Re-forming Britain

The emergence of British modernism has gone largely unconsidered, so whilst historians have examined Britain’s engagement with modernity in terms of art, politics and planning, this study addresses and fills that gap. Re-forming Britain considers the process through which architects sought to establish modernism as the dominant ideology in British architectural culture from the late 1920s onwards. The author documents, contextualizes and explains the emergence and nature of architectural modernism in Britain between the wars and shows how modernist architects allied themselves with progressives in other fields and through what the author characterizes as ‘narratives of modernity’ – projects both realized and unrealized and in different media – made a deliberate campaign to convert the nation to this ideology.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Darling trained as an art and architectural historian at University College London. Since then she has taught, researched and published in the history of 19th and 20th century architecture. She is now a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History of Art at Oxford Brookes University.