. As the Victorians did, there was a social change, or rather, sorry, sorry, like a socio-cultural change and gothic architecture appeared. So perhaps the same thing could happen.

If suddenly we all started becoming very, very interested in whatever time, place, or period it was in ancient Egypt, let's say, maybe we'll suddenly start building pyramids again and temples with papyroform capitals on top of the columns. Well, one point that you've made to me before, and I mentioned this to Mr. Peugeot as well, is we were arguing about brutalism, which, as you said a moment ago, you're more of a fan of than I am, perhaps.

Not perhaps for sure. Some things you said about brutalism have swung me around. I mean, the most mind-altering thing that you've ever said to me about brutalism, about brutalism, actually that you wrote in a thread about it was, you sort of described it as potentially mimicking, it goes well with nature. You know, you put a bunch of greenery in this horrible concrete building and it actually complements it quite well. And it starts to look a little bit like a cliff edge or something with greenery coming out of it. And I thought, that's beautiful. And I can see maybe in a hundred years when you have real sort of real earth built

into this concrete, that that could actually be quite beautiful. Okay, fair enough. But one of the things that you pointed out is something you've already alluded to is this idea that maybe we just don't like new things. Maybe we just like old things. Just to be clear, it's not maybe, we definitely don't like new things. The same thing happens in many areas. I mean, you can see this.

You can read like ancient Greek texts of people saying the kids these days, you know, they use sort of shortened language and they sort of, they, They butcher the words and endlessly, endlessly. And it sort of seems to happen every, it always makes me laugh when I see people complain about, you know, kids in their slang and how they're, you know, they're not reading as much and all of this kind of stuff. It's never, it's never not been. Well, it's almost beautiful in a way. History is a litany of people complaining about their times in much a sense. Yes.

And complaining about the behaviour of children. We were not as, we were not as morally upstanding as were the previous generation. Yeah. no longer follow God. Yeah. It is maybe the best example. People wonder when history should start. Like as a history teacher, you know, should you be teaching?

I mean, I, I, I, some parents are horrified to find their, their kids learning about, you know, Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair in their history class. I think, gosh, I'm getting old. Maybe a good point is history begins when people sort of stop complaining about it as a, as a time period. But, yeah, I was, I'm thinking about, I, that, that's a very interesting point there. definition, perhaps. The Twin Towers of New York, I've always thought were quite stunning, quite beautiful. The photos that I've seen, I think that's sort of amazing bits of architecture, but I can imagine sort of were not the tragedy connected to them and were they sort of built during my lifetime, I'd probably be picketing. If they were built in the middle of London now,

it would be kind of horrifying. You know, they said of the Twin Towers, they used to refer to as the boxes that the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building came, and they sort of put them down down in the south. But there's something, there's something a bit sort of matchsticky about the Twin Towers as well, these sort of great big straight lines. I imagine if you built it out of a different material, it would look a bit gothic perhaps, because it's sort of this concrete matchstick. Well, but I think rules are too harsh on concrete. You can do a lot of things with concrete. Don't blame concrete. It's what you use it to do is the question. I mean, recently in you know in in in serbia i'm not sure if it's finished yet there's a cathedral

and the cathedral of st sava it's been consecrated a vast neo-byzantine cathedral inspired by of course the iosophia in Istanbul and the dome of this great neo-byzantine cathedral the interior is covered with mosaics you've got all the domes and the semi-domes everything you could want from a from a Byzantine cathedral. The dome is made from concrete, from reinforced concrete. So the question isn't, you know, should we use concrete or limestone or marble? It perhaps is just what we use our materials to do. And there's no reason we couldn't, for example, build in a more gothic or classical way,

whatever it is that you like or one likes, rather. There's no reason we can't do that with concrete. But back to brutalism. Yeah, well, the point that you made to me that I found quite interesting was you were talking about the pyramids, the pyramids of Giza, and you said, you know, like, are the pyramids of Giza beautiful, or are they just old? And in fairness, you know, if you sort of, again, if you plunked, if you just sort of plonked down the Pyramids of Giza, built them today, in the centre of London, people would probably look at it, decry them as an example of why modern architects

have completely lost their mind. They've lost side of what a building or structure is supposed to be. it's complicated by the fact that we don't really know what the pyramids were four of course but I think we know pretty pretty well they were four there's a tomb of the pharaohs well yeah I mean the Jos of the opinion that that this is what I mentioned oh okay what did he say he just he just said that we don't we don't really know I think it's true like people have changed their their mind but but you know whatever the case doesn't doesn't matter I know I do let's say retract my statement I'm always wary of being too certain about about history but more to the point Look, maybe it's just old and maybe that's why we think it's cool and beautiful.

And actually, yeah, I mean, the weird thing is, rather than saying, okay, yeah, maybe modern architecture is beautiful, then it kind of made me go, well, maybe the pyramids are really ugly. Maybe they are just like these disgusting. Because you said they've got, you said they've got much more in common with brutalism than they have with, you know, a Gothic cathedral, just these sort of geometric shapes just stuck there in the desert. Okay, fair enough. But what I brought up with Jonathan Pajot was, I really wanted to get your opinion on this. And I haven't asked you about this yet in part because I wanted to ask you on this podcast. You know the Las Vegas Dome?

