A SHORT HISTORY OF BRITISH ARCHITECTURE

Provocative elegant intriguing Jenkins is a bold imaginative writer brilliant at challenging old assumptions and encouraging you to look at British architecture in a new light Rory StewartThe architecture of Britain is an art gallery all around us From our streets to squares through our cities suburbs and villages we are surrounded by magnificent buildings of eclectic styles A Short History of British Architecture is the gripping and untold story of why Britain looks the way it does from prehistoric Stonehenge to the lofty towers of today Bestselling historian Simon Jenkins traces the relentless battles over the European traditions of classicism and gothic He guides us from the gothic cathedrals of Lincoln Ely and Wells to the â prodigyâ houses of the Tudor renaissance and visits the great estates of Georgian London the docks of Liverpool the mills of Yorkshire and the chapels of south Wales The arrival of modernism in the twentieth century politicised public taste upheaved communities and sought to reconstruct entire cities It produced Coventry Cathedral and Lloydâ s of London but also the brutalist monoliths of Sheffieldâ s Park Hill Glasgowâ s Cumbernauld and Londonâ s South Bank Only in the 1970s did the public at last give voice to