Ghastly Good Taste
eBook - ePub

Ghastly Good Taste

Or, a Depressing Story of the Rise and Fall of English Architecture

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Ghastly Good Taste

Or, a Depressing Story of the Rise and Fall of English Architecture

About this book

'My own interest started in seeking out what was old. When the guide told me that this was the bed in which Queen Elizabeth slept, I believed him. When owners of country cottages in Suffolk told me their cottage was a thousand years old, I believed them too. I thought that this or that church was the smallest in England, and that secret passages ran under ruined monasteries, so that monks could get to the nearest convent without being seen. The older anything was the lovelier I thought it.'

Most famous for his poetry, John Betjeman was also passionate about architecture, 'preferring all centuries to my own'. In his first prose work, Ghastly Good Taste (1933), he vigorously defends his love of Victorian and Edwardian architecture, considered deeply unfashionable at the time. With the savage humour of his famous satire 'Slough', he attacks notions of Modernism and (at the other extreme) unthinking antiquarianism.

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Yes, you can access Ghastly Good Taste by John Betjeman in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Architecture & Architecture General. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Faber & Faber
Year
2012
eBook ISBN
9780571286911

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. Table of Contents
  6. Preface
  7. Introduction · An Aesthete’s Apologia
  8. Chapter I · An Apostrophe to One of the Landed Gentry
  9. Chapter II · The Argument of the Book
  10. Chapter III · Christendom
  11. Chapter IV · The Upper Classes Take Over from Holy Church
  12. Chapter V · Educated Architecture
  13. Chapter VI . Regency Architecture
  14. Chapter VII · Middle Class Architecture
  15. Chapter VIII · Revolt in the Middle Classes
  16. Conclusion
  17. About the Author
  18. Copyright