Alec Clifton-Taylor

Alec Clifton-Taylor OBE (2 August 1907 – 1 April 1985) was an English architectural historian, writer and TV broadcaster.

Born Alec Clifton Taylor (no hyphen), the son of Stanley Edgar Taylor, corn-merchant, and Ethel Elizabeth Taylor (née Hills), in 1907 at Whitepost House, Overton Road in Sutton, Surrey, Clifton-Taylor was educated at Bishop's Stortford College and at the Queen's College, Oxford. He went on to the Courtauld Institute of Art. During World War II he served in the Admiralty.

His best-known and most influential book is The Pattern of English Building (1962) (ISBN ), an examination of the architectural vernacular. It orders its subject according to the building materials and methods used in England. Two of his other books are studies of ecclesiastical architecture: The Cathedrals of England and English Parish Churches as Works of Art. Along with Nikolaus Pevsner (to whose Buildings of England series he was a contributor) and John Betjeman, Clifton-Taylor is considered one of the three most significant figures in the study of English churches.

Clifton-Taylor gained his greatest public recognition late in life through his work for the BBC. After being introduced through Pevsner to BBC arts producer John Drummond, Clifton-Taylor presented a television programme on mediaeval building in the series on British architecture, The Spirit of the Age, broadcast in 1974–75. Clifton-Taylor went on to present three extremely popular series of 30- or 40-minute BBC programmes: Six English Towns (1977), Six More English Towns (1981), and Another Six English Towns (1984), in which he visited Chichester, Richmond, Tewkesbury, Stamford, Totnes, Ludlow, Warwick, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Saffron Walden, Lewes, Bradford on Avon, Beverley, Cirencester, Whitby, Bury St Edmunds, Devizes, Sandwich and Durham, discussing their history and architectural character in an accessible and courteous (if uncompromising) style. Each series was accompanied by its own book, and DVDs of the three series were released in 2016/7.

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