Speakers

Sally Bedell Smith

Best-selling Author

Sally Bedell Smith is the author of bestselling biographies of Queen Elizabeth II; William S. Paley; Pamela Harriman; Diana, Princess of Wales; John and Jacqueline Kennedy; and Bill and Hillary Clinton. A contributing editor at Vanity Fair since 1996, she previously worked at Time and The New York Times, where she was a cultural news reporter. In 2012, Smith was the recipient of the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence. She is the mother of three children and lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Stephen G. Smith.

Rufus Bird

Furniture Specialist and former Surveyor of The Queen’s Works of Art

Rufus Bird is an art advisor at Gurr Johns where he is Director of Decorative Arts and Heritage Collections, Europe. After receiving History of Art from Cambridge University, he joined Christie’s as a graduate trainee and joined the Furniture Department in 1999. In 2010, he was appointed by HM Queen Elizabeth II as Deputy Surveyor of the Queen’s Works of Art. At the Royal Collection, he was responsible for about 500,000 works of decorative art across fifteen residences.

In 2018, he was appointed Surveyor of the Queen’s Works of Art. During his time, he saw the three-volume catalogue of Chinese and Japanese Works of Art to publication, co-curated the Charles II: Art and Power exhibition, contributed chapters in The First Georgians: Art and Monarchy exhibition catalogue and George IV: Art and Spectacle. He was a lead member of The Riesener Project culminating in a book published in 2021. He is one of the authors of the official history of St James’s Palace published by Yale University Press and Royal Collection Trust in 2022.

Dr. Tracy Borman

Author and Joint Chief Curator, Historic Royal Palaces

Tracy Borman is a best selling author, historian and broadcaster, specializing in the Tudor period.  Her books include Elizabeth’s Women, Thomas Cromwell, The Private Lives of the Tudors and Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him. She has also written a fiction trilogy, The King’s Witch, based in the court of James I. Tracy is also joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces, Chief Executive of the Heritage Education Trust and an honorary professor at Bishop Grosseteste University. She has presented a number of history programmes for the Smithsonian Channel and PBS, including The Fall of Anne Boleyn, Inside the Tower of London and Henry VIII and the King’s Men.  She is a regular contributor to BBC History Magazine and gives talks on her books across the country and abroad.

Edward Bulmer

Interior Designer

Edward Bulmer is an interior designer, architectural historian, and founder of Edward Bulmer Natural Paint, a popular line of all-natural environmentally friendly paints. He has been named to House & Garden’s Top 100 Interior Designers, and in 2019 the magazine named his Pitshill House restoration Project of the Year.

Sophie Chessum

Clandon Park Senior Project Curator, National Trust

Sophie Chessum is Clandon Park’s Senior Project Curator. Chessum has been with the National Trust since 1998, when she started as a Curatorial Researcher.

Since 2002 she has been a curator for a number of internationally important houses, collections, gardens and landscapes including Clandon Park, Claremont, Hatchlands Park, Hinton Ampner, Petworth House, Polesden Lacey, The Homewood, Uppark and Woolbeding. She has been a consultancy manager at the National Trust since 2013, where she provides specific consultancy support to Ham House, Sutton House and 575 Wandsworth Road, Osterley Park, Morden Hall Park, Rainham Hall, Carlye’s House, Fenton House, Red House and 2 Willow Road.

In addition she is the curator for Ham House, Richmond Surrey. Since the fire at Clandon Park in April 2015, she has been seconded to lead the salvage elements of this project – providing curatorial expertise on the house and its collection and working closely with archaeologist and conservator.

John Chu

Senior Curator of Pictures and Sculpture/ Senior Curator for Midlands, National Trust

John Chu was appointed Senior Curator of Pictures and Sculpture/Senior Curator for Midlands at the National Trust, UK in 2021.  He joined the NT in 2015 as Assistant Curator of Pictures and Sculpture and worked on exhibitions at Osterley, Powis Castle, and Basildon Park among other properties. He also worked on permanent re-displays of state rooms at The Vyne, Hampshire and Knole, Kent. He graduated from Cambridge University and received a Master of Arts and Ph.D. from Courtauld Institute of Art, London University. He was a visiting lecturer from University of Reading and an Associate Lecturer at Courtauld Institute of Art. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at The Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art.

