C O N T E X T 1 2 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1 43 read with this in mind, however, there is much practical information here which can inform the library designer. The overall impression generated by the studies is one of confusion. The question remains: what will the role of our libraries be in 10 or 20 years’ time, and how do they respond to ever-evolving information technology while maintaining the laudable basic premise of knowledge and inspiration for all, established in the mid 19th century? The plethora of surveys, analysis of opinion, committee reviews and statistical analysis described in Renewing our Libraries, seems to blur any sense of clarity or direction. Books, Buildings and Social Engineering provides an excellent platform from which to debate the future role of the library. It is important not to jump on to the latest technological bandwagon, without a detailed understanding of the past. The book should serve to inform the debate into the future of libraries, and serve as a warning not to lose the inherent sense of place, and a wider concept of ‘civicness’. The case studies fromRenewing our Libraries underline how easy it is to consider libraries purely in terms of content and the danger of seeking too much opinion, rather than determining a clarity of vision. Perhaps we need reminding that libraries are not just repositories for information: they can be, simply, inspirational places to be. Robert Chambers, associate with Purcell Miller Tritton Architects, Liverpool The mass medium Cinemas in Britain: a history of cinema architecture Richard Gray, Lund Humphries, 2011, 176pp hardback, fully illustrated in black and white and colour, ISBN 978 1 84822 072 0, £45 This new and updated edition of Richard Gray’s original 1996 survey of British cinemas culminates in a gazetteer consisting of notes on more than 2,000 sites. It demonstrates what a huge subject is covered under the heading of cinema history. At its height, just after the end of the second world war, annual cinema attendances reached numbers that equated to a visit to see a film each week by every member of the adult population. During this era film was the dominant form of mass entertainment. It resulted in a vast industry employing developers, architects, builders and craftsmen who created picture palaces. In my boyhood, spent in a mediumsized Essex town, there were four local cinemas. Of these, two were notable creations of the late-1930s which later achieved listed status. Now only one still stands. It no longer shows films, it is disused and its future is problematic. Gray’s book covers the history of cinema from Trewey’s pioneering show in Regent Street in 1896, through the good times between the world wars and on to the 1984 low point in attendances, when each person averaged one visit a year. The subsequent resurgence has brought British cinema-going back to an average of three annual visits, still a small fraction of the late-1940s. When the industry was at its height, the picture house had a dominating place on high streets and in suburbs. Cinemas brought to the masses a unique experience of large-scale architecture. The significance of the medium was immense. Foreign films, other than American ones, were unknown and there was nothing except a mainstream of films. It is ironic that the big picture house in my town was called The State. It was a palatial building that demonstrated in its overall effect what we had absorbed culturally from the diet of American and British films, from their music, from the decor and from the frequent ritual of going to the pictures. The British state played little part in the creation of this architectural empire. Planning regulations placed few restraints on their construction. Ideas on design and decor flowed in from the US and from Europe, and well-travelled developers and architects were eager to bring the exotic and even the avantgarde to picture house design, despite the conservatism that censorship and public taste still imposed on the film diet. The state does not appear to have directly entered the fray until the first cinema buildings were listed in 1972. Why should a building you did not see (since it was often night when you went and because the lights were out for most of the performance) attract so much architectural attention? The book explains how competition and prestige gave rise to such extravagant displays as are found in 1930s cinemas, and how a cinema style emerged from the proto-theatres of the early days. German theorists had tackled the question of the building’s nighttime exterior and had created night architecture, for example in the TitaniaPalast, Berlin (1928) that soon found its way to the UK’s cinemas such as The Sheen in East Sheen, Surrey. Conservation professionals will find the book useful as well as entertaining. The question of significance that is so often asked when applications and appeals are being decided, or when heritage statements are being drafted or reviewed, may be answered more effectively by consulting this comprehensive and thorough book of reference. The architects discussed here were often leaders, not followers of taste, despite the medium’s popular appeal. The bright young Turks (the most modern-thinking mid-century designers) generally remained outside the sphere of British cinema architecture, and the accomplished full colour drawings in perspective that are reproduced here (such as of Robert Atkinson’s interior for the Regent Cinema, Brighton) show a mastery of highly traditional artistic skills. Graham Tite, conservation officer, BEAMS A sense of identity The Synagogues of Britain and Ireland Sharman Kadish,Yale University Press, 2011, 398 pp, 248 colour and b&w plates, ISBN 978 0 300 17051 1, £45 In 1656, Jews were permitted to return to Britain, having been banished in 1290. Their places of worship since the resettlement are the subject of this ambitious survey, the first comprehensive study of British synagogues. It is not a narrow architectural history. Kadish describes the development of the building type within its changing social and religious context. Successive waves of immigration, first Sephardic (Spanish-Portuguese) and then Ashkenazi (Eastern European), brought in different liturgical
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