CHATSWORTH - I fell in love with a photograph of Chatsworth, the historic house, collection and estate in Derbyshire’s Peak District, when I was 12 and visited for the first time as a teenager.  I then worked there for 19 years, from 1991 to 2010, starting with a summer job car parking and lavatory cleaning, and ending up as their first Head of Communications.

My first bosses were the 11th Duke of Devonshire, Andrew and his wife Deborah (famous in her own right as ‘Debo’, the youngest of the six Mitford sisters), and then their son Stoker, the 12th Duke and his wife Amanda, and in that time I became immersed in the place; the house itself, its collections, landscape and history.

With my lectures, which I give to members of The Arts Society and other culturally-minded groups around the UK and internationally, I hope to pass on my life-long passion for this beautiful place, cared for since 1981 by a charitable trust, enabling all the visitor income to be dedicated to its upkeep and ongoing preservation.

THE GARDEN & PARK LANDSCAPE - Alongside the history of the house and its collections, I give a lecture that charts the evolution of the designed landscape that surrounds the house. Over more than 450 years, eminent landscape designers have left their mark on the garden and park, creating a landscape of rare complexity and interest, from London & Wise in the 1680s, Capability Brown in the 1760s and the great Joseph Paxton in the first half of the C19th, to Dan Pearson and Tom Stuart Smith in the C21st.

DEVONSHIRE COLLECTION - I have two lectures that explore the collection; in ‘Passions, Personalities and Patronage’, I explore the collection chronologically by collector, over 17 generations from 1550 to the present day, by way of explaining how such a diverse range of art and artefacts end up under one roof, from precious drawings by Rembrandt and Raphael to modern work by Lucian Freud, Elisabeth Frink and Edmund de Waal. And my lecture ‘A Renaissance in modern times’ looks at the transformation of Chatsworth’s fortunes, landscape and collections since 1950, making it one of the most vibrant evolving historic collections to be found anywhere in the UK.

DEBO - Responsible for Chatsworth with her husband Andrew, 11th Duke of Devonshire, between 1950 and 2004, Debo Mitford, was much more than a boss to me; patron, friend, teacher, supporter and someone I came to admire deeply. For the centenary of her birth, on 31 March 2020, I wrote some impressions and memories of her sparked by a set of photographs, which you can read here. My lecture celebrates her singular life.

MAKING & UNMAKING: THE ELEMENTAL LAND ART OF JULIE BROOK

Many viewers of a BBC4 profile of artists who work out in nature, presented by Dr James Fox, were haunted by the fire stacks of the only female artist featured, Julie Brook. Her fire stacks also populate this website.

My lecture explores this fascinating artist and the range of her work over four decades in some of the world’s wild places, centred always on her passion for the islands and coast of West Scotland where she lives. From drawings, oil painting and film to her powerful physical interventions in the landscapes of Britain, North Africa and Japan that engage with the elements of earth, air, fire and water, Julie Brook’s work takes its place alongside such pioneers as Andy Goldsworthy, David Nash and Richard Long.

I am lucky enough to have known Julie well for many decades and have access to her archive and never before seen photographs of her work, and my lecture charting her career includes fragments from her astonishing art films.

‘O PAXTON!’ - HOW CHATSWORTH’S VICTORIAN GENIUS JOSEPH PAXTON CAME TO PUT THE WORLD UNDER GLASS

When the Duke of Wellington witnessed Joseph Paxton at work at Chatsworth, he exclaimed “I’d have liked that man as one of my generals.” Paxton was one of the most inventive and influential figures of the 19th century, whose most famous masterwork, the Crystal Palace of 1851, is considered by significant contemporary architects like Norman Foster to be ’the birth of modern architecture’. Born into a humble farming family, as gardener, engineer, designer, architect, publisher, railway investor and MP, Paxton was to leave his mark on Victorian Britain like few others.

For more than 30 years he worked at Chatsworth, supported by his formidable wife Sarah, enhancing it with innovative buildings and garden designs in a close partnership with his patron the 6th Duke of Devonshire. His boundless energy and vision found its greatest expression in his radical design for the Great Exhibition, where the ‘industry of all nations', and a dazzled populace, gathered under his vast glass structure. My lecture celebrates the man and his achievements which have profoundly influenced architecture ever since.

JOHN RUSKIN - I lecture about John Ruskin, exploring the way in which his passion for social justice links Venice and Sheffield, and how his growing social conscience, given shape in his famous words ‘There is no Wealth but Life’, inspired his gift of the Ruskin Collection to the working people of that city.