Dwight Cleveland

Private Curator

Dwight Cleveland is a 48-year veteran of collecting and advocating for vintage film posters. In 1981, Dwight published the first article on film posters while a junior at Columbia College. The 2019 Norton Museum exhibition in West Palm Beach of his Classic Films collection was the first of it’s kind for the art form. The exhibition at Poster House in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood was another first highlighting Women Behind the Camera during the silent film era. Dwight has been quoted and interviewed in various publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Film Collector’s World, Forbes, BBC, NPR, The ROBB Report, Nitrateville and POPCandy. The British publication Art of the Movies has called him the ‘Indiana Jones of Movie Posters.’ Two major acquisitions were highlighted in NBC’s series The Hunt for Amazing Treasure in 1992 and 1994. Assouline Publishing released his book, CINEMA ON PAPER: The Graphic Genius of Movie Posters in 2019. Dwight entered into an Artificial Intelligence project with Dartmouth College in 2022 boosting their data set from 2,500 to over 25,000 giving the project scale and attracting support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was subsequently named to the newly created post of Associate Visual Cultural Curator, Department of Film & Media Studies, Dartmouth College.

Sarah Coffin

Decorative Arts and Design Consultant, Curator

Sarah Coffin, Decorative Arts and Design Consultant, Curator, and Lecturer, has extensively researched and explored the interaction of culinary design and history. She initiated and co-authored exhibition, book and article for The Magazine Antiques on Art Nouveau architect and designer Hector Guimard, now at The Driehaus Museum, Chicago.

Previously she was Senior Curator and Head of the Product Design and Decorative Arts Department at Cooper Hewitt for over fourteen years, retiring in 2018. Her tenure at Cooper Hewitt included her curation of the exhibition Feeding Desire: Design and Tools of the Table, 1500-2005. Her many exhibitions culminated with The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s, which she co-curated and co-authored the book with Stephen Harrison, for Cooper Hewitt and The Cleveland Museum of Art.

Other exhibitions for Cooper-Hewitt included the blockbuster exhibition Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels (2011), and Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730-2008. A frequent author and lecturer, Coffin worked at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the Metropolitan Museum prior to becoming a Vice President and Decorative Arts Representative Sotheby’s. She has taught and/or lectured at many universities and to numerous museum and private groups. Coffin holds an MA in Art and Architectural history from Columbia University and a BA from Yale University.

Fergus Connolly

Architect

Fergus Connolly is from Lancashire and studied architecture at Glasgow School of Art, and London Metropolitan University. Fergus undertook the SPAB’s Lethaby Scholarship in 2008, and was awarded first prize in the Georgian Group’s Architectural Drawing Competition (presented by HRH The Prince of Wales), later that year. From 2003-2006, Fergus worked for Martin Stancliffe Architects. In the role of Cathedral Surveyors, the practice undertook St. Paul’s Cathedral’s largest phase of repair and reordering since it’s completion in 1711. At FCBStudios Fergus spent 8 years as church architect to Grade 1 listed Bath Abbey, and project architect for The Footprint Project. The project secured £10.5m of HLF support to repair and stabilise the collapsing Abbey floor. During his time at FCBS he also worked on Shrewsbury Flax Mill, Windsor Castle’s Visitor Masterplan and new conservation studio for the Royal Collection. He authored The Burrell Collection’s Statement of Significance. Fergus lectures and tutors across the UK on vernacular architecture.

Ian Cox

Lecturer and Historian

Ian Cox studied at the Universities of Keele, London and Glasgow. He developed his career as a decorative arts historian in the 1980s and was the Director of the Christie’s Decorative Arts Programme at the University of Glasgow and then Director of Studies for Christie’s Education in London. Ian also ran a prestigious Decorative Arts Summer School for Christie’s in New York and was Co-Director of the Victorian Society of America London Summer School. Ian has published widely in the history of the decorative arts, particularly on furniture and ceramics. In more recent times he has directed cultural holiday programmes for the ACE foundation in Cambridge and is a regular round the world lecturer for the Seabourn and Silverseas cruise lines. He has been a lecturer for The Royal Oak Foundation in the USA since 2006.

