Download or read book Nairn s London written by Ian Nairn and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR and OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 'This book is a record of what has moved me between Uxbridge and Dagenham. My hope is that it moves you, too.' Nairn's London is an idiosyncratic, poetic and intensely subjective meditation on a city and its buildings. Including railway stations, synagogues, abandoned gasworks, dock cranes, suburban gardens, East End markets, Hawksmoor churches, a Gothic cinema and twenty-seven different pubs, it is a portrait of the soul of a place, from a writer of genius.
Download or read book Nairn s Paris written by Ian Nairn and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 50th Anniversary of original publication; this is a unique Paris guidebook from the late, great, architecture and travel writer Ian Nairn. Illustrated with the author's black and white snaps of the city, Nairn shows his eye for detail - whether it is stonework on an archway, shadows cast by a railing, or an empty chair in a Paris park, in this book which celebrates the City of Light. Nairn's Paris captures the city on the cusp of great changes and provides a glimpse of a city that is about to disappear. Here is an idiosyncratic and unpretentious portrait of the 'collective masterpiece' that is Paris. Introduced by writer and BBC presenter Andrew Hussey, author of the popular Paris: The Secret History. 'About one third of the book is discovery, in the sense that I came upon the sites by accident or by following a topographical hunch. There must be many more, and all you need for the search is the ability to turn off the main road, switch on your antennae and respond. Good luck.' - Ian Nairn
Download or read book The Enchanted Glass written by Tom Nairn and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2011-11-07 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this acclaimed study of British statehood, identity and culture, Tom Nairn deftly dispels the conviction that the Royal Family is nothing more than an amusing relic of feudalism or a mere tourist attraction. Instead, he argues that the monarchy is both apex and essence of the British state, the symbol of a national backwardness. In this fully updated edition, Nairn’s powerful and bitterly comic prose lays bare Britain’s peculiar, pseudo-modern, national identity—which remains stubbornly fixated on the Crown and its constitutional framework, the “parliamentary sovereignty” of Westminster.
Download or read book Britain s Changing Towns written by Ian Nairn and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Break Up of Britain written by Tom Nairn and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this classic text, first published in 1977, Tom Nairn memorably depicts the 'slow foundering' of the United Kingdom on the rocks of imperial decline, constitutional anachronism and the gathering force of civic nationalism. Rich in comparisons between the nationalisms of the British Isles and those of the wider world, thoughtful in its treatment of the interaction between nationality and social class, The Break-Up of Britain concludes with a bravura essay on the Janus-faced nature of national identity. Postscripts from the Thatcher and Blair years trace the political strategies whose upshot accelerated the demise of a British state they were intended to serve. As a second Scottish independence referendum beckons, a new Introduction by Anthony Barnett underlines the book's enduring relevance.
Download or read book The Perfect London Walk written by Daniel Curley and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes a walking tour in London, off the beaten path, and shares observations on British customs and history, and points of interest along the way.
Download or read book Cyclogeography Journeys of a London Bicycle Courier written by Jon Day and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cyclogeography is about the bicycle in the cultural imagination and also a portrait of London as seen from the saddle. In the great tradition of the psychogeographers, Jon Day attempts to depart from the map and reclaim the streets of the city. Informed by several grinding years spent as a bicycle courier, he lifts the lid on the solitary life of the courier. Traveling the unmapped byways, shortcuts, and urban edgelands, couriers are the declining, invisible workforce of the city. The parcels they deliver keep things running. For those who survive the crushing toughness of the job, the bicycle can become what holds them together.
Download or read book Ian Nairn written by Gillian Darley and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ian Nairn erupted onto the architectural scene in 1955 with the publication of The Architectural Review issue 'Outrage'. A mathematician by training, and a former RAF pilot with no formal architectural education, Nairn's visceral and savage attack on the blandness of post-war British design struck an immediate chord with a surprisingly diverse array of traditionalists and modernists, and gave rise to a new concept: that of 'Subtopia'. Gillian Darley and David McKie's study of Nairn - Ian Nairn: Words in Place - published by Five Leaves, reintroduces to a new generation an architectural critic whose work has influenced writers and critics such as J.G. Ballard, Will Self, Iain Sinclair and Jonathan Meades, who once described Nairn as 'a great poet of the metropolis'. Gillian Darley and David McKie will be discussing Ian Nairn's life and work, and Owen Hatherley, author of A New Kind of Bleak and A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain will be in the chair.
Download or read book The Balkans 1804 1999 written by Misha Glenny and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 756 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of two centuries of history, providing a background for general readers on the terrible events happening in the Balkans. It gives insights into the roots of the region's reputation for violence and explains the origins of modern Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Greece, Bulgaria and Albania.
Download or read book The Alternative Guide to the London Boroughs written by and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guest-edited by Owen Hatherley, thirty-three writers; architects, activists, and Londoners present thirty-three essays exploring famous and unheralded buildings, streets, estates and neighbourhoods across the thirty-three London boroughs.00With contributions from columnist Aditya Chakrabortty to the historian Gillian Darley, via playwright Hanif Kureishi and the politician Emma Dent Coad, the Alternative Guide to the London Boroughs is a journey into the neighbourhoods, housing estates and public buildings of London?s rich urban landscape.00Encompassing everything from Brutalist Polish community centres to suburban garden cities, from pioneering modernist estates to ornate Victorian greenhouses, as seen through everything from grime videos to the films of Patrick Keiller, this book will be a refreshing journey into the city you have been missing, and a celebration of the buildings, places and landscapes which make it special.00In reimagining our guidebook this year we set out to create a book that is as interesting to handle as it is to read. A thoughtful approach to typography and printing conceived by Studio Christopher Victor will bring together the longer essays with highlights from Open City?s extended network of community groups. Richly illustrated with images and artefacts from some of the city?s vast and eclectic museum collections and archives that have remained closed to the public throughout the pandemic, the guide will be offset-printed in London using premium book papers and metallic spot colours.
