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Sapling.info Bookstore (26)
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Great Gardens of Britain
Helena Attlee and Alex Ramsay
(2011)
Hardcover - 144 pages
Frances Lincoln
ISBN: 0711231346
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
Britain is famous all over the world for its gardens. In this book Helena Attlee focuses on twenty of the finest gardens in the country. Her choice encompasses a rich selection of sites all over England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, ranging from famous eighteenth-century landscapes such as Stourhead to quirky modern gardens such as Charles Jencks' Garden of Cosmic Speculation in the Scottish borders. Her lively text provides a brief history of each garden combined with a vivid account of its main features. Alex Ramsay's dazzling photographs reveal the gardens at their best. Gardens include: Crathes (Inverness), Crarae (Argyll & Bute), Garden of Cosmic Speculation (Dumfries), Little Sparta (Lanarkshire), Alnwick (Northumberland), Levens (Cumbria), Scampston (Yorkshire), Mount Stewart (Co. Down), Bodnant (Clwyd), Powis Castle (Powys), Stourhead (Wiltshire), Hidcote (Gloucestershire), Great Dixter (Sussex), East Rushton (Norfolk), Beth Chatto's Garden (Essex), Kew (London), Wisley (Surrey), Sissinghurst (Kent), Eden Project (Cornwall), Tresco (Scilly Isles).
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Walking London's Parks and Gardens
Geoffrey Young and Roger Tagholm
(2010 - 2nd Revised Edition)
Paperback - 176 pages
New Holland Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 1847736173
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
London is as famous for its green spaces as for the historic buildings surrounding them. For "Walking London's Parks and Gardens", wildlife journalist Geoffrey Young specially devised 24 walks around over 30 of the most historic and beautiful parks and gardens that flourish in the capital. His walks range from the Chelsea Physic Garden (the second oldest apothecaries' garden in England) to the 2,500 acres of Richmond Park, former royal hunting forest and London's largest park. He includes beautiful clusters of garden squares that he has imaginatively woven into walks through central London's most graceful districts, such as Bloomsbury and Westminster. He has set each walk in the area's historic context and included detailed information on features and highlights, such as plantings, statuary and architecture. He has also provided the reader with easy-to-follow detailed route maps for each walk. Wonderfully illustrated with specially commissioned colour photographs and route maps, the book provides full details of addresses, opening times, and the best bars and restaurants to visit en route.
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Lost Victorian Britain: How the Twentieth Century Destroyed the Nineteenth Century's Architectural Masterpieces
Gavin Stamp
(2010)
Hardcover - 192 pages
Aurum Press Ltd
ISBN: 1845135326
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
These days it seems perfectly obvious that stupendous nineteenth-century constructions like St Pancras Station should be not only preserved from dereliction but also restored to their original iron-and-glass glory - and used. But it was not always the case. As recently as the 1970s a superb Victorian building like Glasgow's St Enoch's Hotel was being levelled to make way for a banal shopping centre. In the mid-1960s St Pancras itself had been earmarked for demolition. The prevailing attitude of the twentieth century towards Victorian architecture had, for many decades, been well summed up by P.G. Wodehouse in his dismissal of the fictional mid-Victorian Walsingford Hall as 'a celebrated eyesore in all its startling revolting hideousness'. 'Victorian', quite simply, was a term of abuse. Add in the wartime bombing of our cities by the Luftwaffe, and the vandalism of the town planners to make way for the modern ring road and the multi-story, and the scale of the damage is truly sobering.
This poignant book, full of stunning and unexpected images, chronicles - and deplores - the catastrophic swathe cut through our architectural heritage by the twentieth century's sustained antipathy to the nineteenth, as well as offering an offbeat history of Victorian architecture, and its belated re-evaluation, entirely through buildings that have disappeared. Of the 200 notable examples of Victorian architecture illustrated in this book, from the magnificent Imperial Institute in Kensington to Norman Shaw's superb church in Bingley, from Preston Town Hall to the vast country house of Eaton Hall, not one still exists. A photograph is all we have left.