Have you seen this? This sort of ludicrous building that they... The looks or the Las Vegas Dome. Don't. It's his big... Or maybe the sphere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The sphere.

This huge spherical building that they put in Vegas and it suits Vegas. But they wanted to build one in London. and the mayor said no and it might have been because of the light pollution it might be because of the disruption who knows but hopefully its sheer ugliness was at least part of the consideration

now I don't know how you would feel about the Las Vegas sphere having a version in London it's this LEDs covering this huge sphere that of course will eventually be used for advertising you just take huge advertisements on the outside of this sphere

it's like a test like yeah sure you're sort of a bit liberal about architecture whatever like this is a test like really like anything goes this you'll allow this and i was wondering if it would be the case that if that were 100 to 200 years old 300 years old people would sort of flock they were from the world and come and see it as of of course it would i mean a better example sorry by the way is stonehenge stonehenge it's literally just just a pile of freaking big rocks and not particularly well piled up either I'm speaking irreverently here, of course, on purpose to some extent, but let's not forget to see it for what it is.

It has this air of mysticism about it, Stonehenge, you know, the dark days of prehistory. These nameless ancestors who dragged these rocks across the plains, set up this strange temple. But it is, so some large chunks of stone lying on top each other. It's very rudimentary. But people don't... And my point being, if I built that today, I said, you look, modern architecture, you'd think, God, this is, you know,

sorry, it's almost like, if I put that in a gallery. Yeah, I was just going to say... That's a better example. You, or not you, but one may conclude that this modern art is really not all that's cracked up. However, I don't think people think that Stonehenge is beautiful, strictly speaking. I mean, people might say that they find it beautiful. What they're really finding beautiful is the connection with the past, the age, the magnificent. But that's

almost the point. Like, I agree, this isn't really about the specifics of what does a beautiful building look like. What are, if there are any rules of proportion, should there be sculpture? What material should we use? What shape should a doorway be? How should our windows look? But set against, you know, the scale of time, that doesn't seem to matter. I mean, Ruskin has this wonderful line in the seven lamps. The glory of a building is in its age. And I wish I could quote a length from this passage where he describes the effect that age has, the sheer passage of time, the simple passage of time, rather, has on a building.

So it's not really about whether Stonehenge is beautiful, but certainly if I took a hammer to it you were telling me to stop and it's certainly very interesting regardless of whether it was beautiful it's certainly interesting and perhaps even if we kind of aim at beauty with modern architecture you've called it ugly you'd also describe as boring I suspect and a lot of it is very boring perhaps we can make it interesting while Stonehenge is interesting

the shard presumably do you think would you say the shard is boring or not I think the shard is interesting actually I think it's an interesting building. And I wouldn't say it's as obviously ugly to me in the same way. I don't like that that kind of building just is there blocking the skyline. You know, you go to, I don't know if you've been to Primrose Hill. I may have, perhaps, gives you this sort of famous view of London skyline, the sun sets behind it. And I went there with, the first time I went there with some friends, they were sort of like, right, right now you're not allowed to turn around. We're going to walk all the way up to the top of the hill and you can't turn around until we get to the top.

You know, he's got to be a big reveal. And so I sort of walked all the way up to the top. I turned around and I thought, oh, right, God, that's, that's, that's pretty ugly actually. Because it's just these sort of cranes and, and the shard just like poking out. I thought to myself, imagine if I was overlooking the same view, but St. Paul's was just dominating the skyline. I thought it would have been so much more beautiful. And so, in other words, now I'm detouring. The building itself, I don't think it's ugly. Sure.

But I think there's an ugliness about the building, you know, being there. Indeed. But in a thousand years, two thousand years, if a shard is still. standing, which may not be, I'm not sure, but let's say the sharder was still standing in a thousand years and you go to Primrose Hill and you look across the city of London. Who knows what London will look like in a thousand years? Maybe it'll all be under the earth and it'll be archaeologists who are trying to figure out what were these people up to. And you saw this great big tower of glass, not so dissimilar in shape from the pyramids of Egypt, of course.

I don't see how that couldn't be absolutely mind-blowing if I was a thousand years old. But in what we're saying here, I don't know, maybe we're getting away from the moment. Do you know what's interesting? And what I think is important here is that the first time we spoke about this, it consoled me in a weird way. Or in, I suppose, actually, quite a straightforward way. And that, you know, often quite upset, people get upset about the state of architecture, the state of London, the state of its skyscrapers. And I remember thinking, you know, at Primrose Hill, like,

oh, God, this could be so much better. This would be so ugly. This is so ugly. And when you maybe think, like, well, there were people having the same conversation about St. Paul's. Oh, indeed. About the Palace of Westminster, about Westminster Abbey. Yeah.

