Ian Nairn: Words in Place

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Gillian Darley

David McKie

Five Leaves Publications, Nottingham, UK, 2013, English

Nonfiction, Architecture

9.1 x 6 inches, paperback, 160 pages

ISBN: 9781907869877

Suggested Retail Price: £10.99/$17.96

From the Publisher. Ian Nairn lit up the pages of the architectural press, broadsheets and TV screens with his incandescent reports on the uglification of Britain, not just by standard eyesores but by the prissy and the pretentious and the blunderings of planners and architects creating new buildings and roads which show no respect for the places they invade. There is reading accross the country, he warned, a blight of anonymous, soulless development, which he called Subtopia.

The least likely of TV personalities, Nairn worked without a script. He was awkward and melancholy, but made admired programmes including Nairn's Travels. He was not just a prophet of doom. He championed what others mock: Swindon and Wigan, even a used car dump. Nairn's London is still acclaimed as one of the best books written about the city. Nairn often piloted a plane over his subject matter or drove, thousands of miles, accross America, Britain and parts of Europe in search of the magnifivent and the banal.

Gillian Darley and David McKie have charted the remarkable life of this exceptional man, with contributions from eight writers who knew, worked with or were inspired by him: Jonathan Glance, Owen Hatherley, Veronica Horwell, Jonathan Meades, Andrew Saint, Gavin Stamp, Deyan Sudjic and David Thomson, all of whom have made their own mark on writing about the built environment.

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