Hoskins Shell Guide to Leicestershire includes a wonderful section on where
to buy the best pork pies...
Matthew
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Belford" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 11:30 AM
Subject: Re: [CHA] Bloody Old Britain
In similar vein are the 13 Festival of Britain guides (1951). The best
ones are by W G Hoskins, which include marvellous passages on the
sublimity of rural landscape, juxtaposed with revulsion at the horrors
of industrial landscapes and the intrusion of the 20th century. (Despite
- as Matthew Butler has pointed out - advocating driving tours as the
means of seeing these landscapes.)
Paul
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion List for Contemporary and Historical
> Archaeology [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Matthew Butler
> Sent: 13 June 2008 11:09
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Bloody Old Britain
>
> Let me first declare my interest - in addition to being a
> member of the CHAT group, and a mature and (very) part time
> PhD student under Mark Horton and Josh Pollard at Bristol, I
> also run a modest second hand book business specialising in
> exactly the sort of works to which Anne Bickford refers.
>
> That said, the works to which Anne refers - above all,
> perhaps, the Shell Guides - are a wonderful insight not only
> into the landscape of Britain between about 1930 and the
> early 1960s, they also tell us much about how that landscape
> was perceived.
>
> What made these books possible was the way in which the
> British landscape was being opened up to a much wider public,
> first through the railway and then the motor car. The guides
> of late Victorian Britain - principally those published by
> Murray's and Black's were aimed at the rail traveller.
> There was then a whole series of guides in which the petrol
> companies played a major part - not surprisingly - of which
> the Shell Guides are the best known. The authors - and the
> young John Betjeman and John Piper were the editors of the
> early Shell Guides - were concerned to give a very personal
> view of the towns, villages and countryside alongside
> impassioned pleas for its preservation. The genre was given
> a boost, ironically perhaps, by the Second World War when
> there was a real fear that if Britain was taken over by Nazi
> Germany much would be lost for ever. Also, many people from
> cities were living in the countryside for the first time
> This was what originally lay behind the "Recording Britain"
> series and the main reason Batsford became involved.
> Interestingly, Betjeman was of the view that the Batsford
> Books were never up to much, and that the publisher lost its
> way having, before the war, specialised in the publication of
> more detailed books on architectural history.
>
> Latterly, all sorts of people got in on the act - some of the
> last books of this sort published in the 1960s were by the
> "National" petrol brand and edited by Sir Hugh Casson. John
> Julius Norwich attempted to revive the Shell Guides in the
> 1980s but didn't get very far.
>
> There was, at times, quite a bit of grit in the oyster.
> Thomas Sharp, architect and town planner, wrote the
> Northumberland and Durham Shell Guide in the 1930s and in his
> introductory note stated: "The guide who with his head in
> the air and his nose in a pocket handkerchief takes you to
> see a battered bit of medieval church and never so much hints
> at the filthy village that surrounds it, is a maddening
> creature. That filthy village is far more important than the
> church...The proud unhononred struggle that goes on in ten
> thousand homes of the unemployed in the derelict villages and
> distressed homes of this region is far nobler and infinitely
> more important than any battles fought long ago between the
> Percy and the Douglas, than any love-sick ghost that walks on
> the castle walls"
>
> Of course, there was an irony at the heart of all this -
> Betjeman once famously wrote "The car is the enemy" - yet by
> encouraging more visitors and, eventually, mass tourism, the
> authors were encouraging the destruction of much of the magic
> they perceived.
>
> There is a book in all this, or at least an interesting
> contribution to a CHAT gathering...
>
> Anyway, I am going to get hold of a copy of the Crawford Book asap!
>
> Matthew Butler
>
> PS Pre-war Shell Guides are jolly valuable (soft covers and
> ring bound) so look after them if you have any!
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Anne Bickford" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 7:17 AM
> Subject: Re: [CHA] Bloody Old Britain
>
>
> >I just read that review and the book looks great. I will
> have to buy it.
> >I have a first ed of his Arch in the Field and Said and
> Done. I think
> >I must have bought that remaindered in the early 60s, but it
> was pub.
> >10 yrs earlier. Of course there is a time lag here in Australia. I
> >hope something is done with his photos, they would be an incredible
> >record now, and his book Bloody Old Britain. I have made a
> collection
> >of those sort of books on England in the last 30 yrs or so. England
> >and the Octopus, and the Batsford Books about houses and
> counties, and
> >and those books about cottage life and cottages. So many of
> them were
> >published between the wars and in the early 50s. I also
> have a set of
> >beautifully illustrated A4 books called Recording Britain. I have
> >collected them because they convey the writers' feelings
> about their
> >heritage so strongly, and are the sites are so well
> photographed and
> >drawn. Of course over here no one was interested in such
> books and I
> >got them in op shops (I don't know if you have this phrase,
> like Oxfam
> >shops or church run shops with clothes for the poor) for
> 6d. I suppose
> >members of this list are interested in such books now. Are
> they hard to find?
> >
> > Annie
> >
> >
> > On 12/06/2008, at 6:13 PM, dan Hicks wrote:
> >
> >> Hi John -
> >> Yes, Crawford's paper and extensive photographic archive
> is held in
> >> Oxford (it's an eclectic collection, including his collection of
> >> images of sites connected with with life of Karl Marx!)
> >>
> >> The thing to read on Crawford in this context is Kitty
> Hauser's new
> >> book 'Bloody Old Britain: OGS Crawford and the Archaeology
> of Modern Life'
> >> (Granta 2008).
> >>
> >> There was a review in the Literary Review last month -
> >> http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/heffer_05_08.html
> >>
> >> Dan
> >>
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> contemp-hist-arch is a list for news and events in
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contemp-hist-arch is a list for news and events
in contemporary and historical archaeology, and
for announcements relating to the CHAT conference group.
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For email subscription options see:
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For CHAT meetings see:
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contemp-hist-arch is a list for news and events
in contemporary and historical archaeology, and
for announcements relating to the CHAT conference group.
-------
For email subscription options see:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/archives/contemp-hist-arch.html
-------
For CHAT meetings see:
http://www.bris.ac.uk/archanth/events/chat.html
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