LONDON, MOST FASCINATING of great cities, has been very badly damaged by dreadful developments in recent years, many of them money-led, but devoid of any feeling for context or even for human beings. Meanwhile the wreckage of whole areas through ideological “redevelopment” and the imposition of bog-standard, dysfunctional, leaking, Modernist blocks to house large numbers of unfortunate people has blighted many lives and ruined large parts of the capital.
Yet there was a time when the place was immeasurably improved, graced by some marvellous, real, finely crafted architecture, so that by 1914 London was a much better place than it had been in the middle of the nineteenth century, although its governance was peculiarly disjointed, unlike many Continental cities.
By 1914 it had acquired fine schools and many other building…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2021