tting value for money from that exercise? Is it allowing you? Is it helping you to understand what this bar of audit satisfaction actually is that was mentioned earlier? Is it allowing you to get there? Because, if you do come back next year, this absolutely has to be sorted, surely you accept that? We do accept that. To be clear, we had no choice. This was a crash course that we had to do, and the crash exercise within a very short period of time, obviously, our intention had been to avoid the section 22 disclaimer for a second year in a row. There was no choice. This was the only way of doing it. There was no methodology in existence. Even the experts in surveying found this a challenging exercise. There was no alternative. As mentioned previously, most organisations would do this over a sustained period. They would do a five-year rolling programme of revaluing assets. In all probability, they would cover the same ground over five years. We had to do it in a very, very short space of time. Therefore, going forward, it would be once we reached the point of an agreed fixed asset register and we passed the test of external audit and the balance satisfaction. I would foresee a sustained programme over, say, a five-year cycle of revaluing the evaluation of our canal assets in the way that many other public bodies would do. You also mentioned the separation between English and Welsh canals and Scottish canals. Was there any opportunity taken to consult with that organisation about how they went through this process? Are they in the same boat as you, literally? Or have they completed this exercise and do they comply fully? My understanding is that the Canals and Rivers Trust are a charity, and therefore, Frem does not apply to the same as us. However, Richard can explain his lots of contact with his former colleagues, and they were fully involved in the process that they are trying to assist as well. In 2012, Scottish Canals remained in the shell of British waterways, and we became under Scottish Government, where in England and Wales became Scottish Canals and Rivers Trust's complete charity. We are in regular contact with them. We are in contact with other global organisations as well to talk about canals. We know Waterways Island and they are going through a similar process, but they are behind us in this process, and we have spoken to a number of European and other organisations. We cast a net wide to try and see if there was a methodology out there for waterways and for this sort of work. We are actually at the very front of this, and that does cost money, and that is taking time, but we are convinced that the team from EY, as SJ said earlier, has the experience of building these from the ground up, and they are working in the Middle East and in places like Africa, where they are starting from the absolute ground up building these fixed asset registers. Unfortunately, it is not cheap, and it is very expensive to do, but it will be at the core of our business moving forward. The connection between the fixed asset register and our asset management strategy and the ability for government to see what is sitting on the books in these heritage infrastructure. As was said earlier by Transport Scotland, there is a lot to be learnt across the public sector for other organisations that will probably follow us in this process. Just for assurance, that was one of the initial things that we did. The joint Transport Scotland and Scottish Canals finance teams, we set up meetings with our counterparts in the English and Welsh body and had a really fascinating discussion on technical accounting and what they were doing and what we were doing, but it became very clear, as Richard has outlined and colleagues have outlined, that they are still, because of the way that the decisions were taken over control at the time in 2012, they remain a charity in a completely different government type of body, no ONS reclassification, and therefore they do not need to abide by the frame, so they have stuck with the historical nil valuation. They were interested in what was going to need to be done up here, but a completely different set of rules applied to them. It is very, very helpful, thank you all for responding to those questions, convener. Thank you very much. I do not know whether Graham Simpson has got any further questions to put, but if he hasn't, that concludes the session this morning. I thank all of you from Transport Scotland and Scottish Canals for your time and your evidence. There are some things that we may want to follow up, and we will need to consider as a committee what our next steps are, whether we need to bring you back in again before next year or we are not going to see you again for a long time or whatever. All of that is not entirely in our hands, of course, you understand. I thank you very much for your time and your patience this morning. We will, as I say, consider what our next steps are, and there are certainly some things that we might want to follow up in writing with you. I now draw the public part of this morning's committee to a close.


I don't know something like that and Then draw another straight line that intersects it kind of I don't know like that Yours will be different from mine and this is where Boston It's tricky for me to explain how to do this on my tablet.  Well, let me pause the video recording and I'll explain to you Do me a favor then can you open your books up, please? To it's lesson one from the next unit sort of it's page 105 page 105 page 105 and What we're going to do gone from talking about Inductive reasoning making conclusions and deductive reasoning trying to prove things and we're going to start to do it with shapes You may have done some of this last year or in grade nine or in grade eight It really depends on what your teacher emphasized or not Sydney I'm going to teach it from scratch. So if you remember all this don't be insulted It's I'm assuming you've all forgotten it So says in this unit we will use inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning to determine Relationships between pairs of angles formed by what are called transversals and parallel lines. Oh Heck, let's jump down here. First of all some definitions Can you all underline or highlight the word acute angle? I'm going to ask you to know that word I'm going to use that word and acute angle is an angle between zero and 90 degrees An angle between zero and 90 degrees. How big is 90 degrees? This big a right angle. How big is zero this big so anything in here? Oh, it's acute No, okay a right angle a right angle is exactly 90 degrees and we have a symbol that shows you that it's exactly 90 degrees Adam if you draw a little square or a half square like that That's the symbol for even if it doesn't look it because mr.  No, that means something different. This is the angle. We're talking about here This is an obtuse angle a straight angle is exactly what it sounds like an angle that forms a 180 degree line Okay, there Courtney. You're really fascinated by the little toy. I can tell You good, okay What's a reflex angle a? Reflex angle is between 180 and less than 360 bigger than 180 and less than 360 What's the reflex angle in this picture here that one that's called a reflex angle Bigger than 180 degrees because it's more than a straight line and the complete rotation is 360 degrees How many degrees are there in a circle? 360 degrees you are gonna need to know these terms and specifically you are gonna need to know Jordan that 360 degrees is a circle most basketball players will have no trouble with that because you call it slam dunk of 360 You have that one memorized and you are gonna need to know that a straight line is 180 degrees So far so good All right A says in each case use a protractor to measure the indicated angles and complete the work so with your protractor right now, can you find how big angle X is and Round off to the nearest five or ten degrees because I think it's supposed to be a fairly even number. I think And I'm gonna grab a protractor Assuming that my screen doesn't distort things What are you getting for angle X? How big? Yeah, I'm getting on my screen. It's like a hundred and thirty seven in a chunk But that could be because my screen is distorting things. Let's call it a hundred and forty degrees How big is angle Y? Sorry, did you measure it or did you use inductive reasoning to figure it out? Oh? You measured it and it was kind of obvious What do angle X and angle Y add to? 180 degrees in fact That's the punchline Jordan that I want to get to Without measuring angle A and angle B. Can you look at them and can you tell me what they have to add to? Pardon me Why I'm not a good answer. I mean you're correct That's the inductive reasoning part, but now we also want to bring some kind of a deductive proof to it What are they formed together when you add them together? What is their base form together? I'll give you a hint straight angle Every straight line is 180 degrees. So can you tell me without measuring angle PQ and R? What do angle PQ and R add to? 180 degrees Angles on one side of a straight line add up to 180 degrees What we're gonna do now is we're going to give that rule a name We're going to say from now on instead of you having to say Those are angles that form a straight line together We're going to give it a name. We're gonna call it supplementary If you say supplementary, I know you're telling me these two angles add to 180 Each one is the supplement of the other X is the supplement of Y.  How big does angle A have to be? Angle A, I don't think can possibly be 180 degrees because 180 degrees is a straight line And I think angle A looks to me about like that. Sorry. I think you're right with 25. What'd you do? Okay 180 minus 155. I agree. How big does angle B Have to be and if you use a calculator go ahead or if you can do the math in your head That's fine, too. How big must angle B be? 61, is he correct? Yes Okay Now we're going to look at a very special shape this X shape the one that I had you draw it being a class and we're gonna See if we can add a new rule to our so right now. We have a rule called century We're gonna see if we can add a new rule We're gonna see if we can do some inductive reasoning and some deductive reasoning so They gave me 80 degrees How big is angle C? Sorry, you're telling me that angle C is exactly the same size as that one there I don't think they look the same to me. This one looks a lot fatter. In fact, this one looks bigger than 90 This one looks smaller than 90 Marcus hundred how come? What's the fancy term that we gave it? Begins letter S and runs with a supplementary Supplementary very good. You okay with that? How big is angle E? 80 convince me Okay, there's another straight line right here. How big is angle D? How big is angle D? Hundred here's the pattern we want to notice here today Matt, how big is this angle here? How big is this angle here? Oh Matt, how big is this angle here? How big is this angle here?  