COWEN: My British YIMBY friends claim to me that the cost of living is too high here, and we need to build at least 2 million new homes, mostly in the south of England. Do you agree, and would that threaten heritage? Although it was made in 1661, King Charles III will be only the seventh monarch to wear the St Edward’s Crown. COWEN: But it’s discouraging the creation and maintenance of the asset you’re dedicated to popularizing and preserving, right? Although lots of things were done — when it comes to urban planning and so on — that we really regret now, I think you have to be really careful not to diminish the seriousness of intent of those people who were trying to conceive of what that world might be — more egalitarian, more democratic, involving more space, more air, more light, healthier — all these kinds of things.

COWEN: How much of that was sincere belief, and how much was that simply an arbitrary marker that different interest groups struggling for power fixed upon, and actually, the Civil War is about the interest groups struggling for power? It’s incredibly important to remember how you have to try and take the long view because if you let things go, you cannot later retrieve them. We look at the decisions that were made in the past about things that we really care about that were demolished — wonderful country houses, we’ve mentioned. It’s fantastic, for example, Euston Station, one of the great stations of the world, built in the middle of the 19th century, demolished in the ’60s, regretted forever since. So, one of the things you have to be really careful about is to make a distinction between the fashion of the moment and things which we are going to regret, or our children or our grandchildren are going to curse us for having not valued or not thought about, not considered. The crown has 444 jewels and gemstones – including expensive sapphires, rubies, amethysts and topaz, although most are light blue and or bluish green aquamarines. They are set in enamel and gold mounts.Robert Boyle learned from William Petty a lot about what was being embarked upon by this group of young men in Oxford in the 1650s, which was utterly revolutionary, really, which was the beginning of what we would regard as proper scientific process and scientific inquiry through experimentation.

St Edward's Crown is displayed during the service to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey, London. (Image: PA) It’s interesting, because I don’t know that it would necessarily have been obvious that that would’ve worked. There might have been a feeling that it would be absurd to continue to have all these palaces and grounds and state coaches and all this kind of stuff when you are looking at something which is fundamentally part of the ritual of state, but it isn’t actually exercising any executive authority. KEAY: [laughs] Well, it could easily have happened. I think a lot of people have forgotten that there was a revolution in the British Isles, and it was a republic for 10 years. The trouble was, really, that this is a classic situation where there was a lot of unhappiness with what had been the case — the monarchy — but the formulation of a stable republic had yet to be worked out. Deft, confident, deeply learned and provocative, underpinned by an extraordinary sense of the landscape and the architecture … Anna Keay traces with fierce intelligence the remarkable and restless lives’ Rory StewartThat said, there has always, alongside this idea that you should be using something very ancient that speaks of the ancientness of your lineage and so on — new pieces have, in the past, often been made to accompany the older ancestral pieces, quite often for queens or queen consorts. Fans of Hilary Mantel are bound to enjoy this new biography of a figure from a fascinating period. Keay provides a lively account of the licentious Restoration court . Ambitious and scholarly . Enjoyable, and should do for the Stuarts what Mantel has done for the Tudors’

Splendid. Plotted like a novel, full of riveting detail, The Last Royal Rebel offers a vivid portrayal of politics in the dynastic age, when bloodlines ruled and accidents of nature swayed the fate of nations’. Robert Boyle had been brought up — he was the son of an Irish nobleman — in great comfort and grandeur in Ireland. Silver spoon in his mouth and silks to wear. William Petty had been born the son of a very poor clothier in a town on the southeast coast of England. They met both in Oxford and in Ireland in the mid-17th century. Toyes and Trifles” the destruction of the English Crown Jewels’, History Today, 52 (7), July 2002, pp. 31-7 Keay married fellow historian Simon Thurley in 2008. The couple have fraternal twins, Arthur and Maude, born in 2009. [2] [4] They live in London and Norfolk. [8] Awards and honours [ edit ]

The later Stuart paintings in the Suffolk Collection’ English Heritage Historical Review, I, 2006, pp. 62-74