Indeed, indeed. And I thought, God, yeah, okay. Maybe actually this is, I mean, it's not like it suddenly all becomes beautiful, but it makes me realize that, I think, in with the complaint about the ugliness of modern architecture is a nostalgia is the thought, wow, it would have been amazing to see what London was like back then. And it would have been amazing. Oh, of course. But the idea that if I were actually alive there, rather than just transported there right now, I would be walking around going, oh, goodness, how lucky I am to live

in this amazing, beautiful city. It made me realize that maybe that's not the case. And I think it's quite a consoling prospect in that, for that reason. And I hope that it's doing that for other people, too. I mean, I'd like to think that, you know, 200 years from now, there'll be some building and somebody will be saying it's really ugly and somebody will say ah but did you know that the great writer she and quirk 200 years ago 300 years ago you know was having this conversation saying the same kind of stuff about the the shard the world famous shard the the Las Vegas London sphere you know they were saying they thought it was ugly can you believe it you know the mayor didn't even didn't didn't want one in London imagine that it's like you know they were

nearly like ancient pyramids you know built in some other country or something but the mayor didn't want them because he thought they were ugly although they you know they'd be a bit too much or whatever you know it would it would seem ludicrous i mean i don't have the same optimism for the for the vagus sphere but well i i i'm not sure i i don't doubt that if it were to last a sufficient amount of time because architecture also does it does tend to be a phase when people hate it when it's not quite um new but it's also not quite old enough to feel like it's worth preserving so victorian architecture is now is now pretty popular i would say in the 1950s 60s, people hated Victorian architecture

and they knocked a hell of a lot of it down. You know, and there was nothing wrong apparently then with, I mean, look at, um, it's not Victorian architect, of course, but we look at Penn Station, the old Penn Station in New York. This, this, you know, neoclassical palace, a vast train station. Glorious great big halls with barrel vaults,

you know, in the coiffed ceilings, everything you could want. It was demolished. I can't remember what year was demolished. And replaced with them, in our Madison Square Garden, I think. Because at that point in the 1950s, there was so much Victorian architecture. Every bloody street had some, you know, school on it, some church, some townhouse. And at that point, it was getting a bit dirty, a bit old, falling to pieces.

It was cold. It was drafty. You know, and people hated it then. And that's happening now to brutalism. Brutalism is now just old enough, the architecture of the 60s, that we're just knocking it down on mass. Because it's not brand new. It's getting a bit. It's a need of repair. What do we do?

Let's just get rid of it because we hate it. And hopefully some of these works of brutalism will survive long enough to recover as Victorian architecture has done, as every kind of architecture has done before it, to survive to the point of which it becomes a part of history. And then we all sort of universally praise it, basically. But surely, I mean, this can't happen in the same, like, you know, Durham Cathedral, which we stared at for a long time and went inside and sort of marveled at. and the barbican center, the brutalist barbican center. I understand that people might one day look at the barbican and think, wow, what an amazing old building.

But I can never see it inspiring the same kind of awe as an old cathedral. And I know it's a different kind of building, but there's a sense in which... I think that's a very important... I'm not sure for you. Well, carry on with what you're going to say. Anyway.

I think what I mean to say is that... A cathedral is something which, yes, I understand that the beauty is just imparted by time. Beauty, it can be imparted onto the... Of course, no, but it's a lot more than that. Buildings are supposed to be, some buildings at least, are supposed to also just be beautiful as they are when they're built. Now, I understand that, okay, but imagine you were trying to sell your skyscraper to a local populace or to the local council or whatever. He said, I don't know about this? It's a bit ugly. And you said, yeah, but don't you know that the real beauty in architecture is in time?

And in 200 years, people are going to love this. say, we don't care. We want it to look pretty now. Now, if you, if you design for them a really nice sort of, you know, Gothic cathedral, they might be like, hey, yeah, we'll take it. And guess what? That's also going to be even more beautiful in 200 years. It's just that it's also beautiful now. Wouldn't that be nice? I mean, Stonehenge is not beautiful. Like, you point out, I mean, some, you know, beauty subjective, whatever. But like, the thing that I think people are really attracted to with Stonehenge is its age. It's, it's a bit like, you know, it's, it's that point that that John Berger makes, or John Berger, I never know how to say his name, that again, you made a

thread about, because you've made a thread about everything, that he has this wonderful page in ways of, ways of seeing, or it shows you this picture of, by Van Gogh, this painting, and says, just look at this and tell me what you think about it, or, you know, have a think about it, and yeah, cool, it's a painting, whatever, and then you turn the page, and it shows you the same painting, but this time it says, this is the last painting Van Gogh painted before he killed himself. And it seemed to like change the way that you interact with the painting. And in a way, the painting might become more beautiful, even though nothing about the painting has actually changed, just because of the context. I think that's what time does to buildings. You know, if I show you a

building, cool. If I tell you that it was built a thousand years ago, you might think, wow, even though the building hasn't actually changed before your very eyes. But, Even so, I think that if we're building something now that's going to be looked at in the 200 years that it takes for it to develop that sort of timely beauty, there should also be this requirement, that it be beautiful now. And that can't be too hard. Sure. I, you know, two things can be true at once. And I've been, you know, giving it the, what's the saying? Giving it the begin, I'm sure. the app given it the you know yeah something i i've been going on on on about um how time changes how we view architecture people always hate it et cetera et cetera et cetera and i do believe all of that to be true but but of course it can also be true as i also believe as i think is pretty clear to most people um that maybe we could be making buildings a little bit better all of what i've all designing

buildings better rather everything i've said shouldn't negate the fact that shouldn't absolvers of the responsibility or the need, the requirement and the need to tend to have buildings that are as beautiful as they can be. The word beautiful is so loaded. I'm almost cautious of using it when describing architecture. It's almost less about beauty, although it is, some sort of level of, I guess, minimum aesthetic consideration. A slightly less exciting way of putting it, perhaps that is what we need. How do we get there? Well, maybe we'll get to that in a minute.

