An invisible influence

AS Athena prepares to bid farewell to 2018, she must observe that it has been a sad year for architectural history. The passing of Prof Gavin Stamp last Christmas was followed by Prof David Watkin. Both were large personalities, influential and a gift for obituarists. A third death, however, that of Colin Amery (1944–2018), which occurred in August, has been less widely marked, perhaps because his influence was largely exerted behind closed doors.

An urbane, immaculate figure, Amery could have been mistaken for an oldfashioned lawyer (he once tried to study law, but hated it) or a Whitehall mandarin. Softly spoken, with a keen sense of irony, he seemed born to tread the corridors of power, as well as those of well-appointed country houses; both were opened to him, in the course of a career that helped shape the taste of the country’s decision-makers.

It was typical of Amery that the outlet for his journalism should, for 20 years, have been the Financial Times; his weekly essay for it was a masterpiece of elegance and discrimination.

At home, he assembled a small but ineffably chic collection of creamware and Wedgwood black basalt.

A natural courtier, Amery helped steer the architectural opinions of The Prince of Wales at a critical time. Although most of his many discussions were private, an indication of their extent may be gathered from the roles he occupied as a member of the Duchy of Cornwall’s property committee and of the Fabric Advisory Committee for St George’s Chapel, Windsor, as well as director of development for The Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Architecture, the charity that promoted traditional design.

He advised the Sainsbury family on the choice of architect for its new wing at the National Gallery after the previous scheme (famously characterised as a ‘monstrous carbuncle’) was consigned to the scrapheap by Prince Charles. His opinion was also sought by Lord Rothschild when building Windmill Hill, the archive centre at Waddesdon. Neither building is a work of orthodox Classicism: Amery was never doctrinaire.

In the face of the suave Amery of later years, it could take an effort of imagination to remember that, in earlier days, he had been a campaigner. In the 1970s, he joined a number of other champions of Georgian London in the sit-ins that would save Huguenot Spitalfields from demolition. His concern for preservation led him, from 1995 to 2007, to serve as founding director of the British division of the World Monuments Fund (WMF). In Britain, the WMF conserved Hawksmoor’s church of St George’s, Bloomsbury; Amery also directed international attention to the architectural treasures of St Petersburg.

For years to come, Athena believes that people who have never heard of Colin Amery will still be grateful to him. In subtle ways, his judicious architectural interventions have made the world a better place in which to live.

People who have never heard of Colin Amery will still be grateful to him