MY HAVEN – DAN CRUICKSHANK

The historian and TV presenter, 67, in the dining room of his Georgian home in east London

1

TOP DRAWER

I bought this house in 1977 while campaigning against the demolition of 18th-century houses here. It was a dramatic battle and I squatted in some properties with other members of The Spitalfields Trust to stop the developers. This house was built in 1727 and first occupied by French Huguenot silk weavers. I live here with my partner, the painter Marenka Gabeler, and our son Alexander, who’s nearly three. She filled this sketchbook with drawings of him for a year. It’s a lovely record of a moment in his life.

2

FAMILY IN RUINS

This photograph shows me, aged about eight, with my parents and sister in Warsaw. We lived there from 1956 until 1958 while my father, a journalist, worked in the city during a critical period in its history. I have intense memories of living among the ruins of Warsaw, which was destroyed by the Nazis during the war. Watching it spring from the ashes inspired my love of architecture and I went back to make a TV show in 2015 to see whether I could navigate back through time.

3

ALL DRESSED UP

I found this wonderful Spitalfields silk dress in a little shop in Cambridge in the early 1970s, before I realised my life would end up entwined with the area. It was made in 1755 and is decorated with flowers and ears of corn in pale yellow. It’s in good condition and has never been cleaned because the dye’s not washable, so it bears the perspiration of all the people who wore it.

Silk weaving was big business here in the early 18th century – introduced by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France.

4

FIRESIDE TALES

While I was repairing one of my fireplaces I found this tin-glazed tile. It’s a biblical scene, but I’ve never managed to decode it. It dates back to about 1725 and was probably imported from Delft in Holland. Tiles were originally used to line fireplaces and it’s a fascinating insight into the taste of the original occupants who, as Calvinists, would have been deeply religious. I find it very moving to imagine the family sitting around the fire telling their children stories about the scenes depicted.

5

FUTILITY OF WAR

This is my paternal grandfather’s war medal. It’s the Mons Star, which was given to those who saw action in France or Belgium in the first few months of the First World War. He was born in Edinburgh and joined the Army in 1914. He survived on the Western Front, where he was gassed, but then six weeks before the end of the war he was torpedoed on a ship called Kendal Castle off the Devon Coast. My father was only four when his father died which, to me, is emblematic of the futility of that conflict.

6

CLAY ON DISPLAY

This clay cone from Uruk in southern Iraq was given to me by the Iraqi Department of Antiquities in 2003, just before the fall of Saddam Hussein, while I was filming the BBC series Dan Cruickshank Under Fire. It’s between 5,000 and 6,000 years old. Cones such as this were used to create fascinating patterns on temples. You should never remove objects from archaeological sites, but as it was presented to me by my escorts I thought it would be rude to turn it down.