What time? What time is it? I might have a cigarette if that's all right. Do I have time? Yeah, yeah, go have a cigarette. Six, seven minutes, that's four. Plenty time. You know what we could do?

If you want to go out for a cigarette, we could just take the mics with us. They'll stretch. Stand outside with them? Yeah, just while you have any cigarette. But then what about the... Oh, you know, most people have switched off by now. I mean, if people are still watching this, it's quite extraordinary. I imagine that they sort of put it on the side

and they're doing the washing up or whatever. So let's just take the mics out. Sure, okay. I'm just going to pour myself some water. Sure. No, I often think it's about water. We don't realize how lucky we are until I just turn on the tap and say, I'm going to get a glass of water.

You know, he was reading this thing by George Gordon recently. About Londoners in the 1860s. Yeah. Who had to beg for water. That was how they got their clean drinking water. They begged for it on the street. You know, I'm not saying this means there isn't work to be done in the modern world, but it should at least remind us of how bloody lucky we are.

As much as we might like to complain, can I put that on the floor? Yeah, just put it on the floor, that's all right. At least we don't have to beg for our water on the streets of London. And maybe horrible architecture was the price we paid. It was the price we paid. Well, I think that we often have a, well, I think gratitude has been sort of the word of the day. in many ways of what we're talking about and something that is missing

not just in the sense that people ought to be more gratitude for the things that are obviously that we should be grateful for but oftentimes there are more things to be grateful for than we actually realize even when we're sort of pressed on it I wanted to ask you about history sure

a few days or weeks ago I think we must have been at dinner or something and you said something like look the problem with historians is this that somebody said something and you went that's the problem with historians. Well, what's the problem with historians? Well, no, there is no problem with historians as such.

But perhaps there are certain habits we fall into, ways of thinking about history, and maybe historians don't help, and maybe they can't help with it. It's just the nature of the beast. If I was going to use a metaphor, I guess I'd say the trouble. The trouble is that sometimes with history, not sometimes. Very often we confuse, as they say, Um, we confuse the terrain, we, we confuse the map for the terrain. Right.

Now, what would you say that means? When it comes to history, you mean? Yeah, sure. Or doing history. Confusing the map for the terrain. Confusing the description for the thing. Sure. So, so let me put it this way.

When you think about, when you think about William Conquerer, like describe him to me. What do you know of him? Why is he important? Who was he? What did he do? Et cetera, et cetera. Well, I am afraid it doesn't expand much further than invading England. It's not a solid trick question.

Invading England. When? In 1066. Right. And what happened? What happened after invaded? What is the famous thing that happened? Well, the Norman conquest.

The Battle of Hastings. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. Imagine if, you know, you go and see a friend of yours. this evening and your friends says oh what did you do today mr o'connor and you say well i i did a really ridiculous um i did a really ridiculous podcast with this guy who has a twitter account called um called call chian in real life sure i said oh that sounds interesting uh can you describe this man for me yeah what would you say you know would you start with for example well

he was born you know in this year in this place and um you know he went to school here in this date and then on this date he did this i'm gonna turn this camera on you've got the camera on um is that for example how you would is that how you describe me well no certainly not um and i suppose that's that's the problem that well you want to say it's okay because you can take all that with his or because you do do that with historical because we say william the conquerer you know um william of normandy um was born in this place at this time in 1066 he invaded England. He defeated Harold Goldmanton in the Battle of Hastings. You know, he was king

for however many years. He commissioned the doom's debunk in 1086. That is history. Of course it is. It's all true as far as we can tell. But I don't dispute the importance of facts whatsoever. But this is just sort of the outward appearance of history. This is the outward appearance of a person. I'm going to describe, you know, the cosmic skeptic Alex O'Connor. No, he's about, what, six foot three, is that at all you are? You know, I'll, I'll, I'll I'll allow it. Yeah, he's got gray eyes and he's got a beard. And I'm saying this to somebody.

And I'm like, no, no, no. What is he like? Who is he? You know, what kind of person is he? That's what we mean when we say, what is someone like. Sure. And I think with history, we're too much fall into the habit of by focusing on dates, places, facts, figures. We forget that these were living people like you and me.

He didn't really know what the hell was going on who couldn't see the future, who were trying to make the best of what they could with what they had. And I guess my concern is that when history dies in that. way becomes this cold, this cold thing in a book, then, well, I think that is what I mean when I say the problem. Well, explain confusing the map for the terrain. Well, what does that phrase actually mean? Sure.

Okay. Well, I guess it's a difference between, let's say, looking at a map of the Himalayas and reading the contour lines. okay, that's X,000 meters. Is the difference between that and actually being on the mountain with the ice picks, climbing it?

Does that make sense? Do you see how that maps onto what I'm saying about history? But how can that be a problem with what historians do? Because of course, they can't put you on the mountain with the ice picks.

All they can do is describe it. Well, there we go. So where do we get a history from? That's the question. What is a historian? Tell me, define a historian for me. Gosh, a biographer of... No, there's not a true question.