Download or read book A Short History of London written by Simon Jenkins and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Fascinating and timely. Required reading for every developer, planner or councillor who holds London in trust today' Griff Rhys Jones 'Accessible, clear and readable' Rowan Moore, The Observer ________________________ LONDON: a settlement founded by the Romans, occupied by the Saxons, conquered by the Danes and ruled by the Normans. This unremarkable place - not even included in the Domesday Book - became a medieval maze of alleys and courtyards, later to be chequered with grand estates of Georgian splendour. It swelled with industry and became the centre of the largest empire in history. And rising from the rubble of the Blitz, it is now one of the greatest cities in the world. From the prehistoric occupants of the Thames valley to the preoccupied commuters of today, Simon Jenkins brings together the key events, individuals and trends in London's history to create a matchless portrait of the capital. ________________________ 'A vivid and deeply well-informed account of London's history' Charles Saumarez Smith, Professor of Cultural History, Queen Mary University of London 'Extremely informative and witty' Roy Porter, author of London: A Social History on Landlords to London 'A short, invigorating gallop over two and a half thousand years' Scotsman on A Short History of Europe
Download or read book A New Kind of Bleak Journeys Through Urban Britain written by Owen Hatherley and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anatomy of failed-state Britain, by the author of A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. In A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, Owen Hatherley skewered New Labour’s architectural legacy in all its witless swagger. Now, in the year of the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, he sets out to describe what the Coalition’s altogether different approach to economic mismanagement and civic irresponsibility is doing to the places where the British live. In a journey that begins and ends in the capital, Hatherley takes us from Plymouth and Brighton to Belfast and Aberdeen, by way of the eerie urbanism of the Welsh valleys and the much-mocked splendour of modernist Coventry. Everywhere outside the unreal Southeast, the building has stopped in towns and cities, which languish as they wait for the next bout of self-defeating austerity. Hatherley writes with unrivalled aggression about the disarray of modern Britain, and yet this remains a book about possibilities remembered, about unlikely successes in the midst of seemingly inexorable failure. For as well as trash, ancient and modern, Hatherley finds signs of the hopeful country Britain once was and hints of what it might become.
Download or read book Faces of Nationalism written by Tom Nairn and published by Verso. This book was released on 1997 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "The Modern Janus", Nairn argued for the democratic necessity of nationalism in the modern world. In this work, he addresses the subsequent upheavals caused by nationalism.
Download or read book The Politics of Dispossession written by Edward W. Said and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-24 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author of the groundbreaking The Question of Palestine, Edward Said has been America's most outspoken advocate for Palestinian self-determination. As these collected essays amply prove, he is also our most intelligent and bracingly heretical writer on affairs involving not only Palestinians but also the Arab and Muslim worlds and their tortuous relations with the West. "Solidly imbued with historical context and geopolitical conjecture...fresh, unpredictable, personal and incorruptible writing."—Boston Globe In The Politics of Dispossession, Said traces his people's struggle for statehood through twenty-five years of exile, from the PLO's bloody 1970 exile from Jordan through the debacle of the Gulf War and the ambiguous 1994 peace accord with Israel. As frank as he is about his personal involvement in that struggle, Said is equally unsparing in his demolition of Arab icons and American shibboleths. Stylish, impassioned, and informed by a magisterial knowledge of history and literature, The Politics of Dispossession is a masterly synthesis of scholarship and polemic that has the power to redefine the debate over the Middle East.
Download or read book The Europe Illusion written by Stuart Sweeney and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was one of the pre-eminent figures of the Italian Renaissance – he was also one of the most paradoxical. He spent an incredible amount of time writing notebooks, perhaps even more time than he ever held a brush, yet at the same time Leonardo was Renaissance culture’s most fanatical critic of the word. When Leonardo criticized writing he criticized it as an expert on words; when he was painting, writing remained in the back of his mind. In this book, Joost Keizer argues that the comparison between word and image fuelled Leonardo’s thought. The paradoxes at the heart of Leonardo’s ideas and practice also defined some of Renaissance culture’s central assumptions about culture and nature: that there is a look to script, that painting offered a path out of culture and back to nature, that the meaning of images emerged in comparison with words, and that the difference between image-making and writing also amounted to a difference in the experience of time.
Download or read book A Guide to Modernism in Metro Land written by Joshua Abbott and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Barnet to Richmond, explore the history of London's Metro-Land A Guide to Modernism in Metro-Land is your essential pocket guide to the modernist architecture of London's suburbs. Inspired by John Betjeman's 1973 documentary Metro-Land and the writing of Ian Nairn, it examines the growth of the city's suburbs from the 1920s up to the present day – a story that is closely interwoven with the development of innovative architecture in Britain – through its most remarkable modernist buildings. Featuring work by architects such as Charles Holden, Erno Goldfinger and Norman Foster, the book covers nine London boroughs and two counties: Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Enfield, Haringey, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Richmond, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. It is designed to help you explore Metro-Land's modernist heritage, featuring short descriptions of each building alongside maps of the areas covered, and more than 100 colour photographs.
Download or read book The British Constitution Now written by Ferdinand Mount and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-12-13 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the former head of Mrs Thatcher's policy unit looks at the state of the British Constitution at a crucial time in its history, arguing that recent years have seen an increased willingness to monitor itself on the part of the Establishment, but that more audacious reforms are needed to restore full confidence in Parliament, government and the legal system.
