VENERABLE AND VULNERABLE

ANDY PIPER WAS WORRIED ABOUT THE Houses of Parliament. Not what goes on inside them, but the buildings themselves—the ornate debating chambers and wood-paneled rooms where the U.K.’s legislative body goes about its business. Chosen as design director for Parliament’s restoration program, Piper had the job of alerting lawmakers to the state of the houses of state. So in summer 2017, he took the then leader of the House of Commons, Conservative lawmaker Andrea Leadsom, on a tour of the building’s darkest corners.

Piper hoped to show Leadsom a few fire hazards and maybe an unsafe cable or two. As the Cabinet member responsible for organizing government business, she could draw more attention to the issue. But when he unlocked the door to the parliamentary basement, the stench hit them both. Raw sewage was oozing down the corridor. “We couldn’t walk all the way through the basement,” Leadsom, now Business Secretary, recalls. “We had to go back and enter from the other end.” Far from being embarrassed by the incident, Piper was overjoyed. “It was very convenient for us,” he says. “She