Emile de Bruijn

Assistant National Curator at the National Trust

Emile de Bruijn studied Japanese at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and museology at Essex University, United Kingdom. After working in the Japanese and Chinese art departments of the auctioneers Sotheby’s, he joined the National Trust where he currently has the role of Assistant National Curator of Decorative Arts. In 2017 he published the monograph Chinese Wallpaper in Britain and Ireland, and his latest book is Borrowed Landscapes: China and Japan in the Historic Houses and Gardens of Britain and Ireland (2023).

Emily Eerdmans

Design Historian and Author

Emily Eerdmans is a design historian, author and principal of Eerdmans Fine Art gallery and advisory in NYC. Eerdmans received her master’s degree in fine and decorative arts from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London and has taught connoisseurship and design history at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the New York School of Interior Design. She first pursued her passion for antique furniture while working for various antiques galleries in New York.

She is the author of a long list books on the history of design as well as many articles in scholarly and national publications including the Furniture History Journal and Connoisseur’s Quarterly. Her previous books include Classic English Design; Antiques and Regency Redux (2008); The World of Madeleine Castaing (2010); Henri Samuel: Master of the French Interior (2018). She was a friend and worked with Mario Buatta for many years. They co-authored his biography Mario Buatta: 50 Years of American Interior Decoration in 2013. After the designer’s death, Eerdmans was hired to catalogue his antiques and belongings, resulting in a $7.6 million two-day sale at Sotheby’s, New York in 2020. Her just published new book is, Mario Buatta: Anatomy of a Decorator (Rizzoli 2023).

Oliver Gerrish

Historian and Author

Oliver Gerrish has a Master’s degree in Architectural History from the University of Cambridge. He is a trustee of the Derbyshire Historic Buildings Trust and helped to found their Architecture Awards. For over 10 years he was actively involved with The Georgian Group, for whom he re-founded and successfully led the Young Georgians from 2002-2016. He was one of the youngest feature writers for Country Life, and has written for The Georgian magazine and reviews for House and Garden and others. He has lectured nationally on subjects ranging from the masters of the Arts and Crafts to the role country houses play in the lives of younger people. He regularly organizes tours of historic buildings throughout Britain for private clients and charities.

You can follow him on Instagram – @archmusicman

John Goodall, FSA

Historian, Author, and Architectural Editor of Country Life magazine

John Goodall, has been architectural editor at Country Life since 2007 and has contributed to CL since 1994.  He is the author of several books, including English House Style: From the Archives of Country Life and The English Castle (2011). English Castle received numerous accolades: the 2011 Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion and the 2013 Historians of British Art Book Prize (pre-1800). The work also received the G. T. Clark Prize for 2007–2012. He read history at Durham University and took an MA and Ph.D. in architectural history from the Courtauld Institute of Art. His first book was a 2001 joint winner of the Royal Historical Society Whitefield Prize.

In 2003 he joined English Heritage as a senior properties historian. He had written several guidebooks for both English Heritage and the National Trust. He acted in 2007 as series consultant for the BBC 1 series How We Built Britain. Other projects include contributions to the photographic book The English Cathedral by Peter Marlow. He has acted as series consultant for the Country Life book series taken from the archive of the magazine, including Curious Observations (2011) and Letters to the Editor. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2001. Goodall is a patron of the Castle Studies Trust, a UK registered charity founded in 2012.

Sarah Gristwood

Best-selling Author and Historian 

Sarah Gristwood is a graduate of Oxford University. A former journalist, she contributes to newspapers such as The Guardian, The Times and The Telegraph. She is a media commentator for Sky News, CNN and the BBC on royal and historical affairs. She also has contributed to documentaries on the Royal House of Windsor, the Queen’s speeches, the Queen Mother, the legacy of Admiral Nelson, Inside Balmoral, and Secrets of the National Trust with Alan Titchmarsh. Gristwood is the author of five books about 15th and 16th century. Among her best-selling titles: Arabella: England’s Lost Queen; Elizabeth & Leicester; Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the War of the Roses; and Game of Queens.  She has also written a number of books on iconic 20th century figures–from Winston Churchill to Elizabeth II and Beatrix Potter to Virginia Wolf—and has been shortlisted for the Marsh Biography Award and the Ben Pimlott Prize for Political Writing. She is the author of two historical novels an. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the RSA.