Of times gone by. Sure, okay. As Thomas Carlyle said, history is nothing but biography. But what does a historian do? How does one become a historian? I suppose they read history books. Uh-huh. Which books? History books.

Books about history or... Well, I suppose they ought to be reading the primary sources. Ought to be, indeed. Now, what is stopping you, Mr. O'Connor, from reading the primary sources yourself? Mostly that, you know, who has time to read books. But it's a good point. If you want to understand, because if you want to understand history, it seems like you're saying, don't read a history book. Read what the history books are writing about.

Read what the people in those times said about themselves. So give me an example. What are you talking? Sure. I'll give you an example I found recently, and it was absolutely fascinating. I picked up a copy of, it's called a description of England. It was written by a guy called William Harrison in the 1580s. Sure, sure.

He was written by a guy called William Harrison in the 1580s. This publisher called Reginald Wolf, I think it's called Reginald Wolf, had commissioned something called... He commissioned this Chronicle. He wanted to write all of English history in this great big book. He asked a guy called Raphael Hollinshed to consult all the manuscript to write about history of England. And actually, this is where Shakespeare got most of his material for his history plays in Hollinsheds Chronicle, as it's now called.

But in addition, Wolf got this guy called William Harrison to write a description of England, Scotland and Ireland, I think it's called, as it was in the present day. So Harrison, he read some letters, read some documents, read, you know, everything that had been collected and related to taxes, to property ownership, laws, and then he went around the countryside, sorry, around the country, speaking to people, interviewing them. simply observing them, writing down his findings, and he collated all this into a book, now called A Description of England. And it's essentially just an eyewitness account of Elizabeth in England, including incredibly trivial details about the clothes they wore, the food they ate, the games they played, what their gardens looked like, what flowers they liked. And there was a couple of bits that caught my eye. One was Harrison explaining how he goes into detail about how the English brew their beer because he said that he had recently read some reports of foreign writers trying

to describe how the English brew their beer and they were insufficient and he wanted to set them right because they did have no they had no idea how English people actually brewed their own beer which is it's quite funny but but then there's another part and he was talking to these old men in some villages and asking well you know well how have times changed since you were younger compared to now and they said a few different things one of them they said is that people have it much easier now than they used to these old men were saying how when we were younger, we didn't have pillows, we didn't have sheets, we would just sleep on a wooden palette and use a stone for a pillow. That was how we slept. And now younger people these

days, you have pillows and they have sheets, you know, the softies. And also, further along in this description of England, everyone starts, he describes that everyone is complaining about the rent going up. And I wish I could quote a word for where there's a sentence or two, which sounds like it could have been written today about London, you know, in 2023 about how rent is extortionate, the landlords don't care, the tenants are being forced out, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, I picked this book up for three pounds from secondhand bookshop. It's not some rare old historical manuscript. It was published.

I think this edition I got was printed in the 1950s, maybe. As I say, three pounds. And that's an example of going to the source, I guess, to the horse's mouth, as it were. And I found at least, I felt like I started understanding Elizabeth in England much more clearly, having read what a William Harrison said about it, a man who lived in those times, then perhaps what a book written in 2023 about the Elizabethans could have taught me. Something like that. But surely there's still some utility in reading a history book,

which is essentially somebody's life's work, somebody's life's work can be engaging with these primary sources and essentially collating them together so that you don't have to do that. I mean, like, if you want to learn about a historical figure, I mean, sure, you can read their entire, you know, entire collected works, but people don't have the time for that. That would mean that people wouldn't really know anything about anybody. They'd have to pick, like, one person to know about throughout history or one age or one sort of decade in the history of mankind and learn about that. This reminds of something your old mate Schopenhauer said. He said, one tiny thing, one tiny grain of truth that you've worked out for yourself.

is worth a library of truths that other people have told you. And I think, look, I'm not saying don't read history books, of course not. They're wonderful and they're well-written and they're interesting and they're exciting and they're written by wonderful people. Historians are fantastic. I love talking to them. But maybe you see on driving it. Like, if you want to, if you want, if you say, my name is Alex O'Connor, I want to learn about Elizabeth I don't really care that much. I just want to reasoning about her.

Then, you know, then read this biography published, you know, this year or last year or whatever. I don't know. But if you really want to understand what it was like in Elizabeth in England, it's worth reading one primary source, perhaps, and just getting one thing from that. Because, you know, from one fact, you can extrapolate an awful lot. And, you know, other examples, like, if you want to learn about the Romans, you know, why not read Tacitus or Plutarch or Chitonial? These books are easily available. I think, you know, it's not that we should take what they say on face value. Of course, they probably lied and made things up and had biases, but who doesn't?

