Timothy Mowl was educated at the Oxford School before taking degrees at the University of Bristol and Birmingham University. He studied for his doctorate in architectural history under Sir Howard Colvin at St John's College, Oxford. Mowl's career has included work as an Inspector for English Heritage, an architectural consultant for the Bath Preservation Trust, a journalist on the Bath Chronicle and as a freelance architectural and garden historian. He taught in the departments of History of Art and Archaeology at the University of Bristol before taking early retirement in 2011.[1]
He has published thirty-five books on architectural history, landscape and garden history, biography, planning and conservation.
His latest book, written with Julian Orbach, is a study of architectural schemes for Cambridge that never materialised - Unbuilt Cambridge, published by Stephen Morris, 2025. Together with Barbara Hardy he has just completed a cultural biography of the architect, Basil Champneys, which will appear in October 2026, and his study of Ornamental Gardening in the Regency, All around is Fairy-ground - Pleasure and the Regency Garden, will be published by Reaktion Books in July 2026.
Publications
Trumpet at a Distant Gate: The Lodge as Prelude to the Country House (with Brian Earnshaw), London: Waterstones, 1985.
John Wood: Architect of Obsession (with Brian Earnshaw), Millstream Books, 1988.
Bristol: Last Age of the Merchant Princes, Millstream Books, 1991.
To Build the Second City: Architects and Craftsmen of Georgian Bristol, Redcliffe Press, 1991.
Elizabethan and Jacobean Style, Phaidon, 1993.
Palladian Bridges: Prior Park and the Whig Connection, Millstream Books, 1993.
The Sack of Bath and After (with Adam Fergusson), Michael Russell, 1989.
An Insular Rococo: Architecture, Politics and Society in Ireland and England, 1710–1770, (with Brian Earnshaw), Reaktion, 1999.
Stylistic Cold Wars: Betjeman versus Pevsner, John Murray, 2000 (paperback edition 2011).
Gentlemen and Players: Gardeners of the English Landscape, Sutton Publishing, 2000 (revised edition Gentlemen Gardeners: The Men Who Recreated the English Landscape Garden, 2004).
Historic Gardens of Gloucestershire, Tempus Publishing, 2002 (Reprinted 2005).
Historic Gardens of Dorset, Tempus Publishing, 2003 (Reprinted 2004).
Historic Gardens of Wiltshire, Tempus Publishing, 2004.
Historic Gardens of Cornwall, Tempus Publishing, 2005.
Historic Gardens of Worcestershire, Tempus Publishing, 2006.
William Kent: Architect, Designer, Opportunist, Jonathan Cape, 2006 (paperback - Pimlico, 2007)
Bristol: City on the Edge, Frances Lincoln, 2006.
Historic Gardens of Oxfordshire, Tempus Publishing, 2007.