As well as architectural causes celebres like the Euston Arch and London's Coal Exchange, Stamp also turns up many lesser-known but amazing Victorian buildings whose loss is perhaps even more to be mourned, because history gave us no time at all to appreciate them. Who'd have known that Hackney in East London briefly accommodated the extraordinary Gothic battlements of Columbia Market, or that Chatsworth in Derbyshire once boasted a soaring glasshouse streamlined like a spaceship? Complementing these plangent images is Gavin Stamp's angry account of the wilful destruction, largely motivated by ignorance and prejudice, of grand, solid, striking buildings made to last a lifetime. Surprising, chastening, but also uplifting, Lost Victorian Britain is a memorable journey back into a world we should never have lost.
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The Contemporary Garden
Phaidon Editors
(2009)
Hardcover - 112 pages
Phaidon Press Ltd
ISBN: 0714849588
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
The Contemporary Garden' is an illustrated survey of 100 iconic and innovative gardens in the world, spanning from the early 1920s to the present day. Accessible and easy-to-use like Phaidon's popular "The Garden Book", this informative source book includes an unrivalled range of gardens by designers, makers, architects and land artists - from Garrett Eckbo's Alcoa Forecast Garden (1925) and Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye (1929) to Ian Hamilton Finlay's Little Sparta (1966), near Edinburgh, and horticultural installation artist Tony Heywood's Split (2003).
Each garden has been selected for its unique design, marking a break from traditional gardens and presenting new and sometimes conceptual designs. The selection ranges from the public to the private and all types are featured - Modernist gardens, conceptual spaces, roof and water gardens, contemporary interpretations of traditional garden styles and urban parks and landscapes.Other examples include Gabriel Guevrekian's Villa Noailles (1927) in France, Fernando Caruncho's startlingly unusual Wheat Garden (1990) in Spain, Kathryn Gustafson's Diana Memorial Fountain (2004) in London, England and Tadao Ando's Zen-like Garden of Fine Arts (1994) in Japan.
'The Contemporary Garden' presents projects by forward-looking garden designers from around the globe. Today's most arresting garden designs are often based on traditional principles but the interpretation - with the use of innovative materials, unusual plants and unexpected forms - offers a new approach to planting and alternative solutions to garden, backyard or outdoor space design. Featuring the use of artificial materials, such as Robert Mallet-Stevens' Garden with Concrete Trees (1925) and Dean Cardasis' Plastic Garden (1995), 'The Contemporary Garden' also offers an examination of the impact of unique, iconic gardens designed by the likes of Isamu Noguchi, Roberto Burle Marx and Luis Barragan, among others. In addition, the selection includes gardens by famous artistic and architectural figures such as Henry Moore, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Joan Miro and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Organised chronologically, readers can trace the development of the non-traditional garden in all its variations from the early experimentations of the twentieth century to the visionary ideas of today's practitioners. Each entry consists of a full-page image with an accompanying text, placing the garden and its maker in stylistic and historical context. The book also features a glossary of terms and movements, a directory of gardens open to the public and an index. 'The Contemporary Garden' is a practical resource and an easy-to-use guide, unique in its appeal to both the general reader and the practicing gardener.
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Walking London's Statues and Monuments
Rupert Hill
(2010)
Paperback - 160 pages
New Holland Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 1847735991
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
This is a captivating addition to New Holland's London walks list, focusing on important, memorable or beautiful statues, sculptures and monuments around London. The 13 walks featured take around one to two hours to complete and each take in between 20 and 40 works. The reader is given all the relevant information about both the walk and the work of art, which include themes such as historical, armed forces, theatre and all current sculpture in London from Hyde Park to Greenwich, including Canary Wharf (with a view to the 2012 Olympics). The book is elegantly illustrated with artworks of the statues drawn in pen and ink with a colour wash. With classical and modern sculptures to visit, the book provides a fascinating overview of the people and events the capital has chosen to commemorate and the way different artists have undertaken their commissions.