We're gonna give that a name First of all, we're gonna erase the highlighter If we have opposite angles at a vertex we call them vertically opposite angles If you have two straight lines that make an X shape First of all the point where they cross right there is called The vertex Can you tell me two angles that have to be the same size in this particular picture? S and R have to be the same size. I don't know what they are, but they got to be the same and In fact, if I knew one of them I could find the other three. Here's an example with numbers Here's a generic example Example A says use a protractor to measure each of the following angles. I disagree I'd like you all just to measure angle A and we're gonna stop We're gonna write that down and then we're gonna see if we can reason our way to what the rest are So can you measure angle A this one right there, please with your protractors? What do you get? I should do this too. Mr. Duke. Are you in about a hundred degrees? I think it's supposed to be a hundred Sorry 110 is it why is a hundred ten on your guys's Okay, so I can't measure the ones on my screen then because my tablet distorts everything That's gonna be a little frustrating And I drop this 110 degrees Now that I know that how big does angle B have to be 110 we call that vertically opposite. How big does angle C have to be? 70 supplementary to angle A or Angle B How big does angle D have to be? Is that a right here thumbs up? Have you guys done this before or not? Is this New or this review? Drilling, okay fine So it says complete the following opposite. We're gonna skip this one opposite angles that a vertex are Equal and in fact we call these Vertically opposite angles Note it says the word vertically refers to the vertex and has nothing to do with being vertical Which is true turn the page So a straight line forms 180 degrees. How many degrees are there in a circle? 360 so If I start here and go all the way around don't write that down. I'll just do that how many degrees must I have just gone through 360 degrees Okay, with your protractor measure angle E, please How big do you get for angle E? Taylor, what'd you get? It's got to be bigger than 90 by eyeballing. Sorry. I Heard hundred and 115 anybody else No, yes 110 110 The consensus seems to be that angle E is 110. How big is angle F that looks a bit bigger than? Looks like about 110 or 120 or something like that How big is angle F? That's this angle right here. I can't hear. I'm sorry 110 again, okay, how big should angle GB? Can you figure it out without actually measuring it and then we'll measure it to confirm it? Alex, what did I say all of these have to add to? It's got to be 360. So I think it's going to be 360 minus 110 minus 110 I think in theory it should be really close to a hundred and forty degrees is it We're going to give that a name as well. I'm not gonna do this second one. I think I've got the idea We call this here angles around a point and angles around a point add up to 360 degrees So example two says calculate the angles marked with letters How big is angle A? How can you figure out how big angle A is Joe? Any guesses and subtract from? Yep, go Does Joe have his calculator? He does. Oh I can like you again Sydney's getting hers out now. Ah people are getting on the bandwagon here be part of the crowd Update your Facebook status. I have my calculator Sam. What'd you get? Hundred Sam says a hundred. Is she right? Wait a minute, Mr.  No, not really That okay? All right Example two The second one let's assume she that they want us to find B first So the question I'm gonna ask myself is how can I find B? How big is B? Why is oh? Here I do have a perfect x Which means that this angle and this angle will be the same size Well, I forgot to turn that off. Mr. Do it now that I know angle B How big is angle C? Joe, how can I find angle C now that I know angle B? What have I just drawn how many degrees? 360 do you know that guy? Yeah, you know that guy You know that guy Did you just figure out that guy? So I can figure out last one same thing as you did over here, isn't it minus 360 good go to it. It's gonna be 360 minus 120 minus 60 minus 55 minus 60 65 Yes, it has to be so let's rehash so far Emily we have supplementary Angles at a point Vertically opposite We're gonna add a couple of more little rules little tricks little shortcuts that we can use Says investigating the sum of angles in a triangle and We're I'm gonna do this one up at the front here really quickly because I don't have enough pairs of scissors to go around Continue says based on this investigation angles in a triangle Matt. What did you say they add up to? 180 degrees every triangle adds to 180 We've got a couple of more little tricks we can use here Says recall the following triangle property. You may or may not recall this In our I saw salise triangle, I won't make you spell it correctly I will make you say it correctly in an I saw salise triangle You have two equal sides and two equal angles Here's how we show this it says verify this property by measuring the sides We're not going to instead. We're going to signify that the sides are the same by using hash marks look up Right now those two sides have different lengths even though they look the same Joe You know how I know that those two sides have different lengths even though they look at the same How many hash marks does this side have on it? This side, how many does this have Soon as I do that what I'm telling you is those are both the same length Okay, or I can also say that the angles are the same. I could do that by going We use little hash marks little symbols It's an easy way especially if you're trying to draw these shea and they're tricky to draw accurately And you're saying they don't quite look the same use the hash marks And I will assume that they are the same This is an isosceles triangle what this means is these two angles are the same size How's that help?  I'll actually draw this down. Is this an isosceles triangle? Not yet. Let's make it an isosceles triangle Alex by doing that Okay, and I'm going to tell you one more thing.  Say what? Courtney, here's how you label angles you often will use three letters and Joe means j o e it's this angle right here You go in the order that it's written where the middle letter is where the vertex is J e o j e o means that angle right there Okay, what shape is this Jeremiah? What does every triangle add to? Okay, so I know that this plus this plus this equals 180, but because it's isosceles I know one more thing. So how can I use that to figure out how big each one of them is? Yeah, Marcus 180 take away my 28. I like where you're going so far. Let's do that. I'm like 180 Take away 28. Uh-huh. Let's try that again. 180 take away 28. Uh-huh. Oh I got 152 degrees left for both angles, but if they're both the same They're each 76. Is that what you're saying? Boston that makes sense That that very handy trick that I just showed you right there We're gonna use that an awful lot if you know, it's an isosceles triangle Very handy because you know two of the angles are the same you can find them by dividing by two Joe you okay on Joe or Geo? This one here. I think we can figure out This last one here. I think we can figure out. It says Exterior sides of a triangle What it's really saying is This angle and this angle. Hey What do these two form together? What do these two form together? Taylor straight line.  Gotta be a hundred gotta be a hundred Why supplementary? So they want us to walk through that bender, but I think I think we see it. Okay, and Instead We're gonna turn the page to page 109 So this is what we're gonna spend some time doing here for the next few days or you'll be using deductive reasoning Inductive reasoning conjectures conclusions for shapes. I like this. It's a nice change from use an equation Rapid how big does angle X have to be? hmm What's angle X sitting in what shape? Matt Triangle and what did we say every triangle adds to? so 180 minus 83 minus 65 Gotta be 32. Yes Okay, here. We have angle a angle B angle C Angle By the way, have you included what the abbreviation for the word angle is it's a little slanty L, right? Sam how big is angle a how can we figure out how big angle a is? Well, I'll give you a hint They only gave me two angles. They gave me a 29 and they gave me a 36 So I'm gonna use one of those guys So I'm now asking myself is angle a forming an X vertically opposite with any of them Is it supplementary to any of them? Is it part of a triangle? I'm running through the little checklist of things that I have here Can you see it? How big is angle a have to be?  A's looking at me like I'm a freak got to keep on the toes say any thoughts how big Okay, let's walk through this. Do you know where angle a is point to it? Yes Yeah First thing I want to notice then is it's made up of this line right here Is that a straight line going to the next angle? Do I know the next angle? Well, how big? How big must these two guys be together? What's every single straight line?  Are you ready? So 151 I agree with you angle B Any suggestions here say how I can figure out how big angle B is ah On the other side same thing sure So what will I type into my calculator or do in my head 180 what? It's 180 minus 30 is 150 minus 6. How big I Agree with you 144 degrees mister What's that?  You want to keep going? How can I say no to you Shay? Absolutely? Let's keep going. Let's keep going now angle C angle C Hmm what shape is angle C in Shay? How big is this angle? How big is this angle right here? Ah? Because the one next to it is 90 and those two form a straight line supplementary What does every triangle add to? Good go to it 61 61 No, yes Doing the math in my head. I could be wrong. What's that? You want to finish this one off and get that rosy glow of success? Absolutely. Shay. Let's do that. Let's do that on your own. Can you tell me how big angle D has to be?  