Winter was awful. I was ill for the best part of three months and consumned more antibiotics than a supermarket chicken. But I've been gradually recovering during the last few weeks and have worked like the clappers to make up for lost time. It seems to be paying off.
I've been working through a delivery of books that has an enjoyably ecclectic range of titles. Here are a few that caught my eye:
I'm a big fan of the coloured frontispieces in old children's novels.
Often they are the only illustration in the book and have to entice a
potential reader with a scene of mild peril. I've been working through a delivery of books that has an enjoyably ecclectic range of titles. Here are a few that caught my eye:
Girls tend to be standing outside a study, waiting to be upbraided, whilst boys can usually been seen hiding from an assailant, who is either an angry master, foreign agent or beligerent farm labourer.
The caption for the above picture is "Miss Perkins looked straight at the girls". It would be a Miss Perkins.
But it was a very different age, as this book below reminds us:
I Googled this book title and ended up with some pictures of a number of very healthy looking young men with George Michael beards. They all looked very cheerful and for a brief moment, I wondered if I would have been a happier person if I was a gay Bulgarian.
I'll never know.
The next book that appealed is this 1960s educational title:
I'll never know.
The next book that appealed is this 1960s educational title:
The book purports to give an unbiased overview of the development of towns and cities, but 50 years on, it seems ridiculously prejudiced. Like many other books and television programmes of the time, it has a blind faith in planning and modernism as the saviours of mankind. For example, the illustration below has this caption:
"A modern town does not grow up accidentally. It is carefully planned so that we can enjoy living in it."
"A modern town does not grow up accidentally. It is carefully planned so that we can enjoy living in it."
The reality, of course, is quite different. Most people prefer living in a town that has evolved slowly over time, in response to people's needs, rather than the soulless creation of priggish idealogues, avaricious businessmen and corrupt councillors. The text claims that these concrete buildings "are pleasant to look at." Really?
The most striking book I found today was a collection of photographs from the Second World War. Apparently, this picture of blind children in a shelter during an air raid was voted the favourite war photo by readers of an American magazine in 1943.
I'm not surprised. It is a powerful image that still shocks and upsets:
The most striking book I found today was a collection of photographs from the Second World War. Apparently, this picture of blind children in a shelter during an air raid was voted the favourite war photo by readers of an American magazine in 1943.
I'm not surprised. It is a powerful image that still shocks and upsets:
"And finally..."
Like the news, it's usually best to end on a lighter note, so I'll finish with this nice juxtaposition of a theatre poster and a bombed-out building:
17 comments:
What an assortment of book illustrations. The blind children isn't a photo I've seen before. It is very moving but Miss Perkins. I have had several Miss Perkins over my long life and I remember them completely :-)
I grew up in a New Town, concrete is not something I like to look at. I couldn't wait to leave and have never been back, soulless is a apt description.
Oh the wonder of old book titles and illustrations, I wonder what folks will make of those around now in fifty years time.............
Travellin Penguin - I think we've all come across a few Miss Perkins in our time. My mother had a particularly tough time of it during the War, when many young teachers left the school to do war work and were replaced by a group of terrifying old Victorian ladies, called out of retirement.
sustainablemum - I thought for a moment you were going to write "I grew up in a new town...and it was great!" as whenever I slag off somewhere like Crawley, I can guarantee that I'll get vitriolic replies telling me how wrong I am.
It's not the fact that they're new that's wrong. I just object to the poor design, cheap materials and priority given to roads. If you visit a market town, even if it's quite small you can spend a long time exploring the various alleys and quirky buildings. In a new town, there's rarely anything to see. Why couldn't the planners have replicated the features that people like about older towns? I don't mean a pastiche, but just an avoidance of bland uniformity.
It is probably true that Coventry, my own town as a child, had 'evolved slowly over time' until a fateful night in November 1940 when large parts of it were flattened - and toward the end of the war, Bomber Harris did a pretty good job on Dresden, until that moment one of the most beautiful cities in Eastern Europe. And I would be one of the last to defend the profanation and defilement of the landscape by post-war architects as, for several years, I worked in the offices of one of them, and witnessed it first hand. And whilst there is no defence against the bland Bauhaus/Corbusian influence in design at the time, there was a shortage of money, and buildings needed to be built quickly and cheaply, if for no other reason than to house the homeless.