Dr. Paula Henderson

Architectural and Garden Historian

Paula Henderson has degrees in art history (University of Chicago, M.A.) and Ph.D. in architectural history from the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London). She lectures widely in Britain (where she lived for 43 years) and the United States and has published over seventy articles on English Houses and their settings. Her first book, The Tudor House and Garden: Architecture and Landscape in the 16th and 17th Centuries (published by Yale University Press), won the Berger Prize for the outstanding contribution to the history of British art 2005. Treehouses (co-authored with Adam Mornement) was published by Francis Lincoln, also in 2005. She is currently completing books on London gardens in the age of Shakespeare and on the Landscape as Art.

She taught courses for the Courtauld Institute of Art Institute Art for many years and, most recently for the V& A Museum. She has lectures for the Paul Mellon Center for British Art, the Architectural Association, both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Birkbeck College, Christie’s Education, The Inchbald School of Design, the V&A Museum, the Tate Gallery, The Garden History Society, Sir John Soane’s Museum, Sotheby’s Educational Studies, and many others. She led tours for the Courtauld Institute to Florence (‘Gardens of the Medici’) Debyshire (‘Elizabethan Architecture’) and the Cotswolds (‘Gardens of the Cotswolds’). While living in England, she also traveled to the United States to lecture for the Society of Architectural Historians, The Garden Club of America, The Royal Oak Foundation, and the Williamsburg Institute. She is a Fellow of Society of Antiquaries of London and now splits her time between Nantucket, MA and Williamsburg, VA.

Laura Hussey

House & Gardens Manager, National Trust

Laura Hussey is the House and Gardens Manager at 575 Wandsworth Road – overseeing all operations, including community partnerships, programming, people management, visitor experience and conservation. She first joined the NT in 2013 as Acting House Steward at Osterley Park. She also worked at Sutton House in 2015-2016. She graduated from University of Exeter and did post-doctoral work at Oxford Brookes University.

Andy Jasper

Director of Gardens and Parklands at the National Trust

Andy Jasper is Director of Gardens and Parklands at the National Trust in the UK. He has degrees from University of Plymouth and Exeter and a Master’s Degree in Heritage Management from the University of Birmingham. He joined the National Trust in 2021 as National Head of Gardens and Parklands, but was a Regional Advisory Board Member for London and the Southeast since 2018.

From 2015 until he joined the NT, he worked at the Royal Horticultural Society, Wisely. From 2011-2015 he was Director of National Tropical Botanical Garden, South Shore Gardens, in Kaui, Hawaii—the only congressionally chartered botanic garden in the US. Before going to Hawaii, Andy worked at the Eden Project for over 12 years in various positions. He became Head of Research and Evaluation, Eden Project, from 2001-2013.

From 2001 to 2013 he was a Director and Research Lead at Quantquest Research and worked on projects including the NT’s St. Michaels Mount, Cornish Mining World Heritage Site, National Maritime Museum in Cornwall, etc. He has worked with England’s South West Tourism Alliance, Visit England, and Tate St. Ives, Cornwall.  He is on the Advisory Board of Global Advisor Garden Tourism. He described Munstead Wood as  “a rare surviving example of Jekyll’s work…”  He said, Munstead showcases “Jekyll’s signature naturalistic design, her bold use of colour and innovative use of everyday plants. There is no greater example of a classic English garden.”

Victoria Kastner

Architectural Historian and Author

Victoria Kastner is a leading scholar and author about the architect Julia Morgan as well as about Hearst Castle, where she worked for 30 years and was the historian. She is the author of Hearst Castle: The Biography of a Country House, with a foreword by George Plimpton, published by Harry N. Abrams in 2000; Hearst’s San Simeon: The Gardens and the Land, May 2009; and Hearst Ranch: Family, Land and Legacy. She co-authored The Beverly Hills Hotel: The First 100 Years with Robert Anderson.

In 2022, Victoria published Julia Morgan: An Intimate Biography of the Trailblazing Architect. Ms. Kastner has lectured extensively on Julia Morgan, Hearst’s art collection, and the history of collection for many museums and groups: including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the American Museum in Britain in Bath; and the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. She has also written about Hearst, San Simeon, and Morgan for The London Telegraph, the American Institute of Architects, Oxford University’s Journal of the History of Collections, and The Magazine Antiques.

