The Society of Architectural Historians is proud to announce the Award of three Honorary Patronships.
The title of Honorary Patron is the Society’s highest Award bestowed on those with who have made an exceptional contribution to Architectural History whether in the areas of scholarship, historic building conservation and heritage, museums and galleries or in public service. The new Honorary Patrons are Professor Malcolm Airs, Professor Maurice Howard and Dr Lynne Walker. The citations below outline their considerable achievements and the reasons for their Award in each case.
Professor Malcolm Airs OBE
Malcolm Airs is Emeritus Professor of Conservation and the Historic Environment at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. He began his career as part of the famed Greater London Council’s Historic Buildings Division and then worked as Conservation Officer with South Oxfordshire District Council. In 1991 he took up a post with the Department for Continuing Education to develop a joint Masters’ course in Historic Conservation with Oxford Brookes University. He developed it into one of the leading courses in the country which still flourishes today. Malcolm has written widely on heritage issues as well as being a leading scholar in the Tudor period beginning with his classic work The Making of the English Country House, 1500-1640 (1975). While at Oxford he ran annual conferences on, among other things, the English Great House which resulted in an innovative series of publications spanning from the sixteenth to the twentieth century (1994-2002).
Malcolm Airs’s expertise in both history and conservation practice have given him the unique distinction of being the only person to have been both President of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation (2001-2003) and President of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (2008-2013). Professor Airs has also served as a Commissioner of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and on the advisory committees of English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund. He has been a member of the Council and the Architecture Panel of the National Trust, Vice-President of the Oxford Preservation Trust and a Trustee of the Oxfordshire Historic Churches Trust, as well as formerly being a Trustee of the Landmark Trust and President of the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society.
Malcolm has been an energetic member of the Society since the 1960s, an enthusiastic participant and leader of Society events, and currently sits on the President’s Council. He is well-known for his generous encouragement of other scholars and judicious support for preservation and heritage initiatives. We make our Award of Honorary Patron to Malcolm in recognition of his great contribution to architectural history, historic building conservation and education.
Professor Maurice Howard OBE
Maurice Howard is Emeritus Professor of Art History at the University of Sussex. He studied at Cambridge and then the Courtauld Institute where he did his doctorate. After early teaching positions at Pennsylvania State University and the University of St Andrews he joined Sussex University in 1990 where he became an inspirational teacher, including supervising many postgraduate students who have gone on to become leaders in the field themselves. He also waged a ceaseless campaign for the recognition and protection of the Basil Spence buildings and landscape at the university. Maurice has published widely on early modern Europe but is best-known for his two major publications on Tudor and Jacobean architecture: The Early Tudor Country House: Architecture and Politics, 1490–1550 (1987) and The Buildings of Elizabethan and Jacobean England (2007).
Through the University of Sussex Exchange scheme with the Victoria and Albert Museum Professor Howard had a close involvement with two major projects as Honorary Research Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2002-2007). He was Assistant Curator for the Gallery of European Ornament and co-authored a book on the subject. He was later Senior Subject Specialist for the Tudor and Stuart sections of the British Galleries.
Professor Howard was Visiting Chair at the Centre for Renaissance Studies, University of Tours, France, in 2000. From 2005-10 he served on the Advisory Council of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. In 2007 he was elected Director of the Society of Antiquaries of London and served as President of the Society from 2010 to 2014. He was Chair of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 1991-94 and became President in 2013.
Maurice has been a mainstay of the Society over many years and is currently serving as a Deputy-Editor for our journal Architectural History, with responsibility for the early modern period, as well as being a member of The Council. We make our Award of Honorary Patron to Maurice in recognition of his leading role in architectural history, curatorship and education.
Dr Lynne Walker HonFRIBA
Dr Lynne Walker is an IHR Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, London. After moving from the United States she did her doctorate with Sir Nikolaus Pevsner at Birkbeck College on E. S. Prior. Following this she taught at the University of Northumbria (1979-1987) and then was appointed Development Director at the British Architectural Library, Royal Institute of British Architects (1987-1990). She became an early member of the RIBA Women Architects Group and chaired the Women’s Design Service, which provided advice, information and publications on women and the built environment. Lynne became the pioneer in this country of the then unexplored topic of women’s architectural history with a series of exhibition she curated at the RIBA beginning with Women Architects: Their Work (1984). She followed this up in numerous publications and two further landmark exhibitions Drawing on Diversity: Women, Architecture and Practice (1997) and the Architectural Association exhibition "AA XX 100: AA Women in Architecture 1917-2017" she curated with Elizabeth Darling.
Dr Walker’s expertise in architectural biography has resulted in numerous articles and thematic essays on women architects for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Oxford Companion to Architecture as well as twenty articles on twentieth-century British architects Le Dictionnaire universel des créatrices (2014). She is currently working on a keenly awaited book on Gender, Space and Architecture: A History of Women in Britain from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day. Along with our other Honorary Patrons Lynne is also renowned for her support and generosity to other scholars. There are few projects in women’s architectural history in this country, as well as some further afield, which have not had the benefit of Lynne Walker’s expertise as an advisor, mentor or promoter in some shape or form.
Lynne has been very active in the Society in recent years. She served on the editorial board of Architectural History from 2021-2026 and is currently co-convenor of the SAHGB-IHR seminar in Architectural History at the Institute of Historical Research. We make our Award of Honorary Patron to Lynne in recognition of her unique contribution in pioneering women’s architectural history in the United Kingdom.
Interviews with the new Honorary Patrons are available on our website.
Maurice Howard and Malcolm Airs in conversation with John Goodall:
A discussion with Lynne Walker about how being supervised by Nikolaus Pevsner shaped her subsequent career:
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