The first three volumes of The Buildings of England appeared in 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain. The last, Staffordshire, was published in 1974, on the eve of the miners' strike and the three-day week. Nikolaus Pevsner, begetter, editor and principal author of the series, had travelled thousands of miles over those years. England and its buildings had also come a long way. To read the first editions as they were never meant to be read, chronologically, is to follow two stories. One is the tale of postwar optimism in which nostalgia, the quest for a once and future landscape, turns to ambivalence and, at times, bitterness and disillusionment. The other is a chapter of Pevsner's own intellectual biography as historian, critic and, as he is less often considered, writer.

LRB 6 September 2001 | PDF Download