Clik here to view.
When children's books were modern 1: Twentieth Century Britain (1972)
What single image would you choose to represent 20th Century Britain? The Festival of Britain? A Spitfire? An NHS hospital? Well, one plucky educational series of books from the early 70s had the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
People in Glass Houses (1967)
Here's a super-geeky documentary made in 1967 about the design of glass curtain walled office blocks and overheating. Unfortunately mutilated with a huge amount of watermarking, the film is still...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Peterlee New Town, 1962
Here's a great little film about Peterlee New Town from 1962. Peterlee was one of the first wave of postwar new towns, built for mining in the North-East of England. Famously the painter Victor Pasmore...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Barbican, 1969
This Barbican film from 1969 is full of character, curious English wit and surprising angles. We see lots of the pedway, the City's streets in the sky network, as well as glimpses of the City's new...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Lost City of Craigavon
Here's a great documentary from 2007 by Newton Emerson for the BBC: The Lost City of Craigavon. One of the mid-sixties second wave new towns, it blossomed so briefly, the idea of being a city for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Alison and Peter Smithson lecture, 1976
Here's an absolute gem, recorded by some forward-thinking genius on April 4th 1976: a lecture for the Architecture Association by Peter and Alison Smithson. Here they present a number of their key...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Oscar Newman on Defensible Space, 1974
Defensible Space was a book, a TV documentary and a political movement, created by a then newly naturalised American academic, Oscar Newman.This Horizon documentary 'The Writing on the Wall' featuring...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Travelling Through the Modern World with Ladybird
This year both the De La Warr Pavillion and the House of Illustration hosted a Ladybird illustration exhibition. And now this Christmas Penguin have released a number of humorous adult spoofs of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Cold War Christmas from Berlin, 1962-63
Here are two remarkable newsreel films from the chilly heart of the Cold War in the early sixties. Both were filmed in Berlin, one in the East, one in the West.The first shows the construction of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ideal Home Exhibition 1959
What could be better than a trip to the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1959? This silent British Movietone footage shows some amazing stuff. There's full-sized modern houses and flats, including the Ministry...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cine film from Park Hill, 1962
Sheffield's Park Hill housing project was designed in the late 50s and was Britain's first 'streets in the sky' estate. This 8 minute silent extract from a longer cine film from 1962 was probably made...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Newcastle, 1968
Welcome to Newcastle in 1968, for a thrilling (and short) tour of the city centre. This short cine film was made by Turners Film Productions. We start, where else, at the Tyne Bridge, and there's...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Centre Point, star of ABC's All of My Heart, 1982
All of My Heart, the 1982 single from ABC, is one my absolute favourite songs. The early 80s New Pop era contains many wonders, but this ballad is an epic, gorgeously realised standout. There's a lot...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bradford Reborn (1979)
This film was made in 1979 for Bradford Metropolitan Council, to promote the city's sixties redevelopment and a new late seventies housing estate at Pollard Park.It's presented in old-school smoothie...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Glasgow 1980 (or is it really Glasgow 1971?)
This is a film for people about the city they live in, about how the city is changing for people.Every so often in this seemingly endless trawl for postwar cinematic gems that capture the era's grand...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Planning Teesside (1970)
This is a really interesting film, because unlike so many of the glossy publicity films of the new towns and big city corporations, this one sets out to critique the plans for a whole area:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
East Kilbride: Town of Tomorrow (1954)
Here's a very early new town film, from East Kilbride in 1954, not even a decade since the New Towns Act was passed. It was a promotional film made for the East Kilbride Development...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Transatlantic Teleview: New Towns in Britain (1956)
Here's a film about Harlow made in 1956, just a decade after the New Towns Act was passed. It's presented by Chris Chataway, who had been one of Roger Bannister's pacemakers when he broke the 4-minute...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Look to the Future (1963)
Here's an extract from one of Michael Calthrop's 1963 BBC schools programmes on town planning, A Look to the Future. This extract focusses on the building of Route 11 and the pedway in the City of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The shock of new Birmingham (ATV Today, 1976)
This is one of the most curious clips I've posted. Taken from local Midlands ITV news programme ATV Today in 1976, presenter Chris Tarrant shows a man round the city centre who hadn't visited for 25...
View Article