The Future Is Georgian

The chairman of the Georgian Group on why the 18th century was best.

- Clive Aslet

I DON’T live in the 21st century,’ declares Christopher Boyle. ‘I never have. Even from the tiniest age, I’ve always been stuck somewhere in the first half of the 18th.’ His religion prevents him from believing in reincarnation, but he’s thought about it. ‘It’s not just the buildings, but music, literature—everything. I’ve been teased for laughing out loud on the Tube while reading Alexander Pope.’

Dentistry left something to be desired 250 years ago and he admits to worrying about the food, but more or less every other aspect of life was better under the Georges. ‘The invention of the internal combustion engine spelled the end of civilisation—that and the 1832 Reform Act, of course.’

The chairmanship of the Georgian Group could have been made for him. After 18 months in post, Mr Boyle is delighting in the conservation charity’s 80th anniversary. I meet him in its elegant W1 Adam town house, 6, Fitzroy Square (Country Life, January 25, 2017), where last month’s exhibition, ‘Splendour!’, centred on restoration crafts: ‘All the things you need if you’re going to look after or adapt an 18th-century building, from lime mortar to scagliola tables. It’s to defeat the notion that, even if you wanted to replicate the best Georgian work, you couldn’t do it. We don’t believe that. We know it’s not true. We can do anything and everything that was ever done before.’

Square of face, with a flush of Cumbrian colour to his cheeks, Mr Boyle even looks the part— it’s easy to imagine him being painted by Hogarth. At Kirklinton, the estate that he bought a few miles south of the Scottish border, he’s proud to be ‘an improving squire. I plant trees. I re-impart my park and put deer in it’.