That's that's called success. It feels good doesn't it? I've never felt that before. Yeah, well, there you go first time Raysh and I let's try this next one here. I tend to go alphabetically because I assume whoever created this went alphabetically and Probably I'll use the first one to find the next one to find the next one So if I jump on the last sort of the alphabet I might be stuck So they gave me I think I'm gonna start out with angle P Because P comes first in the alphabet All right over here angle P equals angle Q equals Angle R equals angle S equals. Is there an angle T? Yes, there is Can I can you tell me how big angle P has to be? I agree with you Supplementary or Shay, you know what you can call supplementary for short sup No, okay Keep going Shania angle Q. Is it 69 degrees? Yes, no. Yes, form the straight line right there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Keep going angle R Hmm. Oh I bet you will use angle Q and angle P to find angle R. That's why I said I go alphabetically all the time It's gonna be 180 minus minus you say 59 59 degrees. Is that right? 5 9? How'd you get that Shania? Why from 180 because this shape together forms up triangle perfect Keep going Angle S. I totally agree 121 oh finish this off. You've done so well and I'll even give you a candy because I like you better than Shay What was that? How could I not? Yeah? 109 how'd you get? Oh, yeah, and by the way again Shay notice This is not vertically opposite X's because it's a crooked X We can't use our these two are the same and those two are the same Otherwise that would have made this question really fall apart really really quick. So sorry what you say it was hundred and what? 109 I agree Boston, what are these two hash marks mean that these two sides are? Which means that these two angles are? Ready Boston, what are these two hash marks mean that these two sides are? Which means that these two angles are? See I Sosley's triangle means two sides and two angles the same which means I can tell you angle D already boss And what's angle D? I totally agree with you and then they want me to find angle E and angle F Let's keep going Boston my friend angle E or 180 minus 34 times 2 or more specifically as a number as an answer 112 yeah, oh how big is angle F? I don't know. You know what first by the way before Marcus points this out to you What we're doing is called geometry. I sucked at it. I'm still terrible at it It was the one thing in math that I'm very very bad at and so I taught myself a mental checklist Where to look to try and find the answer one of the first places I look is at the angle that we just found What angle did we just find? Angle what E do angle E and angle F form anything together? I heard someone murmur it over here Straight line and what's every straight line? Now I can but that's what I would have done with I would so 180 minus 112 is I think 68 Is that okay? Gonna add one more term for you by the way. It says summary We have opposite angles on a line add up to a point add up to 180. We called that supplementary. Let's write down the word supplementary Opposite angles at a vertex are equal vertically opposite angles. That was this one How do I remember that one? Can you all look up for a second? What letter is that right there? I? Agree with you X if I cover it up What letter is that top half form? V for vertically opposite angles You're looking for a dumb way to remember it works for me Angles around a point add up to 360 Angles in a triangle add to 180 says the exterior angle of a triangle equals the sum of the interior opposite angles By the way, it is true. I don't know if you noticed Boston, but 34 plus 34 is 68. I Don't know if you notice, but that plus that gives you that I've never really used that one as a shortcut because almost always I can find this guy and then find that guy as a hopscotcher But we are gonna add a sixth one a sixth term angles that add To 90 degrees are called So angles that add to 180 degrees are called supplementary Anybody know what we call angles that add to 90 degrees Complementary Complementary call. What's your homework two things for you to work on first of all in the workbook? number one number two number four We skipped three five is good Six is good seven eight Sure, nine is good too. I think and then I have for you a great big package of stuff that we're slowly gonna work through I'm gonna tell you which questions you're capable of doing right now It doesn't mean these are all due next class But you want to start them if you finish them and I'll give that to you in just one second here right click pause So put your name on this big great big geometry package number one and uh Okay, mr. Dewick, apparently you haven't printed this up yet Okay, really quickly hang on bear with me reasoning with angles reasoning with angles package number one Right now, I think you folks can do or are capable of doing This first page which is called s2 and s3 and s4 Now am I saying all of that is due next class? No, but you're gonna find when you get pretty good at these you can probably get all the homework done including this far done in class Okay There's a couple of words on here that you might not know congruent means same size But vertically opposite acute obtuse All stuff and I have an answer key I'll put this answer key both online But I'll throw it up here every so often so you can double check for your answers because this one the answers are not attached Does that make sense alex? We're good Fun with drawing and pictures if you can hand in the protractor and the rulers Preferably putting them back in the little plastic thingy That would be wonderful. That would be great and you have the remainder of class to work on this


Welcome back everyone. Day two of SuperCloud 4. It's our second day of wall-to-wall coverage. In studio here in Palo Alto is the Cube studio. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Rob Streche with Cube Research. Guys, day two, we've got another packed schedule. What a payload of SuperCloud 4 content. The theme is generative AI. As you guys know, we do this every quarter. Folks watching, every quarter we have an episode. We unpack and drop a payload of content from experts, startups, founders, industry experts, people from the community, all weighing in on the hottest trends, the most important stories. Dave, I mean, great day two. And the earnings season for the hyperscalers is kicking in. You saw Alphabet, we saw Google Cloud. We've got Amazon coming up. You saw Microsoft Numbers. Kind of a interesting time. We obviously got the war in Israel, which is kind of putting a really kind of a wet blanket on some of the tech scene, certainly on the startups and Israeli component of those of the tech scene here. So weird market. Are we in a recession? What's the cloud outlook look like? Generative AI has got all the hype. Is the bloom off the rose or is it still hyping? I mean, this is the big conversation we've been having. And it seems to me that from yesterday, it seems like it is like a web moment where people are like so enthusiastic. Confidence levels, I'd say 50-50 around where we are and how we shoot kind of pointed that out. What's the lineup look like for today and what's your analysis of the current market? Well, first of all, I'd say it's kind of playing out how we thought it would play out. Microsoft is winning its relationship with open AI has clearly put it in the front. We say it cut the line and now it's in the lead with AI. Jassy's talking about how it's early innings. It's just the first three steps in a marathon. But the interesting thing is when has Amazon not led? Amazon's always been a front runner here. So that's kind of an interesting dynamic. And Google, who's got the best AI you would think with BigQuery and Vertex AI, it would have a little bit of a tailwind from that, but its quarter suggested not the case with GCP. They were talking about cloud optimization. Azure, unbelievable. Azure's actual constant currency growth was 28%. I had it at 27% and I'm usually a little higher on Azure. And then GCP came in, the overall cloud came in at 22%. My guess on GCP, I had GCP come in at 25%. I'm just squinting through the data and the transcripts. It maybe grew a little bit faster than their overall cloud, but not much. They talked about optimization. So clearly there hasn't been a huge tailwind for these cloud guys yet because of AI with the possible exception a little bit for Microsoft. Rob, what's your take on this cloud game as well? Generally AI obviously is hot, it's hyped. Where's the rubber meeting the road? Where's the meat on the bone, as we always say? How do you see this? I think to Dave's point, I think OpenAI has been able to really help Microsoft jump the line and get people in because they can use that as a way to quickly get to chatbots and things of that nature and build out first prototypes or proof of concept type AI and generative AI products. And I think that has helped them. And I think when people looked at Vertex, it's newer from that perspective. And I think it's not as hyped. And I think the models behind it. I think we're still to use Andy's terms early innings on that because I think a lot of the open models, I think you have WatsonX coming in. You have a number of different walled gardens that are still yet to be built for people to secure their data, protect their intellectual property. And I think that's going to have a big impact on clouds. WatsonX might be the diamond in the rough here. We're actually seeing momentum for WatsonX after all the years of pain that we had to endure listening about Watson and not performing in the market. It actually looks like WatsonX has some really great potential and some momentum behind it. I mean, IBM could get a mulligan here with Watson that kind of failed to meet up to his expectations over the years with NLP. But now with the AI coming in, they're kind of maybe in a pole position. We got to keep an eye on that. Certainly, Dave, love to get your perspective on that. And the other thing I did, OpenAI is actually starting to see some competition as high as they are. They entered the market, like really came in fast. But they've come down a little bit because they've got competition, right? There's alternatives out there. There's third parties that are open source. You say OpenAI AI isn't closed. You said that a lot