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A Lust for Window Sills: A Lover's Guide to British Buildings from Portcullis to Pebble Dash
Harry Mount
(2008)
Hardcover - 384 pages
Little, Brown
ISBN: 1408700905
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
Ever wondered why the floors in our terraced houses are different heights? Or what the landscape round where you live looked like before it was built on? And did you know you can date a building by its window sills? A LUST FOR WINDOW SILLS tells us why and how. Harry Mount takes us on an engrossing tour of the nation's architecture, exploring the quirks, foibles and tiny details that make our buildings unique, and revealing the fascinating stories and anecdotes behind them along the way. We see every historic building style in Britain in one hour's walk across London, from the Norman apse of St Bartholomew's in Smithfield to the National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing, via Gothic in Holborn, Sir Christopher Wren in the City and the Knights Templar at Temple. A trip up the M4 reveals some of our greatest country houses, while a visit to Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill is a journey back to the Bronze Age. This book is a lively, entertaining and affectionate portrait of our history and the Britain we live in today.
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On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries
Richard Reynolds
(2008)
Hardcover - 256 pages
Bloomsbury
ISBN: 0747590818
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
When Richard Reynolds began planting flowers secretly at night outside his tower block in South London, he had no idea that he was part of a growing global movement committed to combating the forces of neglect, land shortage and apathy towards public spaces. But before long, his blog had attracted other guerrillas from around the world to share their experiences of the horticultural frontline, and is now a focal point for guerrilla gardeners everywhere, with over 4,000 people enlisted as recruits. "On Guerrilla Gardening" is Reynolds' lively, colourful treatise on why people illicitly cultivate land and how to do it yourself. From discreetly beautifying corners of Montreal to striving for green communal space in Berlin and sustainable food production in San Francisco, from Christmas trees on London roundabouts to the political agitations of landless workers in Brazil, Reynolds charts a battle that people worldwide are fighting on many different fronts. Along the way he unearths the movement's notable historic advances by seventeenth-century English radicals, a nineteenth-century American entrepreneur and public-spirited artists in 1970s New York.
Reynolds has researched the subject with guerrilla gardeners from thirty different countries, and compiles their advice on what to grow where, how to cope with adverse environmental conditions, how to seed-bomb effectively, how to harness propaganda to win support and even how to handle anti-terror police. "On Guerrilla Gardening" informs, entertains and inspires. Packed with photographs, anecdotes and sound horticultural advice, it is an irresistible invitation to shoulder your shovel and join the revolution that is blooming in the world's shared spaces.
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St Pancras Station
Simon Bradley
(2007)
Paperback - 224 pages
Profile Books Ltd
ISBN: 1861979517
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
An iconic London landmark of Gothic dream palace and futuristic train shed - built in the 1860s for the new Midland Railway line into London, St. Pancras is soon to be reincarnated as the main international gateway from London to the Continent. In 1866, the ancient churchyard of St. Pancras was excavated for the new Midlands Railway line into London. Both the train shed and the Midland Grand hotel, the constituent parts of the new station, are outstanding structures: the train shed for its structural daring and drama, the hotel for its heroic attempt to adapt Gothic architecture for the requirements of modernity. In 2002, more of the churchyard was excavated as part of the station's transformation for the Channel Tunnel terminus. The work, to be finished in 2007, will reinvent St. Pancras as the main hub for rail travellers between the UK and Europe. In the years between, the station has flourished, but has also come close to being demolished. Simon Bradley examines this fascinating story of changes in taste and of our understanding of the past. It is a reminder of the revolutionary effects of the railway and of how the innovations of the Industrial Revolution have weathered subsequent technological change. St. Pancras demands to be understood for the continuing thrall in which great urban monuments can hold us.
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Churchill and Chartwell: The Untold Story of Churchill's Houses and Gardens
Stefan Buczacki
(2007)
Hardcover - 384 pages
Frances Lincoln Publishers
ISBN: 0711225354
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
This book is a biography of Winston Churchill through the houses he lived in and the gardens he made. It culminates with the full story of his purchase, alteration and creation of Chartwell, Kent, where he lived for more than forty years before and after the war, and which is now owned and run by the National Trust in keeping with his intentions. Churchill was born amidst the splendour of Blenheim Palace but, ever a restless spirit, he owned or rented many houses, both grand and relatively modest, over the course of his long life, including country retreats, modern town apartments and, as First Lord of the Admiralty, Admiralty House. But it was his house at Chartwell that would be for ever associated with the name Churchill. Based on extensive and scholarly archive study, this unique book brings to light an array of previously unpublished details and reveals a fascinating side to Britain's greatest war leader. Winston Churchill was named the Greatest Briton of all time in a BBC poll that attracted nearly a million votes. He remains a hugely popular figure. This is the first book on Churchill to focus on this relatively private aspect of his character. It contains material from the Churchill archives, including reproductions of his paintings.
