Susie Harries

Much has been made of the alleged rivalry between John Betjeman and Nikolaus Pevsner, the icon of Englishness and the ‘Herr-Professor-Doktor’, the Shell Guides and The Buildings of England. This lecture argues that the so-called ‘feud’ was a one-sided battle which in fact had little to do with architecture. In the cause of conservation,   Betjeman and Pevsner were perfectly able to overcome their differences of taste and temperament and work together to save buildings from St Pancras station and the garden suburb of Bedford Park to the Foreign Office and the original machinery of Tower Bridge.