yesterday. I didn't really understand why you say that. Explain that. Well, okay. Well, I don't get to the Amazon. We'll come back to Amazon. But on your question, when the model started coming out, they were called proprietary models because they're proprietary to OpenAI. But they're actually crawling the web and getting data that's open. So, and as you go down to the power law, if the slide looked at the power law slide, we have that still. Love going to the slides that's there. So the power law, as we've been promoting through our CUBE research initiative, you see as these specialty models come in, all the talk at SuperCloud 4 in General AI is the data is your intellectual property. That's proprietary to the company. So words are, the semantics are, the words are getting flipped upside down. Memory, is it memory? Is it memory for the rag or the retrieval? Is it proprietary? Is it open, walled garden? So what you see in the trend line is on the specialty power law, those sets are going to be smaller, but high fidelity data. And that's going to be valuable. So it's interesting, the proprietary at the top of the head of the tail is OpenAI. So technically it's open. And then they have open in the name. But they were called proprietary because they didn't really share the data other than querying through the API. So it's like, it's just, the industry is in a weird tide moment, Dave. The tide's shifting. It's kind of mid tide right now. And I think that the AI wave coming in is going to completely change the semantics of the definitions of how data is organized. And I said that yesterday. And so, and this is why I think Amazon's flat footed because Amazon's playbook is cloud based. And you brought up the Azure success and how OpenAI kind of cut the line or as we say in the NASCAR, you know, slingshots of the front. And I think Amazon's mistake was their, their, I think they got a little bit cocky. They are conservative with the trends. They'd like to see things develop before they make their move. But OpenAI was such a strong move. They were so flat footed.  And then if you look at what they're doing now, I see Jassy posting about the Today Show. Their entire PR strategy is focusing on mainstream press. I don't get why they're doing that when all the action's in the industry. So it's like, they're, it's almost as if they got the wrong playbook on comms. What are they trying to convince on the Today Show that Amazon's got good AI? Like, what, like, what? I was going to say, what if somebody's going to go out from the Today Show and go and, you know, my mother is not going to go use something from Amazon. Your developer mom? Yeah, my developer mom is not going to go out. If anything, it's worse to use chatGPT. She can't use, you know, anything from Amazon for this. And I think that's, that's, that is, and we talked about this when we were at Google Next, is when we look at it, Google really has pervasiveness with Vertex. And I think that really has helped it, how it goes through a lot of their services and helps across many different services. Amazon, just based on how the stack is built of the services and how independent all 300 services are, so they can do the two pizza teams and they can go fast, really is going to be a tough thing for them to go and build into that. Even just co-pilots is going to be tough for them to build into these and integrate into these services just based on how they're built. But do you think- But Microsoft's running the table on integrating across the product line, Office 365 and the co-pile. I mean, Microsoft's got the formula down. And the other thing about Microsoft, and one of the guests yesterday, I was talking to him offline, I forget his name, VJ. VJ from, from Howie Shoes Panel. He was saying they made a bet years ago not to scrape email, to fairly double down on privacy. And he said, that hurt us for a while because we had all this data that we could have scraped but we didn't. We said, no, we're going to be true to privacy. And I mean, it sounds very self-serving now. You know, kind of Apple same thing, but I think it's true. Whereas Google, you're typing your email and it's, it's finishing the email for you, suggesting replies. So Google's scanning your emails. Now, I don't think Google's, I kind of trust Google, but maybe I shouldn't. But- What do you think Amazon should do then? Do you think Amazon's picking the wrong approach and comms, you think that they're messaging to the wrong audience? I mean, I think, you know, the today's show and these kinds of outlets are more like, could do more harm to Amazon because it's going to scare people. Like, Amazon's too powerful. What Amazon's always done well, and I, I got to believe it's going to do this at re-invent, is it shows proof points. It shows products and it shows customers that are using them, it trots them up on stage and it convinces people that this stuff actually works and it's the best out there and we're the fastest, we're trusted. We got to see that.  They're still not using their own bedrock. They're like, yeah, we're still testing it out and, you know, the components in bedrock and Titan, it's, we're still out there yet. Yeah, we're using SageMaker, but, so it feels like it's just not ready. I think to that, I think you're dead on with where re-invent's going to land in, you know, about a little over a month from now, right, is that they're going to have proof points but they're going to double down on their community, which is the builder community. That's where they've gotten that real momentum always is from people building. And I think what has happened is people aren't building the complex, huge language model, chat GPT style stuff. They're doing these SLMs, the segmented language models and those small ones. And I think, you know, on the longer tail. So I think they're playing for the long tail. They're not playing for the front end. And I think that's their strategy. I think it's going to hurt them in the, you know, in the run up to getting to the tail. But again, if they play it right, they still have a really good play in there as a platform. I think Amazon, I mean, we can get into the research in a second, but I wanted to say that Amazon should go to their true north star and that is the IaaS. They have to address the cost issue and performance. They nail that right now. That's what I would be saying to Jassy and Dean and Adam, nail the silicon, nail the performance, let the data sets, whether it's in Bedrock or SageMaker, sit in there as an app enabler. So the question that I'm looking at for reinvent and love to get your perspective guys is, what's the apps look like? Okay, because there's a lot of talk about them having solutions. Yeah, the call center, they trot that out all the time. It's contact center, whatever the depth got going on there. But what are the apps going to look like? What are those AI apps going to look like? What, in Gen one cloud, it was SaaS. That was well understood. Post on EC2, that's three.  What's the AI app look like on Amazon? Again, Microsoft has the strategy down. I mean, they've nailed it. They're saying, hey, we have the apps. We're going to layer AI on top of that. Boom, they've got a captive market and they're going to do really, really well. I think it's, they got to go back to their roots. It's the developers because Amazon doesn't have that up the stack, the software portfolio. They rely on developers to go build that stuff and compete as SaaS companies. And so they've got to get back to the core. By the way, when you look at the data and you talk to customers about their intent to use them, they definitely want to use Amazon. Amazon's well positioned. They've got to execute, they've got to deliver and they've got to show it, reinvent that people actually are using this stuff. And then I think they'll do great. Rob, I'm going to see what Swami's going to say, but we heard Bratton say yesterday on the keynote from Amazon, it's not about the models. It's the end to end reaction to that. What's your thoughts?  I think the pricing thing is definitely an issue. They're always about how do we lower the cost and build out apps. I think when you start to look at BI, and I mean, that's Adam's, you know, from his Tableau history and heritage, coming back, I would not be shocked to see some advancements with the AI they'd already announced within that product line. And I think that when you start to look at that end to end, like you're saying, they do have a little bit of a stack on that, but it is the developers. They got to make the tooling that much easier. So I think- It's the picks and shovels market, isn't it? It is, and we're going to hear, I think a lot of co-pilot-ish type stuff for building your bedrock applications with example use cases. And I think that's what they're going to focus on. But I do think Amazon has to do a better job of integrating its data estate, right? It's still got a very bespoke data estate. When you look at what BigQuery's doing with Vertex, AI, what Microsoft's doing with Fabric, what Snowflake, Databricks, they have a much stronger, in my opinion, integration story. Amazon's starting to get there, but they're kind of gluing things together, but it's still, that to me is critical because then it makes it easier to layer AI on top as opposed to have to munch your data. Well, quite literally called gluing, right? Yeah, quite literally called gluing. But I think to that point, that actually may or may not be a disadvantage for them. You think they can leverage that? I think they can leverage that, especially where you have Databricks is so huge within Amazon and you have other estates there and they have so much data. And they benefit from those other partners. I mean, Amazon has nailed the partner and the go-to market. They're blowing Google away. They got ecosystem, no doubt about it because they don't really compete with them much at all. I got to ask you guys the question we asked yesterday to all the experts and I want to get your reaction to the question. So we talked about the step up function of AI, how we brought that up in his panel. We mentioned it to the other founders. Before the cloud, you had to provision a data center, put a box in there if you were to start up. Cloud came in, start up, said, oh, I don't have to just pay for those boxes. I can use my credit card and start a company. We know all the history of the web 2.0 and beyond was cloud-based. So