Roger Bowdler

I'm a historian of tombs, monuments, statues and other reminders of the dead. I studied at Cambridge University and completed a PhD in 1991 on 17th century church monuments with lots of bones on them (or else people rising up from their graves). I worked at English Heritage/Historic England from 1989 to 2018 first as a historian, then as a listing inspector, ending up drector of listing.

I now work at Montagu Evans where I am a partner in the Historic Environment Team, advising clients on their historic buidlings. The switch from regulator to supporter of owners has been very positive. I have been chairman of the Mausolea and Monuments Trust, a Comissioner at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, Master of the Armourers and Brasiers' Company, and still sit on the London Diocesan Advisory Committee and the Royal Mint Advisory Committee. I'm also a Trustee of The Remembrance Trust which is dedicated to the upkeep of military graves from before the Frst World War. I enjoy walking around the coast, visiting battlefields and exploring cities, but I am happiest in a graveyard or looking at church monuments.

As well as lots of articles, I have written two short books on churchyards and on war memorials, and a recent one on soldiers' graves before 1914. With Brent Elliott, a long-standing authority on Victorian landscapes, I have co-written a bigger work: The British Cemetery 1700-2020 (Historic England/Liverpool University Press, 2026). This draws on decades of looking at cemeteries and inspecting the tombs, and provides an overview of their development. Favorite cemetery? probably Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh. Favorite tomb? Probably the artist WIlilam Mulready's (d. 1863) in Kensal Green Cemetery, London: he's smiling as he beholds the world to come.

Married to Christina, a film designer, I have two childern and live in North London.