Marcus Binney studied the history of art at Cambridge, writing a dissertation on the architecture of Sir Robert Taylor which led to his appointment as architectural writer to Country Life in 1968. He greatly expanded the magazine’s coverage of country houses on the Continent and the United States.
In 1972 he started the magazine’s regular Conservation in Action page. Among early successes were an attack on proposals to build a bypass through the middle of Petworth Park (which the National Trust felt it could not publicly object to) and the saving of Normanton Church now a much loved landmark on the edge of Rutland Water.
This led to an invitation from Roy Strong to work with John Harris on the exhibition “The Destruction of the Country House” at the V & A, which generated huge publicity and inspired the foundation of SAVE Britain’s Heritage in 1975, which, with Marcus as chairman, rapidly became Britain’s most vigorous conservation group. Classic SAVE exhibitions (held at the RIBA Heinz Gallery) were Off the Rails: Saving Railway Architecture, Satanic Mills, Taking the Plunge and Deserted Bastions.
In 1977 Marcus was co-organiser of Change and Decay: the future of our churches at the V & A, another campaigning exhibition which prompted, within a month of opening, the first repair grants for historic churches. SAVE’s campaign to stop the break-up of Mentmore Towers led directly to the establishment of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, from which developed the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Marcus had meanwhile become the architectural editor of Country Life in 1977, becoming editor of CL in 1984. He was awarded the OBE for services to conservation in the New Year’s Honours in 1983, aged 38. In 1979 he initiated the foundation of the Thirties Society (now The Twentieth Century Society) and in 1984 he was one of the founder directors of the Railway Heritage Trust which has given more than £20m to the restoration of historic railway structures.
Marcus has not simply preached conservation he has also been instrumental is setting up trusts which saved three of the most endangered buildings in Britain, Brunel’s original but badly decayed 1840 terminus at Bristol Temple Meads, All Souls Haley Hill in Halifax, a great Victorian church by Gilbert Scott threatened with demolition, and 18th century Barlaston Hall in Staffordshire, suffering from severe coal mining sudsidence and acute neglect.
In 1995, following a threat of closure to as many as 27 City Churches, he revived the Friends of the City Churches, becoming their first chairman. The same year he established Save Europe’s Heritage becoming chairman. During the 1990s SAVE campaigned successively for military and naval buildings, for historic hospitals, initiating a successful campaign to breathe new life into the hundred large mental hospitals becoming redundant, many of which were designed by significant architects and stood in extensive landscaped grounds. Latterly SAVE has been involved with the aviation heritage, notably the top secret Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough.
He played a key role in the establishment of the Phoenix Trust and in 2003 in the establishment of Heritage Link, a new network of independent and voluntary organisations in the heritage field.
Since 1991 he has been Architecture Correspondent of the Times, writing extensively about contemporary architecture and architects as well as planning and preservation issues. His books include Our Vanishing Heritage (1984), Country Manors of Portugal ( 1987), Railway Architecture (1995) Town Houses; 800 years of evolution and innovation in urban design (1998) The Ritz Hotel London (1999), Airport Builders (1999) and Great Houses in Europe (2003) which is also the title of a 39 part TV which has been broadcast extensively in north America, the Middle and Far East.