it was clear value between paying for machines, the tax of starting up a company versus the cloud, cloud won and was great. What is the step function value of AI in the cloud now? So take the progression, data center, cloud minimizes that for the startup. What's that benefit that the cloud with AI brings to the startup? That's going to be that step function that's going to differentiate which cloud. Now remember, Amazon was kind of the only cloud at the time, so it was obvious you go to Amazon. The only game in town. Now with the competition, you got Azure, Google, Amazon, and maybe even Oracle in the mix there, the startups now have choice. What's the step function value that makes that decision? So the cloud, it was time to value, right? I mean, it wasn't so much about TCO. Maybe it was, maybe we can argue that, but it was really about agility and time to value. It became so compelling to get stuff done quickly. That was the cloud value proposition. The value proposition of AI is cutting labor costs. I mean, that's it. That's where the step function is going to come in. I can cut headcount or I can reduce the need to hire people and that's going to drop, that's going to increase productivity and drop right down to the bottom line of the income. And specialize talent too. I don't need PhDs to run. But I'll take that and say, okay, back to the startup question, right? I think what you're seeing is expectations out of the venture community for five to six customers out of the gate to go get your seed funding and things of that nature. And what it's helping people do or not is build that first alpha beta product out of the gate without having to have the massive team. So to your point about labor costs and things of that nature, when you start to look at it, it's augmented. It's how do I get to that first, that minimally lovable product out of the gate? Awesome. I think we should probably set up day two. Well, no, well, I want to spend the last minute just taking a quick public service announcement. We still can angle the cube and Wikibon has been in the three brands. We have the new cube research that's going to replace Wikibon. I want you guys to explain the last minute we have here. What is the cube research? Rob, you're working on that, Dave. What is the cube research? What do we bring it to customers? And what are we following? Yeah, I mean, we're adding to our capabilities, which we have the cube, the cube community, the insights that we get from the cube. We have a partnership with our data partner, ETR. And we're layering value on top of that to help people. We got research, we've got advisory, we do private consulting, we help them get the word out with the cube. We're combining those in what is essentially the industry's best service to take data, data-driven insights and broadcast to the world. Rob, we've been facing this quite, we haven't really launched it, but what's your experience? What are we offering? What are you talking to customers about? Yeah, I think a lot of, it's meeting the customers and providing them value. I think typically in advisory services, you would get a subscription or an annual contract and it's, hey, we say nice things about you. What we're focused on is really ROI to those customers and helping them build their go-to markets, helping them get the word out and helping them understand how they're competing within those markets. And I think the fact is, we see so much of that signal and it's mixed up with the noise and it's extracting that as you guys would always say and how do you help them understand this is where you position yourself and doing it in an honest and way that has integrity as well.  I'm looking forward to hearing more on news about the research. All right, day two, setting it up. We've got a great lineup of experts. SuperCloud 4 day two, so much coverage being dropped in these two days on General AI, so much there. Share it with your friends, check it out, consume the content. It's going to be a great community site. You can update two starts right now.


It's a huge treat to have you with us on this wonderful celebratory occasion, which of course we're holding in Mark's honour. Tonight in fact we're going to be celebrating three things simultaneously. The first is Mark's 90th birthday, which fell a fortnight ago. I think it's only right that I should begin by asking you all to join me in raising your glasses and wishing Mark a belated happy birthday. The second thing we're celebrating of course is Mark's newest book, A Biographical Dictionary of English Architecture, 1540 to 1640, which we're delighted to be publishing next week. As well as marking both these events however, we thought we'd take the opportunity of their conjunction to do something else. That is to ask Mark to join us in celebrating the entirety of his remarkable career as an architectural historian, which of course shows no sign of abating. Most of all however we wanted to use tonight's event to give Mark himself the chance to talk at some length about his multifaceted career and to respond to questions about that career from you, the audience. Mark will be in conversation with a trio of friends who are all immensely distinguished architectural historians in their own right. I'm delighted to have on stage alongside me. First, John Goodall, who will ask Mark about his work on Elizabethan and Jacobian architecture. Second, Michael Hall, who will steer the discussion towards Mark's publications on 18th, especially 19th century British architecture. And finally, Catherine Croft, who will encourage Mark to tell us more about his many contributions to the field of 20th century British architecture. So shall we start? John, over to you. To start at the beginning as it were, I wanted to ask Mark first of all about Hardwick Hall. Because for those of us who are lucky enough to go to Mark's birthday party at Instant Paul's Covent Garden, they will know that the birthday cake took the form of Hardwick Hall. Not exactly as any of us might recognize it, but it did nevertheless do so. More or less. More or less. With 90 candles on it. No more or no less. But it's clearly a building that has underpinned your entire interest in a way in the Elizabethan world. And I wonder if you could start by just telling us a little bit about what it means to you and your experience of it as a child. As a child? Yes, I mean it was just extraordinary, really. But I didn't react to it architecturally at all, I don't think as a child. But I remember looking out of the window of the nursery which is on the top floor at the battered ruins of Old Hardwick and decided that there must have been a fire that had been burned. So when we were all set to drawing one day I did a lovely picture of Old Hardwick with flames belching out. But I didn't really notice the architecture very much, I don't think. It was all shut up in the war and we couldn't go there. But then I came back, when was it? When I was 12 or so, or 13, 14, and all I could think of writing to my father was, it's beautifully tidy inside. And it wasn't, I think, it was a combination of my actually going to stay there with my aunt Evie when she finally moved in there and Sir General Sitwell's amazing sort of purple prose which poured out of him about Hardwick which first got me to see the point of it architecturally and then more and more and more and more. And just every time I stayed there, you know, I saw it was just so wonderful to be able to walk around it by oneself, nobody there. You said to me that you think you remember the footmen complaining about powdering their wigs and things like that. Yeah, I think I do. Well, it's never quite sure whether one remembers correctly or what one's been told. And the footmen certainly didn't have powdered hair. You know, when I was there, they were only on special occasions. So I never saw a footman with powdered hair. And so I mean Hardwick, because it's a building that clearly underpinned your enthusiasm for writing Robert Smithson.  You describe the Elizabethan world as being very unfashionable at the time. Was it a kind of conscious decision to start getting involved with it, or were you aware of the second Elizabethan age reviving and you wished to be a part of it? I just, you know, these things happen gradually. I just got more and more interested.  And Hardwick was just the obvious one. There was no, and Robert Smithson, I mean, and Hardwick arising out of that. So having briefly considered James Wyatt, and I can't think why, I opted for Robert Smithson. And, you know, the more I wrote that book, the more involved I got really. Can you describe going and seeing these places?   And you talk again with great enthusiasm about just how exciting these buildings were. Did you sort of stop off with, you know, in Hardwick and go and visit lots of places from there in a car or were you cycling to see these places? What was your, and what were the owners like? What was your experience of those things? Well, yes, I suppose, but Bolzowa was the nearest and to walk over to Bolzowa was wonderful. And what was so, I mean, fascinating in those days was everywhere was empty. I mean, there were no interpretation centers or anything like that. And I would walk over to Bolzowa and there was a nice old caretaker there. It'd be just me and him in the building. I mean, obviously it couldn't last like that, but I remember with great pleasure those days when you could, you know, I was very pleased with Wofort, what they call Wofort towers now when it had pigs grazing on the grass in front of it, which I photographed. It was just a funny world. It's just so different from what it is now. Did you, you've written, of course, about your sort of teachers and the people you particularly admired when you were a student, but what about your peers? I mean, I noticed, for example, just glancing at the New Diction, you described drinking coffee with Roy Strong at the Courtauld. Who were your, you know, formative peers and were they very helpful in your lightning work as you raced through your PhD? I suppose Margaret Winnie, who was my supervisor, who was a dear person, John Somerson was my hero really in those days. Roy and I, Roy was a shy young student in those days. Hard to believe. We used to have coffee together and plan our futures. And now who else did it? Well, yes, Lucy Worsley was a great enthusiast. And I read a lot, I read a lot of nonsense, actually, in