GLIAS

Book reviews — June 2024

"Modern Buildings in Britain, a Gazetteer", by Owen Hatherley
608 pages illustrated with photographs by Chris Matthews. Particular Books, 2022. ISBN 978-0241534632
This enormous book was as you might expect rather expensive when published, it is now available at £32, a much more reasonable price, via Amazon and there is plenty of material here for the GLIAS reader. But, of course, the book covers the whole of Britain from before 1900 to the present, a colossal task which means that coverage could well be uneven.

As an example of the author's style here is a sample of what Owen writes in the introduction about the Lloyd's Building by Richard Rogers:

... it is senseless not to describe the best work of 1980s corporate High-Tech — such as Richard Rogers's dizzying, endlessly fascinating masterpiece, Lloyd's of London — as modernist. While the building forecloses all the social optimism of the modern movement, however much the architect himself would elsewhere try to revive it, this thrilling statement of amoral futurism, this utterly dynamic, totally confident revelling in technocratic form, cannot be construed as anything other than modernist.

Because of its great size the book is extremely heavy, making it not that easy to read. Readers might prefer the digital version which costs £29.99 and this should be machine searchable. This is not a book review. Rather it is a note, informing our readers that this book might now be within their price range. It is to be hoped that more publishers will consider this kind of reduction. The book 'The Architecture of Steam Waterworks and the Victorian Sanitary Crisis' by James Douet noted in the February GLIAS Newsletter, number 330 p12, is a particularly relevant candidate and its subject matter is more relevant to GLIAS interests than is this volume's. Bob Carr

"Taken by Trains — The Life and Photographs of William Nash 1909-1952", by Kate Robinson and Robert Forsythe
Oakwood Press 2004, still available new
At first sight this book appears to be a fairly routine collection of photographs depicting trains pulled by steam locomotives, but this is deceptive. Apart from the usual captions there are sections of longer text. These appear more frequently towards the back of the book and here there are proposals for LMS railway electrification in the late 1930s.

The book examines William Nash's professional life as a career railwayman during which time he was involved in pioneering studies which included electrifying the Midland Main Line as far north as Harpenden. Nash also worked on the Oxford to Cambridge line where shortly before the war a streamlined diesel train was put into service. Nash appreciated the wider potential of an East-West rail route.

The Second World War was so disruptive things were setback by a good 20 years or more. Tragically William Nash's life was cut short in the Harrow & Wealdstone railway disaster of 1952. Kate Robinson is his youngest daughter and the death of her father at the age of 43 must have been an utterly terrible event. The title of the book Taken by Trains is all too apt. Bob Carr

© GLIAS, 2024