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Great British Bus Journeys: Travels Through Unfamous Places
David McKie
(2006)
Hardcover - 352 pages
Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1843541327
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
Great British Bus Journeys travels to Britain's most unfashionable towns (using the least reliable method of transport) to uncover the nation's secret history. Starting on a green bus in Leeds, the city of his birth, and culminating atop the number 94 as it swooshes past Trafalgar Square in London, David McKie reclaims British towns from the embarrassment and neglect for which they are famed. From Frinton-on-Sea to Bradwell-juxta-Mare, McKie rescues cities and villages from the condescension of snobbish urbanites.
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Historic Arts and Crafts Homes of Great Britain
Brian D. Coleman
(2005)
Hardcover - 192 pages
Gibbs M Smith Inc
ISBN: 158685531X
Synopsis by publisher:
From esteemed author Brian D. Coleman comes a thorough exploration into the origins of the design and philosophy of the Arts and Crafts movement in Great Britain - the roots of which are inspiring a fresh new approach to the more traditional American Arts and Crafts style. Coleman leads an inspiring and beautiful tour of ten of the most historic Arts and Crafts homes in Britain, from William Morris's Red House in Kent to Macintosh's Hill House in Glasgow.
Learn about the history, construction, and thoughtfulness of design that give valuable insight into the philosophy of the movement and how it is reinterpreted today. Honesty of construction, attention to detail, and the value of handcraftsmanship are principles of the Arts and Crafts movement first celebrated by William Morris and John Ruskin over one hundred years ago. Other homes featured in the book include Blackwell in the Lake District (architect M. H. Baillie Scott), Castle Drogo in Devon (architect Sir Edwin Lutyens), Cragside in Northumberland (architect Richard Norman Shaw), and Kelmscott Manor in London (William Morris's holiday home). All homes featured in the book are open to the public and maintained as museums and tributes to the artistry. Contact information is provided for each house, which provides a helpful tool for planning a visit.
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Gardens of the National Trust
Stephen Lacey
(2005)
Hardcover - 400 pages
National Trust Books
ISBN: 1905400004
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
When the National Trust decided to take on the care of gardens, the aim was that these would be the very best of their kind in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust now has the finest collection of gardens ever assembled under one ownership - the greatest in number, diversity, historic importance and quality. Taken together they contain the world's most important collection of cultivated plants, distinguished for their beauty, rarity, historical interest and scientific value. First published in 1996, this new edition has been substantially revised to showcase superb new photography, and to introduce recently acquired properties such as Greenway in Devon and the gardens of houses such as Red House in Kent and Tyntesfield in Somerset. Stephen Lacey paints a vivid picture of individual Trust gardens through historical and horticultural perspectives. He gives his personal take, describing the present state of each and placing it firmly within the context of gardening history in Britain. All the major periods are represented: a knot garden from a 1640 design at Moseley Old Hall in Staffordshire; magnificent eighteenth-century landscapes such as 'Capability' Brown's at Petworth in Sussex; Victorian Gardens like Biddulph Grange in Staffordshire, with its wealth of new plants introduced from all over the world; and the famous plantsmen's gardens of the last century, such as Nymans in Sussex, Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, and Hidcote in Gloucestershire.
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Urban Forms
Ivor Samuels, Jean Castex, Jean Charles Depaule, Phillippe Panerai
(2004)
Paperback - 240 pages
Architectural Press
ISBN: 0750656077
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
This popular and influential work, translated here into English for the first time, argues that modern urbanism has upset the morphology of cities, abolished their streets and isolated their buildings. In tracing the stages of this transformation, this book presents the view that the urban tissue, the intermediate scale between the architecture of buildings and the diagrammatic layouts of town planning, is the essential framework for everyday life. Only by investigating the urban tissue will it be possible to understand the complex relationships between plot and built form, between streets and buildings and between these forms and design practices. The chosen trail of the first French edition - Paris, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt - is one of continuously evolving modernity. It outlines a history, which, in one century (1860-1960), completely changed the aspect of our towns and cities and transformed our way of life. The shock has been such that we are still looking for answers, still attempting to find urban forms that can accommodate present day ways of life and at the same time maintain the qualities of the traditional town. This English edition brings the story forward to the present day and considers the impact of the New Urbanism in the United States, which, over the last decade, has sought to re-establish former relationships within the urban tissue.