those days, looking back. I've done rarely moving account of Berle's Evercastle and the revival of chivalry. And I don't think Berle's Evercastle has anything to do with the revival of chivalry at all. And also, Mark, you know, more recently, of course, you've written an enormous amount outside the world of architectural history. Indeed, I believe you're completing a rather racy novel at the present time. When did the wider literary career begin? Were you writing even as a schoolboy about other things? I didn't write about anything except buildings for a very long time. And then I just supported to be amusing to write about other things. I mean, to write about myself, really, actually. So I read these two books, Friendships and Enthusiasm. When did you find your voice as a writer? Was that something that came very easily to you through reading, or is it something you had to work very hard to establish and, you know, coming through country life and, you know, the regular turnaround of things? Yes, I had to work quite hard sort of editing what I'd written to make it seem as it was written very easily. But it wasn't. It was quite hard work, I found, actually. Shaping once grows. And when did it come? When did your voice come? When did it come? Well, straight away, I suppose, but I mean only as a result of work. Well, there was country life, I suppose, where I really, really got going because I had to write something every few weeks, you know, to a date line, so you just had to get it out. That's a familiar feeling. I realise my time is already running short. It's like the Christmas, the different Christmases and Dickens, isn't it? Each of us have our short period of time with Mark. At the last thing I'd like, before you push my hat down over my head and extinguish me, I'd like to ask about your feeling about Elizabethan architecture now. I mean, when you reprint, Smithson, you talk about how poorly many of the buildings that you studied and loved had fared. And how do you feel, and you've described how different going to Bolsova then was or Hardwick then was to today, how do you feel about Elizabethan architecture today? Do you feel it's a fashionable subject once more or something completely different? Well, as far as the National Trust is concerned, it seems to be a non-fashionable subject. All they are concerned is having a nice day out with the kids, as far as I can see. But I don't know. I mean, I did try myself to write something which would be readable for everybody. Perhaps I had some success in that way. But now, the situation, you just, it was very selfish, really, to enjoy these buildings on one's own. And you obviously interpretation centers and so on are necessary because people want them because they want to have the building explained to them. So I can't say I'm, I can possibly say I'm against them. But I do sort of rather nostalgically think of those days when you had the whole place to yourself. Do you think you would have entered into your own career if it hadn't been for your personal experience of staying at Hardwick? No, I think I was already looking at buildings. I mean, Hardwick sort of brought it to a consummation, so to speak, but I think probably it's very interesting to think what gets, what makes someone become an architectural historian. And actually the first building I remember being turned on by was the Romanesque Church at Melbourne in Derbyshire, which is totally different. You know, it's another world altogether. But that's actually the first building that excited me, aged about 12 or 13, I think. And as I was saying, when I first went to Hardwick as a little boy or even as a young, as a slightly older boy, it didn't turn me on the way it gradually did, just more and more and more. But I suspect that if Hardwick hadn't been there, I would still have become an architectural historian doing something quite different, obviously. Maybe written about James Wyatt, I don't know. On which happy note, I now pass over to Michael to ask, well, I'll let Michael ask his own questions. Mark, it's already been mentioned, but in tracing the route that took you to the 19th century and the Victorians, I think one might start with country life, perhaps, because I realise that another anniversary that we're celebrating is it's the 65th anniversary of your first article. Is it really? On lonely. Oh, yes, yes. But that was actually two years before you joined the staff in 1958 as an architectural writer. How did that come about? Well, I was looking for a job and having done my thesis and I tried the Ministry of Works, as it were, in those days, citing as my references the Duke of Wellington and Rupert Ganes. No ice at all with these ridiculous avatars. I didn't get that job. And then I tried for the National Trust. And I don't know why. I thought I was made for it in a way, but I had a bad interview, so I didn't get that.  So I put in for it and I got it. And very often I know at country life, once you started as a writer, they had a book waiting for you. There was something they wanted you to do. And at that stage, Christopher Hussey had just published The Late Georgians or Country Houses. Was it almost immediately it was suggested that you might look at the Victorians? Or was that your idea? There was one reason why they took me on. Because Christopher Hussey had just started writing about Victorian houses. And he wanted me to, you know, to carry on. And so I did, you know, and it was thanks to him that I joined the Victorian Society the year after I joined Country Life. And I gradually became more and more aware of Victorian architecture. Because one looks back and it is extraordinary what fresh territory it was. I mean, you were the first person to write any serious academic articles about William Burgess. Yes. In your early articles on Cardiff Castle, which I think was 1961 or so on. I mean, wasn't much resistance to you writing about such buildings in the rather stately and occasionally gentile pages of country life? Yes. I mean, I got very caught up by Burgess. And quite a few of the houses I wrote about. Others I just found extraordinary, like Bear Wood. I couldn't say. I thought it was a beautiful house. But it was an absolutely fascinating house because of the planning and the complex planning of Victorian country houses fascinated me more and more. The way it was all split up into different realms. The bachelor's and unmarried women and servants the same, male servants. All carefully separated from each other. And this terrific sort of substructure of servants would support you the whole thing. I got more and more interested in that. I looked back at the original reviews of the Victorian country house when it came out. And it should be said perhaps that Country Life was going to publish it, but then in the late 60s it closed down its book publishing arm, which was why the first edition was published by Boxbury University Press. But the early reviews, I mean, they all comment on how wonderful the social history is. So it leads really to the inevitable question. I mean, did the Victorian country houses was there a straight line from there to what remains your most famous book and probably the single most influential work in architectural history in the past half century, life in the English country house? Yes, it all started from the Victorian country house, I think. Yes. Robert Smith said and got sort of respectful reviews but only a very small sale. And it was the Victorian country house which sold well and got lots of reviews and rarely established my reputation. I mean, that's what got me going. And did the Victorian society make use of you? I mean, were you pulled into conservation battles at that stage? Because, of course, the 60s was the sort of heroic age of conservation in the 19th century. Yes, we had these two great battles, Houston Arch and the Cornix Age. Cornix Age, yeah. And that took me over into conservation, really, because it was so upsetting. And we had this great Victorian society battle which failed to save them. Before I have to hand it over into the 20th century, I was thinking of the things that came out of your interest, particularly in the 19th century. I mean, there are so many books, I began scrolling through your entry in the British Library catalogue and it goes on for page after page after page. But one book I'd like to mention, because I think it was your first one on the Victorian subject after the Victorian country house, was the Victorian pubs. Oh, yes. Was that almost deliberately? Yes, it was absolutely deliberate that I thought having written about the upper classes, I would then write about the middle classes, which was the Queen Anne style, which was sort of middle and upper middle classes, and then move on and write about the lower and lower middle classes with Victorian pubs. And that was a deliberate choice. But also Victorian pubs was intriguing because no one had occurred to anyone that they could be documented like, you know, like Hardwick or something, you know. But when I looked into it, I found there was more and more documentation, including drawings and plans and everything, and the names of the architects and the craftsmen involved, which one could disinter, and that was absolutely fascinating. And more even than the Victorian country houses book, I mean, it's a record of what's been lost because, I mean, the harmony of those pubs, but you were asleep at the end of the class. Oh, yes, yes, indeed, indeed. So few of them are still as they were when I wrote about them. That a life in the English country house just returned to that, and that began with slave lectures at Oxford, didn't it? That was what? It began with your slave lectures at Oxford. That's right, yes. Did you suggest that as a subject or were you approached? Yes, yes. I suppose, I mean, I was asked to give the slave lectures, but I could choose the subject and it just, to talk about houses and their social background was just something I got interested in and it was an obvious choice. So it was my choice and the lectures went down very well and became life in the English country house a year or two later. Before I hand over, I'd just like to mention, finally, because it's a book which I enormously admire, which is your book of Shivery and the English gentleman, Return to Camelot, which is an extraordinary book in some ways because of course it links everything. It actually starts with Elizabethans