Sandringham House has not been admired by critics. Its chief fault is the lack of harmony between Humbert's original building and Edis's extensions, "a contrast between the northern and southern halves of the house (that) has been much criticised ever since". The architectural historian John Martin Robinson wrote in 1982, "Sandringham, the latest in date of the houses of the British monarchy, is the least distinguished architecturally". In his biography of Queen Mary, James Pope-Hennessy compared the house unfavourably to "a golf-hotel at St Andrews or a station-hotel at Strathpeffer". Simon Jenkins considered Sandringham "unattractive", with a "grim, institutional appearance". Pevsner described the architectural style as "frenetic"; Girouard expressed himself perplexed as to the preference shown by the royal family for A. J. Humbert, a patronage the writer Adrian Tinniswood described as "the Victorian Royal Family's knack for choosing second-rate architects". An article on the house in the June 1902 edition of "Country Life" opined, "of mere splendour there is not much, but of substantial comfort a good deal". The writer Clive Aslet suggests that the sporting opportunities offered by the estate were the main attraction for its royal owners, rather than "the house itself, which even after rebuilding was never beguiling".