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Concrete Architecture
Catherine Croft
(2005)
Hardcover - 240 pages
Laurence King Publishing
ISBN: 1856693643
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
After a long period of being synonymous with urban deprivation and dreary stained surfaces, concrete is is now chic. A favourite material of fashionable style magazines, it is becoming ubiquitous in shops, restaurants and even homes. Concrete is in fact a fabulous material, which can be used in a huge range of techniques and situations. Its colour, texture, and constituents vary, it may be cheaply mass produced, or meticulously crafted, and new developments and increased understanding of its possibilities are inspiring contemporary architects and designers. Concrete Architecture begins by asking questions like: What is concrete? What is its history? How is concrete used? The book goes on to look at recent architectural projects that use concrete for an enormous range of building types. All the examples chosen celebrate the intrinsic qualities of concrete and how they work to make the places in which we live, work, and play. A range of projects from around the world includes for example a private house in the Netherlands by UN Studio and Canary Wharf Underground Station in London by Foster and Partners.
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The Anxious City
Richard J. Williams
(2004)
Paperback - 296 pages
Routledge, an imprint of Taylor & Francis Books Ltd
ISBN: 0415279275
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
In the western world, cities have, arguably, never been more anxious: realistic anxieties about personal safety, and metaphorical anxieties about the uncertain place of the city in culture are the small change of journalism and political debate. Cities have long been regarded as problems, in need of drastic solutions. In this context, the contemporary revival of city centres is remarkable. But in a culture that largely fears the urban, how can the contemporary city be imagined? How is it supposed to be used or inhabited? What should it look like? What should be its purpose? Which existing forms of urban life might serve as models for a new city? Taking England since WW2 as its principal focus, this provocative and original book considers the western city at a critical moment in its history. Historically among the most urbanised of countries, England is an extraordinary urban laboratory. The energy and thoroughness with which its cities have been transformed in the 1990s have lessons for urban development everywhere. The Anxious City examines the problem of the contemporary city through a series of detailed case studies: Poundbury, Milton Keynes, Liverpool's Albert Dock redevelopment, Trafalgar Square, Canary Wharf, the Great Court of the British Museum, and central Manchester after the 1996 IRA bomb. It deals with some broader cultural phenomena too: the continuing attraction of picturesque aesthetics, and the lure of southern European urbanism (exemplified by the RIBA's canonisation of Barcelona) and the complex, contradictory relationship between urbanism in England and the USA. The experience of these places, the book argues, shows a culture where the idea of the city remains contested: the frantic redevelopment of city centres in the 1990s represented one vision of the city - the city of spectacular consumption, competing in some imaginary urban race with other world cities. But such development took place against continuing suburbanisation and sprawl. In spite of all the building works, the city was still being worked out This book is a cultural history that will be essential reading for anyone interested in the recent history of urban life. It argues that the contemporary city is uniquely anxious, caught between nostalgia for the past, and uncertainty about the future. At a crucial moment in the history of the city, it cuts through the urbanistic propaganda spread by architects and politicians. This unique and challenging study will be of interest to students and practitioners alike.
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London's Contemporary Architecture: A Visitor's Guide
Kenneth Allinson
(2003)
Paperback - 200 pages
Architectural Press
ISBN: 0750658487
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
London's Contemporary Architecture: A Visitor's Guide is a practical and highly-illustrated guide to the best modern buildings in the British capital. In full colour throughout, this map-based book contains pithy and fascinating comments, plus lavish illustrations, of more than 130 examples of London architectural projects from the last two decades.
This third edition is completely up-to-date with the best and most interesting architecture of London, from the early 1980s right up to the first years of a new millennium for the city. As the book is logically arranged by geographical area, the reader is led on a physical and intellectual tour. This book directs the architectural enthusiast, professional or amateur, to the sites most worth visiting, and provides the essential background information for architectural appreciation. This includes references to the most significant and enjoyable of London's other architecture, of all periods.
