And so I dragged everyone to the look at the Greenwich Hospital/ Old Royal Naval College/Queen’s House ensemble with me, in my quest for…well, everything left in London of the English Baroque. I have to admit that when I finally found my way into the King William Court and confronted Hawksmoor’s broken-pediment-in-triumphal-arch concoction, my first thought was, “That’s it! Now I’m sure he’s just making fun of us.” Inevitably, the genial Hawksmoor of history is confused in my head with the scheming demoniac of Ackroyd’s novel, in which case there must be a nefarious geomantic reason for this.

I never feel as comfortable photographing “the insides” of even well-known works of architecture, which probably indicates something about me as an architect as well.

And of course I had to do a spin through the Queen’s House, which is the excuse for the Baroque dance that all the later structures must do about this site. I actually find it a bit disquieting. It might be the first “Classical” building constructed since the Roman occupation of Britain, but I can’t help but suspect that it was Inigo Jones (and not the fictional version of Hawksmoor) who was up to something sinister with an unnecessarily prismatic organization of space.