Sophie Jeffreys has worked as the editor of 'Charity Times' and as curator and fund-raising director of the Beckford Tower Museum in Bath. She is director of Claridge Press, a small publishing house and founder and director of Horsell’s Farm Enterprises, a public affairs consultancy firm. She is a Conservative District Councillor in North Wiltshire representing the Brinkworth and Somerford Area. She is editor of openDemocracy's Ecology and Place theme.

Recent articles

The Countryside March across London on 22 September will be a massive demonstration of resistance to unjust power. One marcher explains how a story that starts with love ends in civic outrage.

From the outside, planning decisions can seem bureaucratic and even corrupt. From the viewpoint of a local councillor in England’s rural North Wiltshire, the role of planning officers is a reminder of their human, and honourably professional, dimension.

Modernist architecture is more than a failure; it is a mistake. It has degraded our cities and ruptured the dialogue across generations essential to civic life. The future lies in a return to the principles of classicism: “fittingness” of building and settlement, part and whole, people and dwellings.