Shorter Notices
How Should We Rebuild London ? By C. B. Purdom. (Dent. 12s. 6d.)
AN appendix of this sensible book appropriately reminds us of the excellent opportunities perctived and then lost after the fire of 1666, when Evelyn described London as " a resemblance of hell upon earth," with its " clouds of smoke and sulphur, so full of stink and darkness." The book is not written for technicians, but to ordinary citizens who should now be deciding the nature of the new London. Among the book's merits are its excellent print and its elucidation and criticism of the various proposals which have been made—the schemes of the City Corporation, the proposals of th Royal Academy Committee, of the R.I.B.A. Reconstruction Com- mittee and the official report prepared for the L.C.C. by Professor Abcrcrombie and Mr. Forshaw. The L.P.T.B. is censured for ill smug assumption that strap-hanging (and overcrowding generally is inevitable, and the L.C.C. plan for not explicitly considering th reduction of London's population. But surely this forcible reductio would be a delicate task for a democracy to undertake. The Barlo Report has certainly shown the need for a smaller London, but th human factors which run counter to this have been equally dead demonstrated by the number of evacuees who, home-sick in th lonely spaces of the countryside, quickly streamed back to condi tions of squalor and often danger. Each chapter of the describes one aspect of the city—London as a home, a plea centre, etc.; there are eleven drawings by Batt and the appendi contain the Borough Councils' reports on the County of Lond Plan.
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