Destroyed...not Lost
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Probably the saddest book I have read in a long time.
Your first impulse is to flick through the pictures and look at all the absolutely brilliant architecture and amazing places. You imagine that these old photographs depict locations (like Hull) that are now swarming with tourists and the pride of each of the listed cities. You then start skimming the text and captions and the true horror starts to dawn that pretty well everything shown in the book has been demolished. Finally, you discover that these cities were not destroyed by bombers, earthquakes or fire but by 20th century planners and insane `visionaries' who knowingly set out to annihilate the past and replace it with a new progressive future. Bear this book in mind the next time your hear about 'progress'.
The only thing missing is photographs showing what the depicted places look like now...but perhaps that would be too much to bear.
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Wanton demolition
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This is a fascinating book giving the reader insight into how 19 of Britain's major cities looked before modern-day reconstruction. It undermines the commonly held view that our cities were largely redeveloped after the second world war following extensive bombing and that their drastic rebuilding in the 1950s and 60s was therefore inevitable. Stamp indicates that several cities were either slum-cleared in the 1930s (Coventry) or received practically no bomb damage whatsoever (Worcester). But what Hitler and the Luftwaffe didn't manage to destroy the city planning department achieved.
The book left me wanting to ask the question "Why all this destruction?" Britain seems to have gone through a period of collective self-loathing about its appearance in the middle of the 20th century (a fruitful study for a social psychologist rather than an architectural historian). The rebuilding of Plymouth comes in for particular criticism and rightly so. Such vandalism/philistinism is in marked contrast to the painstaking reconstruction of Dresden and Krakow after the second world war. "Change is inevitable" concedes Dr Clamp in his introduction but his main message is that it did not have to be so drastic. The only crumb of comfort one can draw from the book is that many of the post-war developments have now themselves fallen victim to the ball and chain. The book is indeed a window into a lost world.
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IN SEARCH OF LOST CITIES
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The many photographs are fascinating in themselves as a record of what has been destroyed in the way of historic buildings during the twentieth century in nineteen major British cities. But the photos also come with an astute and illuminating text which catalogues the disastrous decisions made by our city planners both before and after the German bombings in the Second World War. Stamp is never purely reactionary - practicalities are acknowledged and good modern buildings praised - but it is impossible not to share his dismay at what we have lost.
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