ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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Best of 2024: Andy Hedgecock
Two books and a film that examine cultural excavation and the impact of place on behaviour
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
PAUL KNOX’s London: A History of 300 Years in 25 Buildings (Yale, £25) is a salmagundi of celebration, inquest, polemic and prophecy.
Each chapter is the biography of a building in which architectural analysis triggers thoughts on fashion, morality, marketing, celebrities, ergonomics, local government and the collision of past and present. These apparently digressive ideas coalesce into a meta-narrative of the city’s evolving identities.
The oldest building considered is a neoclassical townhouse of the 1750s; the newest is Google’s state-of-the-art UK headquarters (opening in 2025).
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