It's not as if modern historians don't have those biases either. So, so that's what I mean. And I think history comes alive when you read what people said about themselves. And also, I think you can become historian. The reason I asked that question, wasn't for no reason. Like, you can be a historian if you apply your mind to, say, you know, reading, you know, the Alexiad of Anna Komnenna that she wrote about her father, Alexios I the First, the Emperor, a chronicle of her times during the First

Crusade in the Byzantine Empire. I think more people should read these sorts of books if they want to understand history. Tell me about your, your bizarre reading policy that I know it's one of the things that people are most suspicious of you about it. Suspicious. It's one of the first things that I will have learned about you and your character i think because of quite early on you would have mentioned this to me i mean we're in a book shop once yeah and um you know just doing some browsing and you said well i'm not going to buy and read that book bloody hell hold on can't imagine what victorian lenders would have said about that a helicopter you know a miracle it's a miracle that's not a miracle for recording a podcast at any rate

You said, I'm not going to buy that book because I don't read books that are written in the past 50 years. Explain yourself. I mean, I hope I didn't sound quite so obnoxious when I said it. Oh, that's just my voice. That's just how anything sounds

that comes out of. No, I try to avoid reading books published in the last 50 years, even the last 100, if I can manage it for a few reasons. You understand why on the face of it that sounds like something, you know, super pretentious and ridiculous. And also untenable, somebody who wants to be a writer and an educator. I can see why.

I don't think it sounds untenable, given that there are more books published, you know, every year than any one person could read in a lifetime. But, yeah, I can see why I would say it sounds really obnoxious. But I think the reason is, there's a couple. One of them being, I think if you want to understand the present date, the 21st century, books written now aren't the ones that have shaped who we are. They're the ones that may shape who we are 50 years from now. They may have captured some trend that has been happening.

But if you want to understand how we came to be here, then I think you're better off perhaps reading the books that published 50 years ago because the people who wrote those books are the ones who were creating the world in which we now live. We've inherited this world. We didn't create it. We didn't build these buildings. We didn't make up these laws, these philosophies, these ideas. We've inherited them all.

And they're what, you know, I don't think we realize perhaps how much we're, I guess, in a way, shackled by the past. And we can't see those limitations always, I don't think. So when you read books that were written further, you know, further back in time, then perhaps it helps you to see these limitations that have been placed on us and maybe where they came from and why they appeared. Architecture being one example, why do things look the way they do? That's one of the reasons. Another one I guess is simply that I wanted to be of use to people. And most of the books that most people read have been published in the last five years, never mind the last 50.

And I thought, well, a lot of people are already reading these books and are either reading them or then reading them and talking about them. Maybe something more useful I can do for people is to read some more obscure stuff from a while ago that people aren't talking about and bring that to the four. You know, one example being, it's not like no one's heard of John Ruskin, he's immense, and there are lots of brilliant John Ruskin scholars around today, who I'd love to talk to, if any of you were listening, please email me. I'm desperate to talk to someone about John Ruskin at a length, but I went and I've been

making my way through his kind of collected works, and I'd like to think one of the great, my great achievements with what I've done on the internet, and as much as I've done anything worthwhile, is getting people to read John Ruskin, who would have never done that in their in a lifetime. They just simply would not have come across him. So that's one of the reasons why I think, I hope it's of more use and interest for people. Back inside. Back inside, because I've got a gift for you. That's that right. Which I think, well, which I know dovetails with what we've just been talking about. A prop. Well, I sort of euphemistically called it a prop. I was lying to you. but actually there there's a question an ethical question if you

hmm no I'll I'll I'll I'll park that but what's the question well for example if I say oh um you know you say you say what's that in your pocket shin and I say oh you know it's just um it's just what's that in your bag oh it's just some milk I bought earlier yeah and in fact it's not in fact it's a cake I got for you because it's your birthday I lied to you about it being milk yeah is that was that wrong of me to lie. It's interesting. I mean, the idea that it's always wrong to lie is I think quite an uncommon one amongst sort of the general population. However, I can do that. However, there are people and philosophies who say that it is always wrong to lie. And there's an

interesting question about what actually counts as lying. And I think that lying has to be something like intent to deceive. I have a Thomist friend who pointed out to me that Thomas Aquinas thought that it was always wrong to lie. And the reason for that is because in classical theology, God is the same thing as truth. They are literally the same thing and indeed the same thing as beauty. And if that's the case, then any time you tell a lie, you are subverting the truth and therefore literally subverting God. And so it's never okay to lie. And you get that sort of objection. What about the man at the door? You know, you're hiding, you know, the innocent people in your closet. And the axe murderer comes to the door and asks you if they're there.

You sort of have to say yes, or at least not lie about it if you're asked directly. And one of the questions I asked him was, is it immoral to bluff in poker? You know? And he wanted to say, well, look, I mean, if you enter a situation where you just sort of agree that we're going to allow lying in some circumstances, then that's fine. I thought, well, that doesn't really do it for me, because Thomas Aquinas also thinks that, like, homosexuality is wrong. It's, like, actually a moral. And what if I said, oh, we're just going to sort of play this game where we all agree that it's fine? and then we can all just sort of have sex with each other.

I don't think that would really work. But it's different because by agreeing that you're about to lie, it's no longer actually deceiving, right? And the best way to bring this out is to say, like, imagine we played, there are more than one way to lie, right? Like, imagine if we played two truths and a lie. You know that game where I'm about to give you three statements and two of them are going to be true

and you've got to guess which one's a lie? Then I would end up telling you a lie, but I'm not deceiving you. However, if I then said three lies, then I would be deceiving you, even though I just announced I was about to lie, that would be sort of a second order lie. And so in poker, you're allowed to lie, right? You're allowed to say, if I say I've got aces when I haven't, that's fine.

