“All times are times of transition,” wrote Flora Thompson in the late 1930s, recalling her childhood of the 1880s. I have been reading her well-known book, Lark Rise to Candleford, for the first time, having previously been mildly put off it by what I remember of a likeable but rather sentimentalised adaptation by the BBC. The book itself, with its […]

“Keep calm and carry on” is a much misquoted slogan from the Second World War, but it reminds us how rapidly things can change. It’s just a fortnight since Russia launched its deadly military assault on Ukraine. Already thousands have died and cities are being reduced to rubble. Here, everyday life goes on, but most people realise that things are […]

When historians come to write the history of our times, 24 February 2022 may well be remembered as the day the World changed. We have no idea yet where the horror in Ukraine will lead, but we can be sure things will be different. Amidst the tragedy, a few are clinging to the old myths about fossil fuel powered growth. […]

The built environment In 1941, Vita Sackville-West was commissioned to write an extended essay on ‘English Country Houses’. During some of the darkest days of the Second World War, she wrote: “Fortunate in her domestic history, it seems likely that England (if in accordance with her tradition she escapes invasion in the present war) will witness the gradual destruction of […]

The point of Parliamentary select committee inquiries is to critically examine Government policy, cross-examine both its proponents and those that disagree with it and reach a measured conclusion which helps the Government out of whatever hole it’s dug for itself. But it isn’t always that way. So I suppose we should have known better than to submit evidence to the […]

When your job-title is the slightly surreal “levelling-up secretary”, it must make sense to be working on a levelling-up white paper, especially in a country like England whose regional inequalities are worse than Germany’s just after the Iron Curtain came down. Germany addressed its inequalities with vigour. Now it’s time for Michael Gove to do likewise. But leaks to newspapers […]

A winter chill is blowing hard through the so-called “Oxford-Cambridge Arc” as ministers slowly come to realise it would fatally undermine their levelling-up agenda The recent unpublicised run-down of the Civil Service team at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities responsible for imposing the Arc on the five threatened counties only confirms the rapid cooling in recent weeks. […]

So, it’s farewell to Owen Luder, doyen of the Brutalist Movement – architects who designed buildings for brutes. Most will remember him for his legacy of awful, inhuman buildings like the “Get Carter” carpark in Gateshead, the Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth or even the “Dunston Rocket” tower flats also in Gateshead. Many have now been rightly consigned to history, despite […]

Smart Growth UK has previously highlighted the artificial nature of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, whose proponents promote it as a cohesive area. It is not a “region” like East Anglia, the Midlands or the South East/Home Counties. It doesn’t fit into sub-regions such as the South and East Midlands, or Greater London. It has no Anglo-Saxon equivalents such as Mercia, Wessex […]

Climate change means we stand at a key moment in history, one on which future generations will judge us – if there’s anyone around left to judge. Prime minister Boris Johnson likes to compare himself with another PM who stood on “the hinge of fate”, Winston Churchill. But the way things are going, the Government’s increasingly weak approach to climate […]