Mark Girouard

Mark Girouard FSA (born 7 October 1931)[1] is a British architectural writer, an authority on the country house, an architectural historian, and biographer of Sir James Stirling.

Mark Girouard
Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire – Girouard's pioneering study of Robert Smythson, later revised and reissued as Elizabethan Architecture, established his reputation.
Born7 October 1931
OccupationArchitectural historian
Notable work
Elizabethan Architecture, Life in the English Country House, The Victorian Country House
Spouse(s)Dorothy Girouard
Parent(s)Richard Girouard
Lady Blanche Maud Beresford

Career

He was educated at Ampleforth College.

Girouard worked for the magazine Country Life from about 1958, firstly as its architectural writer, and then from 1964 as its architectural editor, until 1967. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art from 1975 to 1976 and elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1987.[2] Girouard was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2011.[3] He was on the board of trustees of The Architecture Foundation from 1992 to 1999[1] and a founder, and the first chairman, of the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust.[4]He is the grandson of Henry Beresford, 6th Marquess of Waterford through his mother, Lady Blanche Girouard.[5]

His Life in the English Country House won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize for 1978,[6] and the WH Smith Literary Award in 1979.

National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C467/92) with Mark Girouard in 2009 for its Architects Lives' collection held by the British Library.[7]

Photographs by Girouard are held in the Conway Library of art and architecture at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and are currently being digitised.[8]

Books
  • Montacute House, Somerset (1964)
  • Robert Smythson and the Architecture of the Elizabethan Era (1966)
  • Victorian Pubs (1975)
  • Hardwick Hall (1976)
  • Sweetness and Light: The "Queen Anne" Movement, 1860-1900 (1977)
  • Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (1978)
  • Historic Houses of Britain (1979)
  • The Victorian Country House (1979)
  • Alfred Waterhouse and the Natural History Museum (1981)
  • The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (1981)
  • Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House (1983)
  • Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History (1985)
  • A Country House Companion (1987) editor
  • The English Town: A History of Urban Life (1990)
  • Town and Country (1992)
  • Windsor: The Most Romantic Castle (1993)
  • Big Jim: The Life and Work of James Stirling (1998) Chatto & Windus, ISBN 978-0-7011-6247-4.
  • A Hundred Years at Waddesdon (1998), ISBN 978-0-9527809-2-2.
  • Life in the French Country House (2000)
  • Rushton Triangular Lodge (2004)
  • Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540–1640 (2009), ISBN 978-0-300-09386-5.
  • Enthusiasms (2011) Frances Lincoln, ISBN 978-071123329-4
  • Friendships (2017)

Family life

Girouard is married to the artist Dorothy Girouard. Their daughter is the writer Blanche Girouard. They live in Notting Hill Gate, London.[9]

He has written of his ancestral connection to Saul Solomon, a pioneer liberal politician and businessman in Cape Colony, and his wife Georgiana Solomon, a social activist and suffragette. Girouard is descended from Saul's brother Edward, born in 1820 in St Helena, who spent 18 years working with the Griquas and Basutos for the London Missionary Society.[10]

References
  1. "Mark GIROUARD - Personal Appointments (free information from Companies House)". Beta.companieshouse.gov.uk. Retrieved 2017-01-06.
  2. "List of Fellows". Society of Antiquaries. Archived from the original on 3 October 2010. Retrieved 11 November 2018.
  3. "Royal Society of Literature » Mark Girouard". rsliterature.org.
  4. "Mark Girouard, Architectural Historian - Spitalfields Life". spitalfieldslife.com.
  5. "Person Page". www.thepeerage.com.
  6. "Welcome | Yale University Press". Yalepress.yale.edu. 2016-12-19. Retrieved 2017-01-06.
  7. National Life Stories, 'Girouard, Mark (1 of 5) National Life Stories Collection: Architects' Lives', The British Library Board, 2009. Retrieved 10 April 2018
  8. "Who made the Conway Library?". Digital Media. 2020-06-30. Retrieved 2020-09-25.
  9. The Independent, 8 February 1993, Marina Cantacuzino "Does only have to mean lonely?: How does growing up without siblings affect a child? Marina Cantacuzino looks at the question from the point of view of offspring and parents"
  10. Girouard, Mark (2011). Enthusiasms.
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