LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Graham Greene, CH, on Sir Basil Spence, OM
Sir: I am in agreement with your leading article, 'Dictator for London,' with one reservation. Poor Mr Harry Hyams, what hats he done compared with the enormities practised by Sir Basil Spence OM whose name is not even mentioned in your article? True you condemn his new office block to replace Queen Anne's Mansions as "this monstrous building ", you condemn with justice the "Knightsbridge barracks complex" as "even worse than Centre Point ", but not once do you name the man responsible for these horrors — Sir Basil Spence.
Centre Point, I grant you, is not exactly beautiful, though if it were surrounded by other skyscrapers it might compare favourably with some Of New York's. By its absurd little forecourt it forces pedestrians to walk in the road among the taxis and buses of Charing Cross Road, but when it is attacked for spoiling the environment — what environment? The area where Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross Road join is
not really a beauty spot: a few rubber-goods shops made redundant by the pill have probably been destroyed, but in the wide ugly wastes you don't notice the building until you have to step into the road and risk death from a bus.
The works of Sir Basil Spence are far more hideous. And they really spoil the environment. Mr Peter Walker should take a second look at them before he worries about Centre Point. Sir Basil presumably recieyed the Order of Merit for rebuilding the cathedral in blitzed Coventry — creditably done, though hardly to be compared with the rebuilding of Warsaw and Dresden. Surely what he has inflicted on London with the Knightsbridge Barracks and what he threatens to inflict with his "latest monstrous building" brings the whole Order to which he has the honour to belong into disrepute.
Graham Greene Paris
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