Mark Girouard
Mark Girouard (born 7 October 1931) is a British architectural writer, an authority on the country house, an architectural historian, and biographer of Sir James Stirling. Career. He was educated at Ampleforth College. Girouard worked for the magazine "Country Life" from about 1958, firstly as its architectural writer, and then from 1964 as its architectural editor, until 1967. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art from 1975 to 1976 and elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1987. Girouard was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2011. He was on  the board of trustees of The Architecture Foundation from 1992 to 1999 and a founder, and the first chairman, of the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust. He is the grandson of Henry Beresford, 6th Marquess of Waterford through his mother, Lady Blanche Girouard. His "Life in the English Country House" won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize for 1978, and the WH Smith Literary Award in 1979. National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C467/92) with Mark Girouard in 2009 for its Architects Lives' collection held by the British Library. Photographs by Girouard are held in the Conway Library of art  and architecture at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and are currently being digitised. Family life. Girouard is married to the artist Dorothy Girouard. Their daughter is the writer Blanche Girouard. They live in Notting Hill Gate, London. He has written of his ancestral connection to Saul Solomon, a pioneer liberal politician and businessman in Cape Colony, and his wife Georgiana Solomon, a social activist and suffragette. Girouard is descended from Saul's brother Edward, born in 1820 in St Helena, who spent 18 years working with the Griquas and Basutos for the London Missionary Society.