director yet also took to the streets taking photographs for the organisation. He was also a Commissioner of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME) for 21 years from 1953 to 1974, writing the introduction to the book celebrating the NBR's fiftieth anniversary in 1991. He sat on many other public bodies and committees, including the Royal Fine Arts Commission (1947–54) and the Historic Buildings Council (1953–78) and was an early and active member of The Georgian Group that was founded in 1937. In 1945 Summerson was appointed Director and curator of Sir John Soane's Museum, a post he held until his retirement in 1984. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford for 1958–59 and Slade Professor at Cambridge University for the 1966-7 academic year. He gave the 1964 Master-Mind Lecture on Inigo Jones. Summerson lectured at The Courtauld Institute of Art on the history of Georgian architecture in London, Birkbeck, University of London and the Architectural Association and became a good friend of his student Roger Westman, who himself went on to become a noted architect. Summerson was noted for his somewhat elitist approach, and he was not always a consistent friend of the conservation movement. He was hired by the ESB in Ireland to speak in favour of their demolition of 16 Georgian townhouses in Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin. The doomed terrace, he said, was "simply one damned house after another". Honours Summerson was knighted in 1958; was awarded the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1976; and was created a Companion of Honour in 1987. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1954. Legacy The term Bristol Byzantine, referring to a style influenced by Byzantine and Moorish architecture and applied mainly to warehouses, factories, and other industrial buildings in the city of Bristol, is thought to have been invented by Summerson. He invented the term "prodigy house" for showy Elizabethan and Jacobean courtier houses. He had many notable students including Phoebe Stanton. There are a number of portraits of Summerson in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London; one in oils by the artist Leonard Rosoman and the others by the photographers, Walter Stoneman, Walter Bird, Barry Beattie, and Stephen Hyde. Photographs attributed to Summerson are held in the Conway Library