and goes right through to the Victorians and then ends up with the First World War, so it takes us into the 20th century. I mean, how did that come about? What was the seed that saved that book? Again, I think it developed out of the Victorian country house, probably, just enlarging it to a bigger, wider subject. But I don't know what got me going. I mean, what did happen was that people were, after life in the English country house, people were expecting another book on the country house and they were totally mystified by the Return to Camelot, which is actually, I would say, my favourite book. Well, that takes us into 1918, anyway. Well, I'm here to talk to you about your 20th century work, but I'm listening now. I remember that actually the first work of yours that I came across was Sweetness and Light. When I was an undergraduate at Newnham, I wanted to know not just about the architecture, but about the experience of being an undergraduate and the relationship between that and the buildings. And I loved it, so I was very grateful to you for that. Moving on to the 20th century, I think you have at least four ways in which you've been influential on 20th century architectural history. I mean, as a straightforward historian, but obviously you're also writing critiques of new contemporary buildings, including two of the ones that I think are the most interesting in 1960s buildings in Oxford, the ABK building at Keeble, who did a building study of, and the Flory building at Queens. Both of them have been cases that I've been fighting for for 20th century and your prose and your enthusiasm has been enormous help for us in doing that. But we've also talked briefly. I mean, you had a very active role in the conservation movement. And I think the part that that plays in the overall history of 20th century architecture is only now beginning to be studied. And I didn't know until I was preparing for tonight as well that you actually, you studied as an architect and you studied at the Bartlett and then you went to work in your year out because of the GLC in Architects Departments. Yes, I did. And I designed a school. Yes, I know. A British second-rate it was. Well, and I know that when you did your National Sound Archives you said it was still there and you enjoyed it. I think it's still there. No, it's not. It's gone. It was demolished in 2015. It was a McCarney job, wasn't it? Yes, it was a base system built. And I only designed it because I mean my boss who was supposed to be designing it but had a nervous breakdown, I think. So I surreptitiously designed it instead of him. But no, it's not a building I'm proud of. And I think basically, when I was totally divided as should I become an architect, should I become an architectural historian? And so after my years of country life I thought I'd have a go at becoming an architect. And it quite honestly became clear that I wouldn't be a good architect. It just wasn't the way my mind worked or something that the way my mind worked was in the history and actually writing about buildings rather than designing them. And I don't think I would ever have been a good architect. But I mean I studied architecture only as an undergraduate and I always felt that it gives me a different approach to how I do architectural history. And also a different way of communicating with architects and I wondered whether you felt this benefit. I suppose yes, I've often wondered what I got out of those five years, wasn't it a long time? Yeah, it was a long time. You stuck it longer than I did. Yes, and possibly it did give me a an insight into buildings which I wouldn't have had otherwise. But I'm not even sure about that. I mean what was interesting was just getting to meet a lot of students younger than myself. It was just a very fascinating time and I made some good friends. You met J.M. Richards? Oh yes, yes. Bob Maxwell, who else? Oh well Celia Maxwell, who's... Who did the standard thing of marrying your supervisor. She married Bob, but she was a good friend. There's a charming, nice J.N. Tannfield. I mean I had several relationships of various strengths. So it wasn't wasted time? It wasn't, I didn't think it was a wasted time. It was a long time, certainly. And actually while, in a way, I quite admired myself, because while I was working there I was also writing The Victorian Country House, which was quite an effort because it was an extraordinary change in lifestyle becoming an architectural student and to sort of move from Victorian Country House to Bartlett School, Bartlett School, Victoria Country House was quite an effort. I didn't realise you were doing that simultaneously. That's impressive. So I know that you don't like to ask what your favourite building is, but I'm surprised that you were willing to pick a favourite book just now. Anyway, one of my favourite buildings is definitely Dennis Laston's National Theatre. And I absolutely, looking back at those architectural review articles, I absolutely love the way that you wrote about that. And I wanted to just read a quote because we've talked a bit about how fluent your writing is, but we haven't... I was just really, really impressed by this, but I just wanted to share it with people. So your description of the National Theatre goes like this. The sum total is like nothing else. A rich complex at times mysterious, sometimes confusing, but almost always enjoyable sequence of spaces. Where columns of delicious slenderness saw through several stories of open space or transfixed staircases like skewers. Where climbing each flight of stairs reveals a new vista and the space of every vista vanishes enticemently out of sight around each corner. So just... Oh, it sounds cool. So, I mean, you said at the time that you felt that the National Theatre was unlikely as a landmark to inspire immediate affection, but it's a smolder, not a fissure, which I love. And that's definitely true. I think everyone now probably would agree that that's a cloudless building. Tourist boats used to go up the Thames past the National Theatre and the loudspeaker would boom, we are now passing the ugliest building in London.  Yes, it does, absolutely, yes. And I can't resist this because, you know, I'm a great concrete fan and I didn't have you down being concrete fan at all. And you described the concrete as, looks like something between canvas and fur and it's caressing rather than cold. Yeah. Pleasing bed. Great, these nice things. I think they're incredibly evocative and incredibly accessible and compelling, which is great and we need more of that today. Can we move on to I think your most extraordinary and compelling work, your biography of Jim Sterling, which came out in 2000 and I know that you've described that as a process of largely stitching together oral history interviews that you did and I would just be really interested to know how you felt that process of being historian using those materials differed from the archival work that you've been doing. Well, I found it absolutely fascinating because I'd never done anything. I'd always written about people who were safely dead but you know, I mean it was I mean it was a tragedy but it was lucky for me really that Jim died relatively young so there were so many people around who I could talk to and I'd never done that before and so it was a whole new form of life really, recording these people and then editing which is very important which I think I did quite well but one half of the book and probably the most interesting is these recorded conversations with all sorts of different people who came into Jim's life one way or another. Yes, it feels like it's a real kind of capturing a segment of the century as well as the architectural story as well and do you regret at all not doing, not you not doing the great last biography which I'm sure you could have done? No actually that had never occurred to me I mean it never occurred to me because William Curtis had a sort of had a corner in Yeah, yeah and he wrote it and it never occurred to me I mean I enjoyed writing the articles that I did write but it never occurred to me that I might write an actual life of him Right whereas with Jim, well I did and I was so excited by his buildings which again were very controversial Yes, when you wrote about the flurry building you were like all the fuss and bother about how it's you know, teething problems have all gone away in five years I don't think you were quite so spot on with that one No How do you think time has treated Stirling's buildings Well, they gradually had the money spent on them which should have been spent on them when they were built built on the cheap a lot of them Yes Let's just say extraordinary what is extraordinary is beautiful ugly Nicholas Pefster who hated Jim's buildings said that they are actively ugly and I found them actively beautiful Yes and it's the same with Butterfield Exactly, you wrote about Milton Ernest you wrote about Burgess, which people who did despise for example and Paul Thompson again was interesting about you know, John Summerson was very good at coining phrases which were always apt I think and he talked about Butterfield's sadistic hatred of beauty and Paul pointed out that that wasn't the way his mind worked at all or what the results were like really once he understood what it was all about Simon, you wanted to ask a question Simon Thurley, it's very interesting that in your interview just then that your rolling conservation was mentioned a couple of times but I think it was under-egged because I think you've been very influential in the field of conservation and the thing that I wanted to ask you about was this famous list of the ten most important Victorian houses that had to be saved and again and again we used to go back to this at English Heritage when there were big crises with Victorian country houses and it became the Bible this list and I've never known how the list came about and were you asked to do it or did you just invent it and how did it happen? Who asked me to make that list? I cannot remember and I think it was probably a very bad thing to make such a list because there were lots of buildings that should have been on the list and then when they got to trouble people said well they're not on Marc Thuroward's list so we can do what we like with them I'm not sure that it ever happened that way around it certainly happened the other way around that if there was a question