Gavin Stamp
There have been several good architectural books this year, notably Andrew Saint's Towards a Social Architecture (Yale, £19.95) and David Watkin's and Tilman Mellinghoff's German Architecture and the Classical Ideal (Thames & Hudson, £30). The Literary Editor's request for the worst book made me borrow Alan Powers's copy of the notorious Follies: A National Trust Guide by Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp (Cape, £15). I had hitherto observed a Swedish neutrality in the great Follies War. Now I must declare for Ian Hamilton Finlay. Although it is full of information, I cannot bear the unrelenting smug cleverness of the text, nor can I sympathise with a book that maintains that `to pepper your estate with temples is a natural, if expensive, version of the desire to ornament your car with a leopardskin steering-wheel cover, furry dice or an alsatian with brake-light eyes.' Architecture is rather more serious. The National Trust should not have lent its. name to this text as it stands.
Previous page
