Life lies beyond the dry stone of Pevsner

I caught a trailer on the television the other day for a programme called In Pevsner's Steps or On the Trail of Pevsner or something like that, and my blood ran cold. My mind went back to the days when I lived on the edge of museum circles, and just for a moment I felt the chill draught of that strange world.

For those who don't know the name, Pevsner was Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, who masterminded a series of books called The Buildings of England, issued county by county. Each book lists all the buildings in the county which Pevsner thought of historical or artistic interest, and then lists details of the buildings. Nothing quite like it has been attempted anywhere else in the world, and perhaps only a man with a meticulous Germanic background would even attempt it.

The upshot is that if you land in an unfamiliar part of England, you can refer to Pevsner for a quick run-down on the facades in the high street or to see what churches, castles, houses or town halls are worth a visit. Pevsner is not afraid to criticise buildings he does not like. He describes the Empire Hotel in Bath as "an unbelievable piece of pompier architecture, 1901, by C E Davis ...The effect on the NE view of the Abbey is disastrous. Moreover in the roof there are side by side a large Loire-style gable and small Norman-Shavian tile-hung gables. The Avon front is in the same frolicsome spirit. What can have gone on in the mind of the designing architect?"

But such personal notes are, alas, rare, and for the most part Pevsner contents himself with a dry list of details, such as: "The nave S wall has odd elongated two-light windows with arched lights and a straight hood which are said to date from the C18. Of the same date the blocked S doorway. Some medieval fragments built into the nave S wall inside ..."

I can remember walking around many such churches with my first wife, Pevsner in hand, trying to educate myself on church architecture, and it never occurred to me at the time that what I was doing as a grown-up was what I had done as a child, but with trains. When I was about 10 I sat on the edge of the old GWR line between Wrexham and Chester, making notes in Ian Allan train-spotting guides which listed all engines by class, by weight, by date, by depot and, of course, by number. Pevsner is no different. Ian Allan was to trains as Pevsner was to buildings. No, as Pevsner was to churches, because if you roam through Pevsner's guides you will find that most of his buildings are churches, and most of the details are endless variations on gargoyles, arches, windows, doorways, tombs, fonts, chancels ... It's architectural train-spotting, that's all it is.

The reason I dragged my first wife into this is that it was she who introduced me to this world. Her father was an architect, on whose shelves I saw Pevsner for the first time, and all the time I was married to her she worked in a museum. A museum is Pevsnerland. Everything is neatly docketed, and labelled, sorted out and catalogued, acquired and accessed, laid out in rows or put in reserve, is that not so? Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. The fact is that behind the quiet facade of the display cases and uniformed warders there is as much blood spilt as anywhere else in the human jungle. Behind the doors marked PRIVATE or STAFF ONLY there are rivalries and vendettas, back-stabbing and eye-gouging, which are all the more shocking for taking place in a museum. There are people who think they should be heads of department, there are acts of favouritism which breed years of resentment, there are new directors bringing their proteges with them...

"One day I should like to write a TV comedy set behind the scenes at a museum," I said to my first wife, "bloodstains and all."

"They'd never believe you," she said. I think she may have been right.

Now, for the first time in ages, I have taken down my two remaining Pevsner volumes from the shelves and what strikes me as strange about them as I reread is how full of things they are and how empty of people. In Pevsnerland houses last, but people die. An architect is a dead name but a church is a living thing. All the important people in Pevsner are dead already - the living people are merely owners who may or may not help Pevsner with his inquiries into the odd elongated two-light windows. As I said, it is a cold world. Somewhere else things are going on, somewhere behind a door marked PRIVATE is the world of flesh and blood, but in Pevsnerland everything is cold and made of stone. I am not entirely sorry to be out of it.