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A Modernist in Suburbia
Here's an absolute treat. In 2012 academic Dr Fiona Fisher and film maker Gilly Booth made A Modernist in Suburbia, a short documentary about architect Kenneth Wood.Wood worked on a number of...
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Home Counties by Saint Etienne
The release of a new Saint Etienne album is always something I'm going to get overexcited about. Each of its predecessors has a strong personality: the London dreamscape of So Tough; the electronic...
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Look and Live Better with Philips, 1972
This pristine 1972 catalogue for Philips, complete with newly decimalised price list, has made my day. Highlights include the terrifying looking heat lamp ('glow with health the whole year round'),...
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T Dan Smith film from 1986
On the 27th March 1986 BBC2 broadcast a documentary called T. Dan Smith on the 70th birthday of Mr Newcastle himself. Smith, out of prison after serving a corruption charge for his part in the John...
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Grayson Perry meets the Brutalism Appreciation Society, 1989
Do you remember 'TV Hell', that chaotic TV style pioneered by Channel 4 and BBC2 in the late 1980s, which led to excessive degradations of The Word among others. Well, back in 1989 a young artist and...
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New Town Old Town...
Here's a handful of films about postwar new towns and their old town problems – how to integrate historic villages and towns into new ones being built.The first is from Hemel Hempstead in 1969. Here...
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Southend vs Basildon (1973)
Here's a great short film made by Essex County Council, from 1973. From the era where planners ran in fear of the car, this film shows how Southend took the example of the new town of Basildon and...
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Nick Broomfield's 1971 film on Liverpool slum clearance
Nick Broomfield's documentaries might not be everyone's cup of tea. His observational style and frequent interruptions in his own work have made him one of the most recognisable film-makers working...
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The Green Girdle, 1941
Here's a fascinating film from 1941 made by the British Council, on the 'green girdle' or green belt around London.I tell the story of the green belts in my book Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of...
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The Ladybird Book of New Addington's Secret Police
Anyone wondering about my Ladybird modernism obsession need wonder no further after watching this amazing 1962 Pathe news film. It follows the story of the local policeman in New Addington, the estate...
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Protected views
Fancy seeing a film of me acting furtively in the dusk at Addington Hills? Of course you do.This short film was made for the National Trust London's campaign for protected views for South London. Other...
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Joe Gilbert's obsessions
Documentary film-maker Joe Gilbert is obsessed with brutalist buildings and postwar architecture. In a series of short films he's catalogued this obsession in great detail. Usually shot in black and...
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The Dirty Modern Scoundrel Christmas Gift Guide 2017
Hello my lovelies. What on earth do you get that grouchy social geographer, town planner or brutalist fanatic for Christmas? Well, the Dirty Modern Scoundrel Christmas Gift Guide hopes to solve all...
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Cedric Price rips it up and starts again
What better way to start the new year, than with architectural anarchist and Fun Palace king Cedric Price ripping it up and starting again, talking about demolition in the early 1970s.Against a...
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Young People go to WH Smith
The internet. If you ignore all the Nazis, bots and people posting the laughing-weeping emoji it's brilliant.Well, this clip is, at any rate.An advert for WHSmith filmed in Croydon Whitgift Centre and...
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Outskirts, the paperback!
Very excited that the paperback of my book, Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt, is out on 8th February.Obviously I'm all about buying books from actual shops with people and carpets...
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Livingston – a Town for the Lothians
Here's another of those heroic new town corporation films from the 1960s. This is for one of the last new towns, Livingston in Scotland.It takes us on a journey from overcrowded Glasgow to bucolic...
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How To Love Brutalism
April 2018 I have a new book published. How To Love Brutalism is published by Batsford, and is illustrated by the brilliant Brutal Artist. Here's what the publisher says:A passionate and personal book...
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Book events in 2018
So, I'm starting to get book events lined up for 2018. I'll add more to this page as they get confirmed.MARCH:Outskirts at Hyde Book Club, Leeds.Wednesday 21st March, 7pm, Hyde Park Book Club, 27-29...
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The Queen Elizabeth Hall, 1969
This is a remarkable recording. From 1969, a year after the Queen Elizabeth Hall opened on London's South Bank, came a landmark performance of Schubert's The Trout.The performers were Daniel Barenboim,...
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