Dr. Jerzy J. Kierkuc-Bielinski

Cultural Heritage Curator

Dr. Kierkuć-Bieliński, a curator at the National Trust, has worked at Tate Modern, The Holburne Museum of Art, Bath, and the Department of Prints and Drawings, The British Museum. From 2007 to 2015 he was Exhibitions Curator at Sir John Soane’s Museum and then from 2015 to 2017 he was Curator of the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood.

He has published on 20th-century American art, on the work and collections of the architects Robert and James Adam, on the work and collections of Sir John Soane, on classical stadia and on Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Currently he is a Cultural Heritage Curator for the National Trust.

He completed his BA, MA and PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Carol Ann Lloyd

Historian and Lecturer

Carol Ann Lloyd is a popular speaker who shares the stories of Shakespeare and English history. She is the former Manager of Visitor Education at Folger Shakespeare Library, where she gave workshops and tours about Shakespeare and Early Modern England. Carol Ann has presented programs at the Smithsonian, Folger Shakespeare Library, Agecroft Hall, and TEDx, among other venues. Ms. Lloyd is a member of the National Speakers Association.

Devoney Looser

Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University

Devoney Looser, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, is the author or editor of 11 books, most recently the biography Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës (Bloomsbury US, 2022). She is also the author of The Making of Jane Austen (2017) and the editor of The Daily Jane Austen: A Year of Quotes (2019). Looser, a Guggenheim Fellow and an NEH Public Scholar, has published essays in The Atlantic, New York Times, Salon, Slate,TLS, and The Washington Post. Her series of 24, 30-minute lectures on Austen is available through The Great Courses and Audible. Her next book, Wild for Austen, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in 2025. In addition to being a quirky book nerd, she plays roller derby under the name ‘Stone Cold Jane Austen’.

Patrick Monahan

Writer and Independent Art Advisor

Patrick Monahan, is a writer and independent art advisor, specializing in British paintings, drawings, and sculpture from the eighteenth century to the present. A native New Yorker, he is consulted by collectors and museums on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico. His written work appears in Country Life and Vanity Fair, as well as in the exhibition catalogue “Flaming June: the making of an icon,” Leighton House, London, 2016. He holds an M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge as well as a BA from the University of Chicago, both in art history. He lives and works in New York City, with regular visits to London.

Instagram @thepatrickmonahan

Wendy Monkhouse

Curator

Wendy Monkhouse has wide ranging curatorial experience and currently works as Senior Curator (South) for English Heritage, where she has curatorial responsibility for 140 sites. She has worked extensively for the National Trust, historic house museums and as an independent curatorial consultant. She has a PhD in Egyptian Archaeology from University College London, is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and a Trustee of the Freud Museum.

Dr. Peter Moore

Curator of Collections and Interiors, Audley End & Wrest Park, English Heritage

Dr. Peter Moore is Curator of Collections and Interiors for Audley End House in Essex, and Wrest Park in Bedfordshire. He trained as an art historian with a specialty in British art from the 17th century onwards. He joined English Heritage in 2017 after various curatorial jobs in national and regional art institutions such as the National Gallery, the National Trust, and Gainsborough’s House. At Audley End, he is responsible for over 20,000 objects, ranging from oil paintings and sculptures, to decorative arts and natural history. He leads the British Art Network affiliated research group, British Art in Historic Houses.

Jeremy Musson, FSA

Historian and Author

Jeremy Musson is a leading commentator and authority on the English Country House. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and sits on a number of boards and trusts including the Country House Foundation. He was awarded an M Phil in Renaissance History at the Warburg Institute, University of London, in 1989 and was Architectural Editor of Country Life from 1995-2007. Before joining Country Life in 1995, Mr. Musson was an assistant regional curator for the National Trust in East Anglia. He has written and edited hundreds of articles on historic country houses, from Garsington Manor to Knebworth House.

Mr. Musson also presented 14 programmes on BBC 2, making up two series called The Curious House Guest in 2005-07, and he also lectures and supervises for academic programmes with Cambridge University, London University and Buckingham University, and the Attingham Summer School. Among his books include Up and Down Stairs: The History of the English Country House Servant (2009), English Country House Interiors (2011), Robert Adam: Country House Design, Decoration & the Art of Elegance (2017), The Country House: Past, Present, Future: Great Houses of the British Isles (2018), and Romantics and Classics: Style in the English Country House (Rizzoli, 2021).