and it was on the list that everybody went mad to try and to save it so I don't think that you did any disservice on the list that shouldn't have been on it were they? No! Absolutely not! Jeremy Musson it leads on quite well I think you mentioned your the discipline of writing for Country Life and I wondered whether you could say something about working with architectural photographers I actually would say that the great country life tradition of architectural photography had become a rather stale formula by the time I arrived on Country Life you had officers and other ranks and the photographers were the other ranks and the officer which as you would go to a building and draw a plan of it with little arrows showing where the photographer should put up his camera and take his view which he then dutifully did but he also carefully lit the room so that there were no awkward shadows or anything and also he obliterated any sign of of human life in these rooms the only thing that was occasionally allowed with enormous daring was to have a photograph which showed the owner's dog in front of the fireplace and I just liked the idea I suppose the Piper-Betchman school which you get in the Shell Guides of taking buildings in natural light and I tried to get Country Life to see it that way and I got nowhere really and I did get John Piper to do one article for them which actually they weren't his best photographs and they couldn't really understand them so it came to nothing I I suppose I'm in the most daring article I read Country Life in terms of photography and I can't remember who the photographer was it was a Bayon's manor which was totally derelict the idea of photographing was in a romantic way was completely new to Country Life and I had some difficulty in getting him to agree to do it but I think it was one of my best and most interesting articles Alex Starkey I think who photographed that for you and there are also a very funny set of photographs in the Country Life archive of you with Alex Starkey walking round Mirworth Castle together for no obvious reason and admiring things and being photographed doing it why? This was totally artificial and it was for some form of publicity I forget what form but anyway you know we were set up to do something quite imaginary which we were talking about Did you always go with the photographers? No there is seldom you just did this little plan and they went afterwards and they always waited for perfect weather to the idea of photographing a building of a stormy sky was not acceptable and in the huge average clipping books which really had the same philosophy behind them but they were so well they were magnificent folio volumes and they were so beautifully done that they were very splendid and I felt that the Country Life it had become stale really and there was a Country Life tradition really that you photographed houses surrounded by acres of lawn with a house quite small in the middle of them and what my wife did in Victorian Country House I think great effect was to take all these technically beautiful photographs and cut them right down to the building and I think actually that revolutionized a lot of Country Life photographs they were far more active on that way Pete Smith Mark is there a house in England that you have never been to and always wanted to get into but failed the Palazzo is it Dottay and Mantua but a Country House that I would have liked to write about and was turned down I did think that any Country House actually they were quite keen to be written about in Country Life did you ever get into Wellbeck Abbey yes, yes a lot actually I never thought about writing about it it was such a curious building it was such a sort of cock up really there were these underground rooms which appeared not to be underground when you were in them it was very fascinating I could have written some fascinating articles but now would they let me it was what she called Lady Anne Lady Anne Cavendish Bentech who was always friendly to me and she put me up and I stayed with her and so on but I think possibly she wouldn't have allowed articles to be published and why was that why was that just didn't like publicity some owners were worried about burglary so at a certain stage I was no longer allowed to have plans which was a great pity Malcolm Ayers just curiosity did you choose the houses you could write about for country life or were you told which houses you were going to write about I mean initially I didn't choose because Christopher Hussey had already had several houses photographed so I took those on and wrote about it but after that I don't think just occasionally like when Winston Churchill died I was forced we had no permission to write about it and I was forced to sneak around the various roads around Chartwell to get some idea of what it was like and then write an article I forget how the photographs were taken or there may have been old photographs and the same thing happened when the wedding Princess Alexandra I think I mean it was another sort of occasion some sort of royal occasion which was getting a lot of publicity so country life wanted an article and so they told me to do it but basically on the whole I always chose my own houses thank you Claire Gapper Mark, so having sent the photographer off did you then get to choose which photographs went into the article I didn't do it one thing about the photographs is that when I photograph buildings which had advertisements on the wall the advertisements had to be airbrushed out because country life couldn't be seen to be advertising anyone but I don't I don't think there were any problems there were problems of layout I think because again the idea that photographs of details should be very large instead of very small because they were details didn't happen I mean that was never really accepted in country life in my time in the layout the details tended to be printed much too small Robert Thorne it's characteristic I think of the questions this evening it becomes skewed towards questions about the country life and your association with country life and country houses and you've written about so many other things about towns about pubs about contemporary buildings do you sometimes feel slightly a center disquiet that you're so closely associated with writing about the country house when the version of British history is now so much in question yes I must say I rather was slightly upset when the very nice interview with me by John was published in country life that I was preferred to as Dr Mark Giroir the country house historian but I don't like being thought of as a country house historian because I've written about country houses a good deal but I've also written about a great deal of buildings and I think some of my most interesting work has been right away from the country house there have been other historians I'm thinking primarily here of David Cannadine and his wife Linda Colley who quite rightly emphasised the the primacy what should be the primacy in British history of the industrial mercantile past rather than the country house past I don't think there is such a concentration on the country house these days possibly there was when when I wrote life in the English country house one reason why it was a great seller was because country houses were extremely fashionable that owners were going back to live in their country houses that all sorts of enthusiasts were buying country houses doing them up usually without enough money so they had to sell them in the end but country houses were very much in and I don't think they are to the same extent now I would have thought there was a lot of interest in other than country houses I don't think they dominate the scene at all these days thank you well I think we need to bring it to a close so can I ask you all to thank Mark for all his responses to your questions


As Muslim faithful in Nigeria join their counterparts across the world to celebrate Idil Fittir, which maxed the end of the holy month of Ramadan fast. They have been charged to imbibe the teachings of love, peace and sacrifice learned during the 30 days fasting for growth and development of the nation. As early as 8 o'clock, hundreds of Muslim faithful gathered at the 8th prayer ground to observe two Raqqat prayers which symbolize the end of Ramadan to the new month of Shawwal. The chief Imam of Sultan Belo Mosque in Kaduna, Dr. Adam Suleiman says leaders must be fair, just and resolute in the discharge of their responsibilities of maintaining peace and unity. He enjoined Muslims to use the season for sub-reflection, rededication and service to God and humanity. Our sermon today is more concerned about the ulamas, the scholars, how they can unite themselves and teach people the true religions and teach people how they can perform Salah that is for real. It was also stated that stakeholders, traditional rulers and religious leaders must preach peace for the national interests which aim to bring peace to the nation. It was also stated that leaders must be fair, just and resolute in the discharge of their responsibilities of maintaining peace and unity. It was also stated that stakeholders, traditional rulers and religious leaders must preach peace for the national interests which aim to bring peace to the nation, urging them to alleviate economic hardship in the country. Allah has put on them to serve people with sincerity and honesty and they should not cheat and they should not show favoritism and they should do everything according to what Allah has ordained with sincerity. To the traders, businessmen that they should fear Allah and they should deal honestly and sincerely when they trade, when they sell and when they buy. Some of the worshippers expressed joy saying this year's Salah while calling on the government to intensify efforts to end the insecurity confronting the nation. To Allah to give us more peace, we pray to Allah to give us more patience to protect us. Those of our brothers and sisters that are in the hands of the bandits, we pray that God brings them back to us peacefully. A kind of body tree for them to change and we pray that God will touch their heart so that they will come and join us, let's move this nation forward. We always pray to Allah to assist our leaders in ruling us and we also pray to Allah for Him to give us patience to follow our own leaders so that we find peace and prosperity in this nation.