But if I say I'm putting, you know, 10 pounds in the pot, but I'm actually splashing the pot and putting in five pounds instead, that's kind of lying. But if I got caught out doing that and said, hey, I was just bluffing. Like that, that's the wrong kind of lie. And so I think that when you're lying for the sake of somebody's birthday, it's a grey area because you are intending to deceive them. Sure.

And so I think a tomist would have to say, yeah, that's wrong. And so what you'd have to do is someone, what's that in your pocket? They'd have to say, oh, you know, it doesn't matter or something. They couldn't just say something that it's not. They wouldn't be allowed to. Well, in that case, then I have done something unvirtuous, and I call it a prop. It sort of is a prop, but really, it's a gift for you. It's, and it relates to what we were just saying.

So this is another thing I found when I was trawling an old bookshop. it's a program from from the coronation of their majesties king george the sixth and queen elizabeth the official souvenir program so i guess this was what 19 when the hell did edward abdicate for 36 or 38 i don't know around there anyway yeah 36 38 so 37 in fact the 12th of may 1937 um so this was published at the time and it's just a guide to the coronation with loads of photographs the description of what's going to happen, all the words they're going to say, a little map of the processional route, and sort of some introductory words. And, you know, I'm aware that you have some sort of trifling interest in the monarchy in this country. And presumably, if you were

going to write a book about it, say, or indeed you just speak about it, you'd want to learn about it, perhaps about its history. Now, how would you learn about the history of the monarchy? I'm not going to read a history book. Well, sure. As I said, I just want to clarify. I'm not against reading history. All I want to do is encourage a different way of understanding history and getting into it. Because I think for a lot of people, the word history immediately sounds like this thing that is sealed off from us rather than this continuous process ongoing. As Thomas Carlyle said, all of the future and all of the past is contained in the present and ever has it been so or something like that.

Anyway, so this is for you to look at. Thank you so much. So let's imagine you wanted to understand. How did people think about the monarchy? in the 1930s. How did they think about the new King George? Well, here you go. This is a guide to what people thought and how they felt about their monarch. And I've read the introduction. It's very interesting. I think it may be the bit there. There she is. Queen Elizabeth. Indeed. And it's also a marvellous. This is, again, I just, for me, this is almost more

transformative than any, anything else is seeing this photograph. When someone first picked this up in their hands when this was fresh hot off the press that photo of that young girl there and the princess elizabeth little did they know that she would go on to rule to reign rather for for longer than any monarch in the history of this country you know the time there she is in the same way of that say that the other children of of william are now and I think when you see a photograph like that for me I found that thrilling and it brings history into colour as it were and out of black and white and it's not so much that you should just believe everything

it says in there yeah perhaps it's it's here you've got the introduction yeah the way this chap talks about the monarchy and its meaning and about Britain as well and its place in the world it's um well in what we may it well ask does this altogether phenomenal interest that is in the in the ceremony of the coronation originate why on this historic day do not only the king's people, but all peoples stand figuratively in waiting on the coronation chair of a man

who is the supreme symbol of British life. The answer, if we can find it, may tell us much about ourselves. Well, there's something I can agree with. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Ian. Sure. That's amazing. Yeah, I'm fascinated to read that. Mm-hmm. It's, um, and I, the other thing, I should say, it's so much fun when you get a little, little odd, this isn't, this is just a booklet, it's just a souvenir program. And yet, I dare say, cautiously, there's more history in there, I think, to be gleaned by a person, to be understood in terms of its depth than you could get by a book about, as I say, the monarchy in the 1930s. You can certainly pick up more, more facts. from like a modern book about it, you can get a theory, you can be presented with the theory of what happened to reading this. You almost have to do the work yourself. Why did he describe the monarchy in that way? Why were they saying these things? And you can essentially, you can become a historian. And I hope I'm not sort of, sounds like I'm disrespecting

professional historians when I say this, but anybody can be a historian. You know, Adolf Luce, the great, well, he's great or not depending on your views about architecture. He's certainly influential and certainly very important. He was an architect who may or may not be responsible for the modern architecture you hate so much, an Austrian chap, major influence on the Bauhaus. Anyway, he made this point about architects, and one thing he disliked about Vienna in the 1890s was that architecture had become overly professionalised, and that in order to become an architect who had to go and study architecture and be given a diploma saying you are now, officially an architect. And that was the only way you could become one. He thought this was a

disgrace. You know, he made this point, you know, I'm not an architect. I'm a human being called Adolf Luce. But the more interesting, the thing he said was that, sure, yeah, the more interesting thing he said was, you know, Beethoven or any great composer, any musician, what makes him a musician wasn't the fact that they studied music. It was the fact that they wrote music, you know. And And if I pick up a guitar and play and decide to call myself a musician, that does not in any way detract from, let's say, the fact that, you know, Richard Wagner was also a musician. In the same way that with history, you can, anybody can be a story. And if you do the delightful and challenging work of history, which is basically looking

at something and I'm thinking about it a bit. Yeah, I mean, sometimes. I've known people to, I mean, I do this myself now. I try to keep newspapers from important events. You know, I have a newspaper from the day of the Brexit referendum and from, I think I have one from a few elections, maybe the election of Donald Trump in America. I didn't get one. I have one from the death of Diego Maradonna. Really? I thought that was probably the most important thing that's happened in the last 20 years. Well, perhaps, you know, the death of the queen is one that I actually miss. And maybe that was, maybe that was less important. I suppose it depends