René Olivieri

Chair of the National Trust

René Olivieri joined the National Trust as Chair in February 2022. He is passionate about using his time in the role to preserve and promote cultural heritage while tackling climate change and nature loss. René has a background in both the commercial and non-profit sectors, following a career with Blackwell’s publishing. He has held a number of non-exec roles in both cultural and natural heritage including as Interim Chair of National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund, and Chair of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. He has also chaired the RSPCA since 2019.

Joe Perkins

Landscape Designer

Joe has designed and built spectacular gardens for over 20 years throughout Europe, including in the UK, Southern France, and Spain. Based in Hove, East Sussex, as Director of Joe Perkins Design he has worked on both commercial and domestic schemes including 12 years of involvement in planning and delivering gardens at RHS shows.

He’s the recipient of multiple gold medals including gold for The Meta Garden: Growing the Future at RHS Chelsea 2022 which follows on from a Gold Medal, Best in Category and Best Construction in 2019. Joe is passionate about considerate and empathetic landscape design and sustainable practice is at the core of his ethos.

Kristen Richardson

Author and Social Historian

Author Kristen Richardson was born in London, and now resides in Brooklyn, New York. Her latest book  The Season: Social History of the Debutante was published in November 2019. It was chosen as a Smithsonian Best History Book of 2019.

Robert Sackville-West

7th Baron Sackville

Robert Sackville-West, 7th Baron Sackville, studied history at Oxford University and went on to work in publishing. He now chairs Knole Estates, the property and investment company that, in parallel with the National Trust, runs the Sackville family’s interests at Knole.

Alice Sage

Property Curator of Hill Top & Beatrix Potter Gallery, National Trust

Alice Sage is a curator and cultural historian, interested in women artists, fantasy, and childhood.

Before becoming Property Curator at Hill Top in 2021, she held curatorial posts at the Edinburgh Museum of Childhood and the V&A Museum of Childhood. Over the years she has made exhibitions about fairies, dollhouses, automata, and children’s TV, and is fascinated with the different ways that we remember our childhoods and collect our memories.

At Hill Top, she creates an annual exhibitions of Potter’s original artwork and manuscripts, and leads the team that looks after Beatrix Potter’s beloved farmhouse for close to 90,000 visitors a year.

Justin Scully

General Manager, Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal Water Gardens, National Trust

Justin is General Manager of the Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal WHS.

The site is one of the busiest properties in the National Trust welcoming in excess of 600,000 visitors per year: attracting significant domestic & international visitors as well as from all across the North of England. Justin has worked for the National Trust for 14 years and in his 6 years at Fountains has overseen multi-million pound investment in visitor infrastructure & conservation, as well as the Skell Valley project, a £2.5m Landscape scale conservation project.

Prior to the Trust Justin worked in the charity sector in the UK & Africa, after a 10-year career in the private sector.

Alice Strickland

Curator, National Trust

Dr. Alice Strickland is a curator for the National Trust. Her doctorate considered British women artists of the Second World War and she was awarded a Paul Mellon research grant for a publication on women artists of the First World War. Her contributions to publications include Laura Knight: A Celebration (Penlee Museum exhibition catalogue, 2021) and Learning from the Masters (Ashgate, 2013). Her book Laura Knight (2020) forms part of a series on Modern Women Artists published by Eiderdown Books.

Judith Tankard

Historian & Author

Judith Tankard is a landscape historian, author, and preservation consultant. She received an M.A. in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and taught at the Landscape Institute of Harvard University for over 20 years. In 2000, she was awarded a Gold Medal by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for her role in the advancement of historic New England gardens. She is a 2022 Honorary Member of the Garden Club of America.

She is the author or co-author of 12 illustrated books on landscape history, including: Beatrix Farrand: Garden Artist, Landscape Architect (2022); Gardens of the Arts and Crafts Movement; Ellen Shipman and the American Garden, winner of the 2019 J. B. Jackson Book Prize; Gertrude Jekyll and the Country House Garden: From the Archives of Country Life; and Gertrude Jekyll at Munstead Wood among others. Judith’s articles have been published in Antiques, Apollo, Country Life, Horticulture, Hortus, Landscape Architecture, Old-House Interiors, Old-House Journal, Pacific Horticulture, and other publications. For 10 years she served as editor of the Journal of the New England Garden History Society. She recently retired as vice-president and a long-time board member of the Beatrix Farrand Society. Judith has a garden on Martha’s Vineyard.

