Peter Howell

Peter Adrian Howell was born in Malta on 29 July 1941. He was one of the six children of Lieutenant Colonel Adrian Howell, a career army officer, and his wife Madge, born Thompson. The family was Roman Catholic, and that faith was a central part of his identity throughout his life.

He was educated at Downside School, the Benedictine school near Bath, and in 1959 won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, to study classics. While an undergraduate he learned of a proposal to demolish the college's Broad Street range, designed by Alfred Waterhouse in 1867, and wrote to the recently founded Victorian Society for help. John Betjeman replied, suggesting a petition, and the demolition was eventually abandoned.

Howell began his academic career in 1964 as an assistant lecturer at the University of London and became a lecturer in the Latin department at Bedford College. When Bedford merged with Royal Holloway in 1985 he moved to the classics department of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, becoming senior lecturer in 1994 and retiring in 1999. His scholarship on the Roman poet Martial included A Commentary on Book I of the Epigrams of Martial (1980) and Martial: The Epigrams, Book V (1996), and in 2016 Uppsala University awarded him an honorary degree.

Alongside teaching he became one of the leading voices in the defence of Victorian architecture. He joined the Victorian Society in 1962 and in 1965 was proposed by Nicholas Taylor for its buildings subcommittee, chaired by Nikolaus Pevsner. He served on its casework committees for about sixty years, later chairing what became the Southern Buildings Committee, and was chairman of the society from 1987 to 1993.

He wrote Victorian Churches (1968), the Companion Guide to North Wales (1975) and the Companion Guide to South Wales (1977) with Elisabeth Beazley, and co-edited The Faber Guide to Victorian Churches (1989) with Ian Sutton. He contributed to the Buildings of England and Buildings of Wales series, completed the society's monograph on G. E. Street after the death of Geoff Brandwood, and helped bring a study of the architect John Douglas to publication. His monograph on John Francis Bentley, architect of Westminster Cathedral, was published in 2020, and Triumphal Arches: From the Roman Empire to the Modern Age followed in 2021.

He served on many heritage and church bodies, including the Westminster Cathedral art and architecture committee for more than 50 years, the churches committee of English Heritage from 1984 to 1988, and historic churches committees for the Archdiocese of Westminster and for Wales and Herefordshire.

In 1979 Howell met his life partner, the architectural historian Edward Diestelkamp. Friends recalled that on holiday the two lived frugally, preferring camping to hotels and picnics to restaurants and taking the cheapest seats at the theatre, so that they could see as many buildings and hear as many operas as possible. He was known for his humour, his strongly expressed opinions and his generosity in sharing knowledge with other writers.

Peter Howell died on 15 August 2026, aged 85. The place and cause of death have not been made public. The Victorian Society announced his death, describing him as one of its longest serving and most distinguished members, a former chairman and one of its great and defining characters, and sent its thoughts to his partner Ed, his family and his many friends. Obituaries appeared in The Telegraph on 21 August 2026 and in The Guardian, written by his friend Michael Hall, on 21 September 2026. He was survived by Edward Diestelkamp and his sister Mary.

Howell's involvement spanned almost the entire history of the Victorian Society, from the years when Victorian architecture was deeply unfashionable to its wide acceptance as part of Britain's heritage. His knowledge of nineteenth century churches and ecclesiastical architects, his writing on Wales and his work on Bentley and Westminster Cathedral remain standard references, and he encouraged a younger generation of historians, among them Gavin Stamp and Andrew Saint.