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
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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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contemp-hist-arch is a list for news and events
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for announcements relating to the CHAT conference group.
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