This event will celebrate the publication of The Strand: A Biography (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2025). Drawing on remarkable archival discoveries, Geoff Browell and Eileen Chanin have for the first time uncovered the deep history of this remarkable street, which has been a witness to London’s growth and change from the earliest years of the city’s existence into the contemporary. In the work, they present the most complete and compelling history of The Strand ever written.
The event will bring together some of the world’s leading scholars working on the history of what remains one of London’s greatest throughfares. Tracing its origins in the Roman era, speakers will reveal how it grew in stature and importance as authority shifted from church to aristocracy, then to commerce, media and law. Over time, everything that mattered converged on the Strand: by 1910, the street was known as the ‘centre of the world’. Following a period of decline in the second half of the twentieth century, the current revival in the fortunes of The Strand through its contemporary regeneration and the restoration of many of its greatest buildings will be discussed, and its future reinvention as a beacon of heritage-led sustainable urban redevelopment rooted in spirit of place will be considered.
Led by Dr Kyle Leyden (The Courtauld), talks will be given by Dr Manolo Guerci (University of Kent), who has written the definitive architectural history of the great town palaces of England’s clergy and courtiers which lined The Strand in the Early Modern period, and the Rev. Canon Dr Peter Babington, priest in charge of St Mary-le-Strand, the architectural masterpiece of Scots-Catholic architect James Gibbs and miraculous survival of fire, religious turmoil, redevelopment, and war, which is currently undergoing a major restoration and reinvention as community events and worship space at the centre of the regenerated Strand. These will be joined by the authors for a round-table discussion of the new book, followed by a drinks reception.
Organised by Dr Kyle Leyden, Lecturer in Early Modern Architecture and Visual Culture, The Courtauld.
Speakers:
Dr Eileen Chanin is a Researcher of the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University, Canberra and a Research Associate of ANU’s Australian Studies Institute. She has published numerous books, including Capital Designs: Australia House and Visions of an Imperial London (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2018); Awakening: Four Lives in Art (Cambridge MA: Wakefield Press, 2015), profiling the achievements of four entrepreneurial women leaders in the arts; and Degenerates and Perverts: The 1939 Melbourne Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2005) which reconstructed the seminal exhibition, the first such exhibition seen in Australia, and its significant impact on Australian cultural life.
Dr Geoff Browell has worked with archives for more than thirty years as a professional archivist and is currently in charge of promotion of Kings College London’s unique heritage collections. He is chair of AIM25, a charitable consortium of the archives of 150 cultural organisations in London, including those of major universities, learned societies and local authorities; and the national Health Archives and Records Group. Geoff’s career has ranged from early modern religious and military history to the use of technology to improve access to heritage and documentary heritage in Africa. Current projects include a new oral history of King’s, in preparation for its 200th anniversary, and leading the London component of the pan-European Yerusha project that is transforming access to archives relating to Jewish people and organisations.
Dr Manolo Guerci’s education, professional and academic experience, and overall expertise covers architecture, art and architectural history, as well as heritage and conservation, developed between Italy, France and Britain. Between 2005 and 2010 he taught in the Departments of Art History and Architecture at Cambridge, before joining the Kent School of Architecture and Planning (KSAP). His research interests range from the Early-Modern Period – his primary field of research – to Modernism. His work centres around how one brings the concept of precedent to the practice of design, and to an understanding of space cultures and cultural sustainability more broadly. Current projects include work on a new online, open-access critical edition of ‘The Book of Architecture of John Thorpe (c.1565-1655)’, preserved at the Sir John Soane’s Museum, London. He has published several books and articles including John Thorpe and the Making of an Architect in Early Modern England (London: Walpole Society, 2023); London’s “Golden Mile”: Great Houses of the Strand, 1550-1650 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2021); and Palazzo Mancini (Roma: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 2011).
The Rev. Canon Dr Peter Babington was appointed priest in charge of the Church of St Mary-le-Strand in 2020 to lead a major restoration and development project which aims to save the heritage of the church and give it a new role, purpose and life at the heart of Strand Aldwych. Before moving to London to take up this role, he was Vicar of Bournville in Birmingham for 18 years. His academic research is in the area of Practical Theology.
