On Thursday 26 November, we will be hosting their auction of ‘The John and Eileen Harris Collection of Architectural Drawings and Works of Art’. John Harris and his wife Eileen were renowned architectural historians; John was celebrated for his expertise in country houses, wit, and self-taught knowledge, while Eileen was a respected scholar specialising in architectural books and figures including Thomas Wright and Robert Adam. Here, British art historian, Director of the Royal Collection and friend of the Harris family, Tim Knox shares fond memories of John and Eileen.

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I recently stumbled across an annotated map I drew of a memorable weekend spent with John and Eileen Harris in April 1994, when we explored country house demesnes that John had known in his youth – Denham Place, Iver Grove, Swakeleys, Richings Park, Stoke Park, Langley Park, Bulstrode, Cowley Grove. The next day (‘No lunch permitted!’) the site of Canons, Little and Great Stanmore, Stanwell Park, Harlington and Cranford Churches, Hanworth House, West Drayton (‘closed - rude note left’), and Dawley House. The thing about these tours was not what we saw (my notes enumerate not just grandiose tombs, lonely gate piers and ‘capitals emerging from the grass’; but also ‘rottweilers’, ‘pink Dulux’, and a ‘disgusting golf course’), but John’s entertaining commentary of historical facts, reminiscences and outrageous architectural gossip!

It's amazing to think that, amidst all his adventures, John found time to write a prodigious number of learned articles and books, from Sir William Chambers (1970) to Moving Rooms: The Trade in Architectural Salvages (2007), not to mention the setting up of the RIBA Drawings Collection in Portman Square, the amazing rollcall of stylish architectural exhibitions in the Heinz Gallery, and the innumerable additions that he made to that collection. He also advised on Paul Mellon’s Centre for British Art in New Haven, Phyllis Lambert’s Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and Drue Heinz’s architecture centre in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. Then there was his starring role in the great Destruction of the Country House (1974) exhibition at the V&A, with John solemnly intoning the list of destroyed houses. But to me the books that sum him up best are the two volumes of memoirs, No Voice from the Hall (1998), and Echoing Voices: More memories of a Country House Snooper (2002). Alternately outrageous and elegiac, they are vintage Harris, and have a cult following to this day.

Indeed, John’s style of life was rather like one of those eighteenth-century rakes whose ruined houses he liked to clamber into - ‘up over and in’ as he would say! He was an extraordinary phenomenon, largely self-taught (John left school at fourteen, and was supposed to become an upholsterer), his remarkable eye, memory, and descriptive powers leading to a fascinating and varied career as an architectural historian, curator, champion and chronicler of the country house. The old Country House Snooper is greatly missed, but here is an opportunity to enjoy some of his treasures