Ken Allinson and Victoria Thornton possess a unique familiarity with London's architecture, serving on numerous public bodies and RIBA committees. Victoria is a founder of London Open House, an architectural charity that promotes the accessibility of London architecture. Ken is a practising architect, author of The Wild Card of Design and Getting There By Design, and also a studio lecturer at Oxford Brookes and Greenwich Universities. Together they currently run the research consultancy Architectural Dialogue, and for over seventeen years they have been researching and managing architectural study visits around the world.
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A Guide to the Architecture of London
Edward Jones, Christopher Woodward
(2000)
Paperback - 444 pages
Weidenfeld Nicolson Illustrated
ISBN: 1841880124
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
This is the first guide to tackle all of London's building history, from its Roman foundations through to the massive expansion of the nineteenth century which made London the largest city on earth. With over 1000 entries covering a 30 km square section of London ranging from Harrow to Dulwich, Greenwich to Hampton Court.
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London's Disused Underground Stations
J.C.Connor
(2001)
Hardcover - 128 pages
Capital Transport Publishing
ISBN: 185414250X
Review by Sapling Editor:
As the book itself suggests, "closed Underground stations hold a unique fascination... a street level building that recognisably was once an Underground station or a break in tube tunnelling that hints at a disused platform attracts our curiosity." Written by Jim Connor, one of the foremost authorities on the subject, 'London's Disused Underground Stations' does not disappoint, and the thoroughness of Connor's research is apparent throughout. The book provides an enthralling, chronological account of the stations, buildings and platforms which have closed, Connor drawing attention to the numerous traces which remain visible today, as well as explaining the circumstances leading to closure. Indeed, while obviously of interest to public transport aficionados, the book also offers a fascinating insight into the richness and changing styles of London Underground on-street architecture, many examples of which survive. In hardback format with over 100 photographs, the book's splendid content is complemented by its beautiful presentation, making it an essential read for anyone interested in the transport and architectural history of London -- Graham Soult
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Gaumont British Cinemas
Allen Eyles
(1996)
Paperback - 176 pages
BFI (British Film Institute) Publishing
ISBN: 0851705197
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
From rundown halls to the sumptuous Gaumont Palaces and the huge Gaumont State at Kilburn, the Gaumont circuit had cinemas in most high streets. The name was lost after a merger with the Odeon circuit, but many former Gaumonts are still operating today. Others are now listed buildings put to different uses, such as the New Victoria (an Apollo theatre) and the Troxy Stepney (a bingo hall). This text describes the often turbulent history of the Gaumont cinemas, their methods of operation and the work of their chief architect, W.E. Trent. It includes data on all 400 Gaumont buildings, titles of films given a release in the circuit and numerous illustrations of cinemas and advertising.
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Bridges That Changed the World
Bernhard Graf
(2002)
Hardcover - 127 pages
Prestel Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 3791327011
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
Whether they span rivers or harbours, cultures or countries, bridges have long been a symbol of man's ingenuity, perseverance, and thirst for exploration. Starting with ancient bridges built by the Mongol and Roman Empires through future bridges that exist only in blueprints, this newest addition to Prestel's highly successful "Changed the World" series travels the globe to examine fifty of the world's most important bridges and the history, legends, and people behind them.
In stunning two-page spreads filled with photographs, plans, drawings, and accessible, informative text, this colorful architectural and historical journey explains why bridges continue to fascinate us, both as examples of engineering genius and artistic vision. It reveals little-known facts that deepen our appreciation of the science and technology of bridge-building, introduces historic events in which bridges have played a central role, and offers surprising reexaminations of some of the world's most familiar bridges. From the glory of the Golden Gate to the grace of the Ponte Vecchio, the imposing presence of London's Tower Bridge to a stone structure in Afghanistan's Quala Panji that is still used today, Bridges That Changed the World is a celebration of our steadfast desire to connect with and discover the world around us.
