IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
London’s blighted skyline
Despite its anti-socialist bias, JOHN GREEN recommends a new survey of British architecture that seeks to educate and provoke

A Short History of British Architecture - from Stonehenge to the Shard
Simon Jenkins, Penguin Viking, £26.99
SIMON JENKINS is one of our last remaining journalists of the old school – he writes with passion as well as compassion, perceptively and rationally, in a style that combines articulateness, erudition and accessibility.
Jenkins has been deputy chair of English Heritage and today is chair of the National Trust. Although he is a conservative with a small “c” and despises many of those with a capital “C”, his commentaries are always provocative and apposite. This, his latest book, will enlighten and entertain, as it will undoubtedly annoy some of our more extremist architectural iconoclasts.
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