you asked. I didn't manage to find a paper for that one. They were all sold out by the time I was probably everyone else had the same impulse. But looking back on these, you know, sometimes you find a really old paper or some somebody's pair might have them from like the 80s or something. And the most fascinating thing is always reading the rest of the paper. Okay, of course. You know, what was going on and look at the adverts. You know, what are people selling? What advertising techniques are being used? What fonts are being used? What was capturing people's imagination. I mean, it's fascinating. That, like, one of the most interesting things about watching a really old TV show or something is if the adverts are still in the recording, you've got like

an old tape or something. And that's the most fascinating thing to look at because you're, you're just like watching history, right? You're looking through a window into what was actually happening. And it's a wonderful way to get to grips with what was actually sort of the culture of the time. Exactly. And that's what history is all about. And it's funny you mention newspapers. And there is a rather beautiful way in which we're coming full circle here as perhaps we begin to wind it down the internet. You can go on the internet and you can just read newspapers from the 1850s. So, you know, a lot of them have been digitized.

These archives and libraries, which 40 years ago would have been harder to access. I mean, you could have gone to a local one, but say I wanted to go and read whatever newspapers had been published in New York in the 1920s. And I was living in, you know, whatever, Lincolnshire in the 1950s. It would be very hard to do so. The internet has now provided us with all the primary sources we could ever dream of having. And, yeah, what you just mentioned then, with the newspapers in your lifetime, if you go online and perhaps read some newspapers from even further back,

it's also incredibly revealing. Not so long ago, I read a contemporary review of, Hemingway of one of his novels. He was in, I just stumbled across it online when I was trying to do some research. And it was just, it was fabulous. I never, it completely changed the way I guess I thought about Ernest Hemingway

simply because I was reading the words of a guy who's reading his book hot off the press and in fact praising him heartily. I wish there was a wonderful sentence that I can't quite remember. But that's just one small example of this happening. So final question I'm trialling this idea of asking people the same question

at the end of every podcast And I think in a way you've kind of already answered this But what I like to end with is Well I spoke to John Viveki not long ago And he said that the problem One of the problems of the modern world is people don't know where to go for wisdom Everyone knows where to go for knowledge now But no one knows where to go for wisdom

Where do you go for wisdom Is that the question that you ask everybody Where do you go for wisdom It's the question that I'm going to start asking everybody Sure And it's a difficult one And maybe I should have warned you about it No, no, no, it's no, no, no need to warn me

It's just, I want to be, think about what I say. I mean, the first thing that occurs to me is who says what wisdom is. But this would be my answer. I'm not going to, I don't want to try and be, you know, clever about it. Certain books, texts, things have been created during the course of human history. We're always writing stories, saying things, doing things, making YouTube videos,

writing tweets, carving statues, whatever the hell it is. We've been doing this endlessly. You know, out of content that human can is produced is incalculably large. You couldn't look at even a tiny percentage of it if you lived through 100 years and there's nothing else. So there's a vast ocean of things that seem to contain some information, some knowledge, some wisdom, some fact, some beauty, so some terror, whatever it is. Some of these things have somehow risen above the others and have survived and have stood the test of time. And that isn't always necessarily because they were the best. Sometimes it's pure by accident.

things survive, you know, a lot of our ancient Sumerian texts, you know, they were lost for thousands of years until the canaform tablets were discovered in Mesopotamia. Sometimes things survive by, by, by, you know, the skin of the teeth of history, Lucretius, on the nature of things. You know, under Charlemagne, the scribes, they made a copy of it, several copies of it. Only one of them survived, and this wonderful poem about Epicureanism survived in one copy, in one library, in a German monastery for centuries until Pogio Brachilini discovered it. But that caveat being said, I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that amidst the sea of content, some things have been thought worthy of preserving and passing down. Despite all the challenges,

that come with preservation, you know, once upon a time, if you wanted to get a copy of a book, you had to write it out by hand, you know, and monks, you know, say, say, in this country, took, took their gospels, took their chronicles with them on their backs as they were fleeing from the Vikings, you know, and that's, that's happened again and again all of the world, burning libraries, burning cities, what do we take, what do we save, the things that matter most. And these books, these poems, these statues, these things that humans have created that have somehow survived the test of time, the centuries, the millennia, therein, I think there must lie something of value. And it's not just in Europe, it's not just in the West, it's all over the world. Every culture, in every corner of the globe has preserved certain things.

and I can't say for certain that there is wisdom there but if I had to place my if I was a betting man where would I say the wisdom lies whatever the hell this wisdom thing is I suspect it would be in the things that people just like you and me who have all our troubles and our fears and our anxieties who you know who are who are miserable some days

and overjoyed the next and they're scared about the future you know and they're excited about something they're doing and they fall in love and they fall out of love and they get, and they die, they get sick, you know, the politics, it's all there. The things that they found useful in their lives and the generation after found useful and so on and so forth, there must be something worth, worth considering in the very least. She and Quirk, thanks for, thanks for coming on with them reason. It's been fun. So far, so good.