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Terrorism, Risk and the City: The Making of a Contemporary Urban Landscape
Jon Coaffee
(2003)
Hardcover - 278 pages
Ashgate Publishing Limited
ISBN: 0754635554
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk:
The continued fortification of urban areas has attracted significant attention and has become particularly relevant in counter-terrorist strategies since 9/11. This book is articulated in the light of these discussions, which focus on notions of risk, security and the spatial restructuring of contemporary cities. In particular it examines how terrorist targeting of the City of London since the early 1990s has led to changes in both physical and institutional infrastructure. The book analyses how the various formal and informal strategies adopted in the City attempted to reduce both the physical and financial risk of terrorism. This was undertaken through a series of place-specific security initiatives and risk management policies which led to increased fortification, a substantial rise in terrorism insurance premiums and changing institutional relations at a variety of spatial scales to protect London's position as a global city. It is also argued that the security measures deployed were advanced not in terms of an anti-terrorist effort, but in relation to the unintended by-products of these approaches such as crime reduction and enhanced traffic management capabilities.
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Sir John Soane and the Country Estate (Reinterpreting Classicism)
Margaret Richardson (Foreword), Ptolemy Dean, Martin Charles (Photographer)
(1999)
Hardcover - 208 pages
Ashgate Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1840142936
Synopsis by Amazon.co.uk and Sapling Editor:
Sir John Soane (1753-1837) was one of Britain's most inventive architects, whose achievements include the Bank of England and the world's first picture gallery at Dulwich. His country estate work, inspired by classicl antiquity, ranges in scale from the remodelling of existing country houses, such as Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire and Aynhoe Park in Northamptonshire, to simple outbuildings. Each reveals further the emergence of key themes of Soane's style and the results of his precise attention to proportion, design detail, and light and shade. Using the Soane Museum and country house archives, Ptolemy Dean examines ten of Soane's country house projects, reconstructing the creativity between client and architect. With the author's own drawings in watercolour to illustrate Soane's use of light and space, and photographs by Martin Charles, the text offers an insight into the work of this renowned architect. An illustrated inventory, a fully researched guide to Soane's country house practice, details Soane's architectural legacy. More recently, the book's author, Ptolemy Dean, has become well-known to TV viewers as one of the 'ruin detectives' in BBC2's 'Restoration' series.
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London: The Biography
Peter Ackroyd
(2000)
Hardcover - 824 pages
Chatto and Windus
ISBN: 1856197166
Review by Amazon.co.uk:
When the eminent novelist and biographer Peter Ackroyd finished writing London: The Biography, he almost immediately had a heart attack, such was the effort of his 800-page work about the "human body" that is this most fascinating of cities. And not just any human body either, but "envisaged in the form of a young man with his arms outstretched in a gesture of liberation ... it embodies the energy and exaltation of a city continually beating in great waves of progress and of confidence". Probably there is no one better placed than Ackroyd--the author of mammoth lives of Dickens and Blake, and novels such as Hawksmoor and Dan Leno and the Lime House Golem which set singular characters against the backdrop of a city constantly shifting in time--to write such a rich, sinewy account of "Infinite London". Ackroyd's London is no mere chronology. Its chapters take on such varied themes as drinking, sex, childhood, poverty, crime and punishment, sewage, food, pestilence and fire, immigration, maps, theatre, war. We learn that gin was "the demon of London for half a century", and that "it has been estimated that in the 1740s and 1750s there were 17,000 'gin-houses'". Fleet Street was an area known for its "violent delights" where "a fourteen-year-old boy, only eighteen inches high, was to be seen in 1702 at a grocer's shop called the Eagle and Child by Shoe Lane". By the mid 19th-century "London had become known as the greatest city on earth". By 1939 "one in five of the British population had become a Londoner".
