A Short History of British Architecture: From Stonehenge to the Shard by Simon Jenkins

Presented by Village Books and Alleyn's School.

British architecture had always been a battle of styles. For a thousand years it has been romanesque versus gothic, gothic versus renaissance, palladian versus baroque, classical versus gothic revival. The greatest battle came in the 1960s, when modernists took control of British planning and plotted the demolition of large swathes of the centres of Britain's cities. 

Simon Jenkins tells the turbulent history of Britain's built environment. He shows how the battles of the past live on today, in arguments over tall buildings, over what should be preserved and what form new buildings should take and where they should stand.