Description

‘Majestic … [an] excitable, illuminating and sure to be enduring work’ Financial Times

‘Elegant, erudite and entertaining … a superbly detailed picture of an architectural era’ The Times

‘A magnificent monument in itself to a fine architectural writer’ Simon Heffer, Telegraph

British architecture between the wars is most famous for the rise of modernism – the flat roofs, clean lines and concrete of the Isokon flats in Hampstead and the Penguin Pool at London Zoo – but the reality was far more diverse. As the modernists came of age and the traditionalists began to decline, there arose a rich variety of styles and tastes in Britain and across the empire, a variety that reflected the restless zeitgeist of the years before the Second World War.

At the time of his death in 2017, Gavin Stamp, one of Britain’s leading architectural critics, was at work on a deeply considered account of British architecture in the interwar period, correcting what he saw as the skewed view of earlier historians who were unable to see past modernism. Beginning with a survey of the modern movement after the armistice, Interwar untangles the threads that link lesser-known movements like the Egyptian revival with the enduring popularity of the Tudorbethan, to chronicle one of Britain’s most dynamic architectural periods. The result is more than an architectural history – it is the portrait of a changing nation.

As an account of the period that still shapes much of Britain’s towns and cities, Gavin Stamp’s final work is the definitive history of British architecture between the Great War and the Blitz.

Publisher Review

A masterful revision of the history of interwar architecture, no longer as a barren seedbed of modernism but as an era of stylistic diversity, invention and delight — Simon Jenkins Praise for Gavin Stamp * : * It is a puzzle to me that Stamp is not better known. He is eloquent, funny and eccentric. He is as familiar with the streets of our cities as a taxi driver with The Knowledge, and brilliant at connecting sublime ideas with the ordinary aspects of our daily lives — Charles Moore * Sunday Telegraph * Acute, erudite, elegant * The Times * A wonderful celebration of the best in English design, and a stylish invective against the worst. — Mary Beard, on ‘Anti-Ugly’ * Observer * Informative and engaging about all kinds of English things, from royal tombs to London buses … Stamp always tell[s] you something new, which is a wonderful thing — Ian Jack * Guardian * Much, much more than architectural history, for here, encapsulated in marmoreally angry prose, is an account of that collective act of mass murder, without parallel in history, known as the Great War. An unforgettable, passionate book — A.N. Wilson, on ‘The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme’ * Evening Standard *