Born Alec Clifton Taylor, the son of Stanley Edgar Taylor, corn-merchant, and Ethel Elizabeth Taylor, in 1907 at Whitepost House, Overton Road in Sutton, Surrey, Clifton-Taylor was educated at Bishop's Stortford College and at the Queen's College, Oxford. He went on to the Courtauld Institute of Art. During World War II he served in the Admiralty. His best-known and most influential book is The Pattern of English Building , an examination of the architectural vernacular. It orders its subject according to the building materials and methods used in England. Two of his other books are studies of ecclesiastical architecture: The Cathedrals of England and English Parish Churches as Works of Art. Along with Nikolaus Pevsner and John Betjeman, Clifton-Taylor is considered one of the three most significant figures in the study of English churches. His other books are Buildings of Delight, English Brickwork and English Stone Building. Clifton-Taylor believed that local materials had to be used for buildings to look 'right', and was therefore critical of much Victorian and subsequent architecture, erected after the railways had facilitated the transport of cheaper materials alien to a particular locale. He also regarded the Victorians as aesthetically poor restorers.
Television work
Clifton-Taylor gained his greatest public recognition late in life through his work for the BBC. After being introduced through Pevsner to BBC arts producer John Drummond, Clifton-Taylor presented the first episode, The Medieval World, of a television programme on British architecture through the ages called The Spirit of the Age, broadcast in Autumn 1975. Clifton-Taylor went on to present three extremely popular series of 30- or 40-minute BBC programmes: Six English Towns, Six More English Towns, and Another Six English Towns, in which he visited eighteen English towns, discussing their history and architectural character in an accessible and courteous style. Each series was accompanied by its own book, and DVDs of the three series were released in 2016/7.
Personal life
He lived in Kensington, west London, for much of his life and was president of the Kensington Society, an organisation devoted to preserving the borough's architecture and open spaces. The Alec Clifton-Taylor Memorial Garden is located behind St Mary Abbots Church in Kensington. Clifton-Taylor was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1982 for "services to the study of architecture".
