In 1965, when he was in his early 20s, my friend Peter Howell, who has died aged 85, was asked by Nikolaus Pevsner to join the buildings committee of the Victorian Society, which had been founded seven years earlier by Pevsner, John Betjeman and others to defend Victorian buildings.
Peter remained a member of the committee, which reviewed the cases submitted to the society, for the rest of his life. He had joined the society in 1962 as a result of his horror at a proposal that Balliol College, Oxford – where he was then an undergraduate – might demolish its entrance range, designed by Alfred Waterhouse in 1867. This was the beginning of Peter’s crusade to prevent the loss or mutilation of Britain’s 19th-century architectural heritage.
Born in Malta, Peter was one of the six children of Lt Col Adrian Howell, a career soldier, and his wife, Madge (nee Thompson). The family was Roman Catholic – a central part of Peter’s identity – and he was educated at a Benedictine school, Downside, near Bath, before winning a scholarship to Balliol to study classics in 1959.
Peter’s dedication to Victorian architecture, which led to him serving as the Victorian Society’s chairman from 1987 to 1993, was combined with a career as a lecturer in classics at Bedford College, London (which merged with Royal Holloway College in 1985), where he worked from 1964 to 1999.
Victorian architecture was deeply unfashionable in the 1960s. From the start Peter was implacable in urging the Victorian Society not to compromise when considering applications to alter or demolish a fine building. The energy he brought to the task was powered by humour as well as outrage – every member of the buildings committee can remember the sound he made, halfway between a groan and a guffaw, when faced with yet another example of proposed architectural vandalism, especially in its many ecclesiastical manifestations.
His distinguished publications on the Roman poet Martial were recognised in 2016 by an honorary degree from Uppsala University, Sweden. His most recent books were a monograph on John Francis Bentley (2020), the architect of Westminster Cathedral, the building closest to Peter’s heart – he served for more than 50 years on its art and architecture committee – and a history of triumphal arches (2021).
In 1979 he met his life partner, the architectural historian Edward Diestelkamp. On their many holidays they lived frugally, preferring camping to hotels, picnics to restaurants, and always sitting in the cheapest seats at the theatre, so that they could see as many buildings and hear as many operas as could be fitted into their busy lives.
He is survived by Edward, and his sister Mary.
