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This week John takes Clive through Windsor Castle, a creation not just of the Middle Ages (subject of part 1 of this series) but of successive monarchs since the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. George III, a King who had been trained in architecture, made it into a family home, before being confined here during his years of madness. Typically, his eldest son George IV had bigger ideas, employing Jeffry Wyatt to revamp the castle after 1824. This included a remodelling of St George’s Hall and making the Waterloo Chamber to accommodate the famous Waterloo Banquets at a table 150 metres long. Wyatt also gave Windsor the romantic skyline we see today. Knighted in 1828, Wyatt changed his name to the supposedly more medieval Sir Jeffry Wyatville with the King’s blessing and was finally buried in St George’s Chapel at Windsor in 1840. For a time, he was joined by the Prince Consort who died in 1861, whose were removed to the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore 10 years later.

Clive and John both vividly remember the Windsor Castle fire which roared through the building in 1992. Discussing its significance they come to some possibly surprising conclusions.

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This week John and Clive are frothing with disapproval at Network Rail’s plan to upgrade Liverpool Street Station. It is proposed that this will be funded by a development which will impose an out-of-scale tower at the entrance to the station, which will deprive the concourse of natural light and destroy the surroundings. What a pity. Liverpool Street was brilliantly reimagined in the late 1980s, to make a virtually new station so much in the spirit of the old that many people assume that it is largely Victorian. If only there was someone who could offer a design of similar sensitivity. Fortunately there is! John McAslan of John McAslan and Partners has come up with a spectacularly clever alternative scheme, fulfilling Network Rail’s objective at a fraction and far less environmental damage.

This is an emergency podcast. The City Corporation are about to decide whether the Network Rail proposal gets planning permission. John and Clive want McAslan instead. Listen as they debate what makes really good railway station architecture and what makes it so important.

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This week John and Clive present their long-awaited podcast on one of the most essential but least discussed rooms in any dwelling – the lavatory. Or (because no object in English or any other language is subject to so many euphemisms and circumlocutions) the necessary, the little house, the smallest room, the going place, the jakes, the john, the pissing place, the bog, the toilet…the list goes on. Although it fulfils a universal need, the loo has taken many forms over the centuries, being subject not only to technological innovation but social change. Today’s norms were not always those of the past. Did multi-seater conveniences provide users with the chance to talk to friends, or do they reflect the discipline of monastic or military life – to be frequented only at certain times and in a regulated manner? From the magna cloaca of Ancient Rome to Sir John Harington’s funny but laboured book on the first water closet, via the Victorian sewers (which Clive has visited) beneath London, ypompod shines a light on a subject that, in some respects, cannot be too private. Warning: the episode may contain schoolboy humour, however much John and Clive have attempted to avoid it.