C O N T E X T 1 0 8 : M A R C H 2 0 0 9 47 Book reviews Something enlightening Images of Change: an archaeology of England’s contemporary landscape, Sefryn Penrose with contributors, English Heritage, 2007, 200pp, 116 colour and 20 b&w illustrations, ISBN 978 1 905624 14 0, £17.99 The problem with any review of landscape change in the 20th century is that there was an awful lot of it. Here the approach is to offer a series of snapshot views of the last 50-odd years with the aim of provoking debate on the way we all experience landscape. The authors are archaeologists. As June Miller explains in the afterword, what archaeologists do is ‘look at people’s stuff and then think about it’ and then ‘try to say something enlightening’. They do this in four main sections: People, Politics, Profit and Pleasure. Each commences with a contributor’s personal journey, followed by an introduction and series of short essays on topics as diverse as homelessness and airports (People), hospitals and protest (Politics), forestry and mobile phones (Profit), and front gardens and holiday camps (pleasure). There are a total of 63 topics, each generally given a two-page snapshot treatment with an evocative mixture of colour and black and white photographs. A bibliography, including a number of websites, provides for further investigation. Our changing perceptions are highlighted. ‘We no longer see post-war architecture through post-war spectacles’ and, as noted in Antony Gormley’s foreword, ‘landscape becomes more passed through than dwelt in’. The idea of a journey and the ability to travel in ‘our mechanical alter ego, the car’ are recurring themes.The motorway network provides the skeleton of the ‘new landscape of profit’ and the impetus for out-of-town experiences from shopping malls to country parks formed on reclaimed industrial landscapes. While England entered the second world war ‘a world leader in heavy and manufacturing industry’, it entered the 21st century with a new landscape; as Gormley puts it ‘formed by the dominance of information and distribution taking over from production... the era of convenience’. This and the ‘almost work-like way in which the English must enjoy their freetime’ have resulted in the section devoted to Pleasure. This is where Heritage slots in, from Bath as ‘a projection of its past’ to the National Trust’s 1995 purchase of Paul McCartney’s childhood home in Liverpool: ‘the epitome of the ordinariness and extraordinariness of the post-war landscape’. It has been noted that late 20th century heritage is ‘unfinished business… it is unavoidable… it won’t go away (Graham Fairclough, English Heritage head of characterisation, in Conservation Bulletin, No 56, Autumn 2007). However, Images of Change also records that elements of our recent landscape are already, like McCartney’s house, receding into a nostalgic past: the post-war optimism of the prefab and 1950s Blackpool, a longlost, moss-covered toy at Greenham Common and Teletubbyland before being ploughed back to farmland – ‘as if the teletubbies had never actually existed’.Whether this book will provoke widespread debate is questionable. But in recording a period which included Harold Macmillan’s 1957 ‘never had it so good’ and the early 21st century ‘new era of affluence’, it is already an historic document in its own right. Helen MThomas, a freelance research consultant on architectural and historic designed landscapes. Second city of the empire The Buildings of Ireland: Dublin Yale University Press, Christine Casey, London 2005, 776pp, 73 b&w illustrations, 111 colour photos, ISBN 0 300 10923 7, £29.95 When Nikolaus Pevsner had made up his mind about the requirements for what was to become the Buildings of England series, one wonders what he might have done had it been suggested that this should extend to the whole British Isles. Half a century ago as he embarked on his extraordinary exploration of buildings and monuments, what would he have made of also assessing the merits of the whole of Ireland?With the coverage of Scotland andWales almost completed by his successors, the publication of this third volume in the Buildings of Ireland series (following those for North Leinster and NorthWest Ulster) is bringing this complete coverage close to reality. Several cities in England or Scotland laid claim to be second in the empire to London in the 19th century, but Dublin probably has the best claim in relation to the 18th century. Those other large cities forged ahead and reinvented themselves during unprecedented industrial expansion. Ireland’s and Images of Change anarchaeologyofEngland’scontemporarylandscape £17.99 51233 I mages of Change SefrynPenrosewithcontributor s SefrynPenrose withcontributors withaForeword byAntonyGormley
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