Though the variousness of London's chapters mean that it can be dipped into at random, Ackroyd is employing a skilful and continuous theme throughout, which constantly links past and present--the similarities of children's games in Lambeth in 1910 and 1999; the obsession with time--"in twenty-first century London time rushes forward and is everywhere apparent", while in 18th-century London the church clock of Newgate "regulated the times of hanging". Above all, he insists that the "dark secret life" of the metropolis is as relevant today as it was in perhaps its most appropriate period, Victorian London. Again and again Ackroyd returns to the image of London as a living organism, hence his use of the word "biography" in the title. At once awed by and intimate with this "ubiquitous" city, he stresses that "it can be located nowhere in particular ... its circumference is everywhere". --Catherine Taylor
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London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25
Iain Sinclair
(2003)
Paperback - 592 pages
Penguin Books
ISBN: 0141014741
Review by Amazon.co.uk:
One might be forgiven for thinking that the only thing more boring than spending a year walking around the M25 would be reading a large book about walking around the M25. Yet Iain Sinclair's London Orbital is a fascinating and curiously haunting read. Part of the reason is that Sinclair brings to the project an immense literary talent, an intense and lifelong interest in the history of London and some extremely interesting travelling companions.
The walk was taken in several stages, from Waltham Abbey to Shenley, Abbots Langley to Staines, Staines to Epsom and Epsom to Westerham before going on to Dartford, the river and Carfax and arriving back at Waltham Abbey. Each stage fills a chapter and the reader is advised to take a leaf out of Sinclair's own book by taking one stage, one chapter at a time. This is a large book of 450-odd pages and by the time the journey gets under way - about 60 pages in - even Sinclair's dazzling prose is not enough to offset the gloomy prospect of taking a second-hand trip around the London Orbital. And yet after the first trip one finds oneself being sucked in and thinking about some of the grey, ugly images, or being angered by the grasping and philistine approach of developers and copywriters and the cynicism and hypocrisy of government.
The history of London has long been Sinclair's great passion but he populates this strange excursion with flesh-and-blood people as well as literary and mythic figures: there's John Clare watching Byron's funeral procession before embarking on his epic three-day journey back to Northborough, "chewing tobacco and gnawing grass torn up from the roadside"; then there are tales of Dracula, of lost lunatic asylums, of passionate political activists crying out against toxic land and of meetings with ex-members of London's criminal underworld.
London Orbital gets under the skin. What looks at first like a dull and deeply unappealing journey is actually a multi-layered, lyrical, ugly, mythical, engaged and engaging excursion from the present into the past and back again. --Larry Brown
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18 Folgate Street
Dennis Severs, Peter Ackroyd (Introduction)
(2001)
Hardcover - 286 pages
Chatto and Windus
ISBN: 0701172797
Review by Amazon.co.uk:
The innocuous-sounding address of 18 Folgate Street is here the book of the tour of Dennis Severs' extraordinary recreation of a Georgian household in Spitalfields, a piece of theatrical still life, mesmerisingly conjured. Severs died at the end of 1999, but this alternative written version, with the sympathetic editing of Jenny Uglow, a gallery of photographs and an introduction by London's literary curator and, indeed, biographer, Peter Ackroyd, provides a unique posthumous flat-pack tour, time-capsuled for the future curious.
Severs, a more-English-than-thou Californian, bought the house in a derelict street just outside the Square Mile in 1979, and set upon installing himself and his lifelong acquisitions. Friends called it a "restoration comedy", but it was to become a historical drama, with Severs' declaration that "my canvas is your imagination". He installed the fictional Gervais/Jervis family, Huguenot silk weavers, from whose affairs Severs himself weaves his narrative magic. Beginning in the basement larder and kitchen, he takes the visitor-reader on a parade upwards, though the parlour, dining room, drawing room, bedroom, boudoir and attic of the house, summoning drama and narrative from the strategically arranged and decorated rooms, heavy with the air of recent occupation. At its best, it resembles a talking book, each room an episode linking to the next, and with Severs' constant evocation of duality, symmetry and dimension as he finds art in balance rather than chronological fidelity. Taste, however, can be a cruel, haranguing thing, something Severs shares when his singular, proportionate vision of the "Space Between" takes pleasure in reading too much into things. Does it work as well on the page? Inevitably, not fully; the effect is reductive, and contrary to the very principle of Severs' ambition. However, this quirky externalisation of this eccentric Anglophile's life, and its epoch-tripping celebration of etymology, social history, hearth drama and cultural and philosophical commentary, allied to tantalisingly brief snatches of autobiography, serves as the final will and testament of Dennis Severs, who rejuvenated the soul of a house with his own charged, imaginative kindling. Ultimately, the house's motto stands as the book's--"Aut Visum Aut Non": you either see it or you don't. --David Vincent
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