When I journeyed to Dresden with a youth orchestra, and to Kiel on the Baltic (both twinned with Coventry), I was shocked, in Dresden, to see rubble from the bombings, still in the street. But what everybody in the band noticed was that there was nothing like the utterly dreadful 'Precinct' Shopping Centre in Coventry that we knew so well. The Germans, as far as we could tell, would try and retain the period facades of damaged buildings, and build a new structure behind the frontage. More expensive surely, but easier on the eye methinks.
Mahlerman - If only we'd followed suit, particularly the Poles' triumphant restoration of Warsaw. Walking around modern-day Exeter, Portsmouth or Colchester is heartbreaking.
I agreed with many of Prince Charles' notorious 'carbuncle' criticisms that earned him the wrath of the intelligensia, but having been to Poundbury, I wouldn't say that's the answer either. I liked the use of local stone and the emphasis on walking rather than driving, but there's something curiously sterile about the place. Perhaps that will change over time.
Affirmative Steerforth. Poundbury is indeed rather unsettling - as any pastiche is bound to be - try the Portmeirion of (Sir) Clough Williams-Ellis, based upon beautiful Portofino; I'd rather wander around Disneyland - at least that is honest tat.
Concrete buildings have their fans! And you have to remember the terrible conditions some people had been living in for years. But I like "priggish ideologues". Glad you're feeling better.
Lucy - I think concrete structures can look stunning in the right climate - Le Corbusier works in the south of France - but in Britain, the last thing we need is grey buildings to go with our often grey skies. Also, when it rains they get damp patches.
Pound bury is indeed weird...and it doesn't seem to be maturing in a good way. I was amused to read that somebody's genius idea of gravel sidewalks meant that buggies got stuck and had to be pushed in the road.
It does, however, have the very excellent Olives et al cafe and deli, which makes a good pit stop on my regular journey between St Austell and Lewes. It's exactly halfway.
Mike - That's one hell of a journey. I didn't know about the pushchair problem in Poundbury. That's a fundamental flaw.
It's interesting to look at old books and think about how times have changed. When I was a school child, my mother subscribed to a series of booklets about the countries of the world. The day the one arrived about French Indo-China we heard that Hanoi fallen to the Communists. The book was obsolete before we even opened the cover.
The WWII photos are indeed moving. Another great assortment - hope some of these books are worth something!
Modernism done well is one thing, but so often it isn't and leads to all those carbuncles. Went through Poundbury once and it was like the Stepford Wives...
"Most people prefer living in a town that has evolved slowly over time, in response to people's needs, rather than the soulless creation of priggish idealogues, avaricious businessmen and corrupt councillors" - as I live in Canberra, I can't help feeling that you are merely rubbing salt into my wounds here.
At least the weather's nicer in Canberra. Somehow, concrete is less offensive in sunnier climes. One of the dullest places I've ever visited is Merced in California - a town where the streets have no name - but because the weather was nice it didn't seem anywhere near as awful as a new town in Britan.
You're right Steerforth: a town can't just be manufactured and its residents expected to fit. Time, when it was allowed to proceed naturally, used to produce beautiful architecture...
'Man Makes Towns'. What amazing propaganda and blind faith in planning (I am presuming it doesn't have a chapter; 'How backhanders to councils work'...?. Got to be worth a few quid if only for the irony!
Glad to hear you are finally on the mend.
Gardener - I suppose all we should do is restrict bad development. The area where my wife grew up has been ruined by a sprawl of badly-designed bungalows, created by a local builder called Cox. They're known as Cox's Boxes. But the idea of planning something and trying to make people fit into it goes against the grain.
Laura - Colchester is a particularly good example of backhanders succeeding where the Luftwaffe failed, allegedly. A drive through the centre of the town, now dominated by A roads, multi-storey car parks and shopping centres, is particularly depressing. They would have probably knocked the Roman wall down if they could.
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