This talk is part of the Online Autumn Lecture Series 2025 called Hot Off The Press: Victorians in the Bookshops. Follow this link to book all of the lectures.
Our autumn lecture series celebrates the remarkable recent flourishing of publications on Victorian architecture and related topics. All the speakers are the authors of new books, either just published or forthcoming. Among them are two contributors to the highly successful series Victorian Architects, published by the Victorian Society in collaboration with Liverpool University Press. As well as discussions of individual architects, the subjects of the lectures range from interiors of the Aesthetic Movement to one of the greatest of all Victorian collectors.
Matthew Digby Wyatt by Robert Thorne
The polymath Wyatt – architect, administrator, designer, writer and connoisseur – was project manager to the Great Exhibition of 1851 and spent his final years advising the South Kensington Museum on its collections. He played a key part in mid-Victorian developments in architecture, design and museum display and worked with such leading figures as I. K. Brunel, George Gilbert Scott, Herbert Minton, Henry Cole and Owen Jones. Robert Thorne is the author of the first full-length study of Wyatt’s work, which was published in Liverpool University’s Victorian Architects series in collaboration with the Society in the spring of this year.
All attendees will be sent a recording of the talk.
This event helps raise funds for The Victorian Society - the only charity dedicated to fighting for our Victorian and Edwardian heritage. Funds raised from events and memberships allow us to employ expert caseworkers to reply to thousands of planning applications a year in our role as a statutory consultee in the planning system.
We help tackle the climate emergency by campaigning for the sensitive reuse of historic buildings to generate much lower carbon emissions than demolition and rebuild. Join us today and safeguard our unique cultural heritage for future generations! For further information, click here.
Image: Book Cover for Matthew Digby Wyatt