Category Archives: Uncategorized

Readers of these words will never again flick through their copy of Building Design magazine each week. After many decades (I first wrote for the title almost forty years ago) it will no longer be on the page, disappearing to the online world, behind a paywall. What I have written is no longer a column […]

  This is a review sent to me by Stephen Kay, in which he discusses televised architecture in general and Ian Nairn in particular. Cardiff City Council wants to demolish the Coal Exchange. Recently sound enough for the Fire Officer to allow it to be used as the superbly historic and richly patinated venue for […]

Now that the transmission date of The Man Who Fought The Planners: The Story Of Ian Nairn has been confirmed as February 20th at 10 pm, on BBC4 (where else?!) I thought a picture or two of the very very chilly shoot last February might entertain Nairn fans. My contribution to Kate Misrahi’s film consisted […]

There’s a strong possibility that Nairn’s London will be back in print later this year. So David McKie and I, as co-authors of Ian Nairn: Words in Place have divided up London and its extremities (from Uxbridge to Dagenham was his ambition) and are looking around to see which of the almost fifty-year-old entries needs […]

Here are some early responses Nairn, in his raincoat and Morris Minor, was an unlikely Icarus. He flew, he burned, he drowned. As alcoholism is now recognised as a disease, we should perhaps simply say that that is what killed him, but it might also be possible to guess that, in asking architecture to fill […]

Ian Nairn: Words in Place is published November 14 by Five Leaves Publications. David McKie and I take part in the LRB bookshop event on 19 November, chaired by Owen Hatherley.     On November 27 I am giving the Soane Annual Lecture on Nairn’s London at the Art Worker’s Guild       My […]

September 12th talking about John Soane and St Pancras at St Pancras Old Church. September 23rd talking, with others, about Ian Nairn at the Barbican

Lowdham Book Festival Scroll to page 12 to find the details of my Vesuvius talk early on the final day of the Festival, Saturday June 29th. It’s a great little celebration of books (and more) in an intriguing part of England, close to Southwell and Newark and not so far from Nottingham. Lowdham even has […]

Ten days in the USA filled my head with impressions. First visits to Charleston and Savannah revealed towns that are immeasurably different, even if both are in the southern states, both antebellum. Live oaks are veiled in Spanish moss, a reminder of the humid, extreme, climate. In atmosphere I found Charleston gentler. The view of […]

A nice sight for an author! a lovely great heap of their books handily positioned to catch exhibition goers leaving the fantastic, poignant show Life and Death Pompeii and Herculaneum  at the British Museum until 29 September 2013. Thursday 2 May I’ll be talking about how one volcano caught the imagination of the world, from […]