Adrian Tinniswood OBE

Author

Adrian Tinniswood OBE FSA, studied English and Philosophy at Southampton University and was awarded an MPhil at Leicester University. He has acted as a consultant to the National Trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund. He is currently Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Buckingham and Visiting Fellow in Heritage and History at Bath Spa University. He has lectured at several  Universities in both the United Kingdom and United States, including the University of Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of 16 books on architectural and social history including His Invention So Fertile: A Life of Christopher Wren; By Permission of Heaven: The True Story of the Great Fire of London; The Verneys, Pirates of Barbary; The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House Between the Wars; Behind the Throne: A Domestic History of the Royal Household (2018). Tinniswood was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to heritage.

Jane Marguerite Tippett

Author and Royal Historian

Jane Tippett is a historian and archivist. She graduated from University of Delaware with a BA in French, History and English Literature. She received her MSt. in History of Art from Wadham College, Oxford, where she wrote her dissertation on the centrality of provenance in the contemporary fine art auction market. Since graduating she has worked as a private archivist to high-net-worth families and interior design firms in New York City, Boston, and London. Once A King: The Lost Memoir of Edward VIII (Hodder & Stoughton, October 2023) is her first book. Her next book, Monsieur, which will be published in May 2024, is a survey of the photographic work of Patrick O’Higgins, the biographer and longtime companion of Helena Rubinstein.

Carol Wallace

Noted Author 

Carol Wallace grew up in a Victorian house on the same block as a public library – both strongly formative influences. Her only full-time job was in book publishing and since then she has been author or co-author of 23 books. Among the best known are The Official Preppy Handbook  and Our Kind of People, a 2022 novel about social climbing in New York City during the Gilded Age that the New York Times called “a charming historical romance.” To Marry an English Lord, which she co-authored with Gail MacColl, was cited by Julian Fellowes as an inspiration for “Downton Abbey.”

Charles Wellingham

Architect

Charles Wellingham grew up in Somerset and studied architecture at University of Plymouth and the University of the West of England, during which time his work was commended by the SPAB Philip Webb award and shortlisted for the RIBA President’s Silver Medal. During 6 years at FCBStudios, Charlie was the project architect responsible for delivering the heritage led regeneration of Middleport Pottery in Stoke on Trent for the Prince’s Regeneration Trust. The site was built in 1888 and has been home to the Burleigh factory for 150 years. As well as securing the continuation of Burleigh’s craft, the brief sought to strengthen the economic sustainability of the grade II* listed site by introducing additional complementary uses, education spaces and visitor facilities. The refurbishment was awarded a national RIBA award, a Civic Trust AABC Conservation Award and a Europa Nostra Prize for European Cultural Heritage Conservation Excellence.

In 2014, he rejoined FCBS and was responsible for leading the design team overseeing the creative reuse of the former Guildhall court rooms in the heart of medieval Bristol. This included securing Planning and Listed Building Consent for the extension and conversion of the Grade I and II* listed buildings into a hotel complex. Charlie is an associate lecturer at the UWE Architecture School and guest critic in the Part 2 Conservation Studio. Charlie was elected to join the Conservation Register in 2016.

Gareth Williams

Curator & Head of Learning, Weston Park Foundation

Gareth Williams is Curator & Head of Learning to the Weston Park Foundation, an independent charity that conserves Weston Park, the ancestral home of the Earls of Bradford on the Shropshire/Staffordshire border. He earned his BA and Master’s degrees from the University of Manchester.

Mr. Williams began his career in London at Sotheby’s and later served as Regional Director for the auction house for five years in Chester. Before joining Weston Park in 2006, Mr. Williams held a curatorial position at Nostell Priory, a National Trust property in Yorkshire. In addition to his curatorial and conservation work, Mr. Williams undertakes consultancy work at other private historic houses throughout the United Kingdom.

Mr. Williams sits on the regional committee of the Historic Houses Association, and in 2022 was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. His recent books include The Country Houses of Shropshire, 2021 and Weston Park: The House, the Families, and the Influence, published in June 2022.