The University of Brighton’s Prof Emeritus Jonathan Woodham reflects on the profound impact of Paddy Maguire (1950-2025).

Patrick J Maguire: A hidden but significant voice in the historiography of twentieth-century British design

Paddy and I go back more than forty years to when I was appointed by the then Brighton Polytechnic to lead the new History of Design degree (the last of the six pioneering design history degrees to be validated nationally between 1975 and 1980). The Brighton BA(Hons) History of Design was launched in 1981 in what was then the Department of Art History & Complementary Studies in the School of Art & Design, itself recognisable as a close descendent of the Art School system established in 1840s Britain with its rich diversity of high-quality arts, design, architectural and craft-based specialisms alongside vocational, professional and extra-mural courses. The History of Design degree was a planned addition to this portfolio, emerging directly from a funded doctoral programme of design history studies established at Brighton in the later 1970s. Like the History of Design and the Visual Arts degree at North Staffordshire Polytechnic where I had previously taught for eight years, the Brighton course had a deep commitment to social and economic history which was a compulsory element at both institutions. However, there was a greater commitment of specialist staffing for this at Brighton, supplied by the then Humanities Department at Falmer. Originally employed in the Falmer-based Department of Humanities at the Polytechnic from 1978, Paddy became increasingly key to the development of this area as the Grand Parade-based design history course began to establish itself and he moved to the campus in central Brighton.

I feel strongly that Paddy’s distinctive role in articulating specific social, economic, and political approaches to design history was, and has been, under-recognised in the wider national arena. With its combination of social and economic history and design history (which embraced dress history and its emphasis on object-based study), there was – at least in the earlier decades of design history – a wider national recognition of what was understood to be ‘the Brighton approach’. From a personal standpoint my approach to, and understanding of, the potential significance of the new discipline was altered and considerably enhanced through working closely with, and learning from, Paddy. Emerging through joint curriculum design, our academic (and personal) relationship developed further through joint teaching and, later, doctoral supervision, including several first-rate scholars from around the world who came specifically to study with us. However, our most focused and enjoyable collaborative work was our joint Special Subject elective course in Design and the State for final year students. Our extensive preparation for this also involved working closely with staff at the then Public Records Office at Kew (now The National Archives). We produced two very substantial books of documentation (two volumes of more than 840 documents with over 1600 pages in total, see acknowledgement Figure 1). These embraced design from the perspective of many key State departments (such as the Board of Trade and the Cabinet Office), with documents complete with marginalia and other forms of informal internal opinions. We made many joint visits to Kew to develop and shape this body of work. Paddy was insistent on the importance of historical rigour in design historical practices, as his searching book reviews in the early years of The Journal of Design History revealed. Nonetheless his sharp observations were accompanied by developed, insightful and helpful critiques that enhanced specific aspects of contemporary design history discourse. He also contributed a small number of important articles to this and other design journals.

In 1994, when we were still teaching on Design and the State, following the Department of Trade & Industry’s decision to close a large part of the Design Council’s operations alongside a heavy and hasty redundancy programme, Paddy and I worked very closely with Chris Edwards of the Council under severe time constraints at the Council’s London Haymarket offices to make quite frighteningly significant decisions about what material might, could and should be preserved from the institution’s complex 50-year-old history. This story is complex and worth telling more fully elsewhere. In summary, given our expertise, intimate knowledge of the Design Council’s history and the complexities of design and the state, infused no doubt by a touch of arrogance, Paddy and I felt as well-placed as anybody, anywhere, to act as midwives to what was to become the substantial Design Council Archive located in the Design History Research Centre at Grand Parade, Brighton, and delivered there in an embryonic state in two large pantechnicons in 1994.

The complexity of approaches experienced in Design and the State were followed up in Paddy’s and my co-edited book Design and Popular Politics in Postwar Britain: The Britain Can Make It Exhibition of 1946 (Leicester University Press/Cassell, 1997, see Featured Image, hardback and paperback) on which we collaborated very closely. We contributed three essays each alongside 17 mini-biographies of key players from the Civil Service, the Council of Industrial Design, government and manufacturing industry; and a fairly full bibliography. Chapters were also commissioned from Doreen Leach at the Archives at the V&A and Dorothy Sheridan at the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex, as well as leading specialists on a select range of British design industries and manufacturers.

Paddy was a modest man but his considerable involvement with History Workshop, the People’s History Museum in Manchester and other such important organisations and pioneering individuals informed much of what he did sans fanfares and spotlights; he also led annual LEA-financed design history student visits to Manchester to explore the impact of the Industrial Revolution in northern England. I and many students owe a great deal to Paddy’s intellectual rigour, critical sharpness and encouragement. He was also a wonderful inspiration and good friend whose impact on what was the ‘Brighton approach’ to design history was considerable.

Jonathan M Woodham, Prof Emeritus, Design History, University of Brighton, June 2025.