First published in 1987, The Heritage Industry sets out to protect the present and the future of life in Britain from their most dangerous enemy: a creeping takeover by the past. The author sets today’s obsession with yesterday in the context of a climate of social and political decline. The economic uncertainties and cultural convulsions of post-war life have made the past seem a pleasanter and safer place. But how true is that image of the past, and whose past is it, anyway? Hew...

First published in 1986, Too Much records the tumultuous period between 1960 and 1975 when, more than at any other time in history, the arts were a battleground for the conflicting forces of social change. With the new affluence of the Sixties the cultural conformism of the previous decade was rejected in favour of new forms of expression. Pop Art, pop music, fringe theatre and performance poetry helped to create the semi-mythological image of ‘Swinging London.’ The liberation eth...

Culture and Consensus, first published in 1995 and a revised edition in 1997, explores the history of the relationship between politics and the arts in Britain since 1940, and shows how the search for a secure sense of English identity has been reflected in official and unofficial attitudes to the arts, architecture, landscape and other emblems of national significance.Illustrating his argument with a series of detailed case histories, Robert Hewison analyses how Britain’s...

Britain began the twenty-first century convinced of its creativity. Throughout the New Labour era, the visual and performing arts, museums and galleries, were ceaselessly promoted as a stimulus to national economic revival, a post-industrial revolution where spending on culture would solve everything, from national decline to crime. Tony Blair heralded it a “golden age.” Yet despite huge investment, the audience for the arts remained a privileged minority. So what went wrong?In

The study of Ruskin’s work and influence is now a feature of several critical disciplines. New Approaches to Ruskin, first published in 1981, reflects this, gathering some of the most distinguished writers on Ruskin and joining them with others who have undertaken significant research in the field of Ruskin studies. The authors were all specially commissioned for this volume and were chosen to represent as wide a variety of approaches as possible to this key figure of nineteenth-c...

Leadership has never been more important to the cultural industries. The arts, together with museums and heritage sites, play a vital part in keeping economies going, and, more importantly, in making life worth living. People in the sector face a constant challenge to find support for their organizations and to promote the value of culture. Leadership and management skills are needed to meet the mission of creative arts and cultural organizations, and to generate the income that underpins ...

This was first published in 2000: A study of John Ruskin's engagement with art and architecture as a critic, a patron and a teacher. It offers insights into both his writings and the visual economy of the Victorian world. Each essay examines Ruskin's relationship with an individual artist or a distinct aspect of art practice. J.M.W. Turner, D.G. Rossetti, W. Holman Hunt and E. Burne-Jones are among those artists discussed whose personal relationships with Ruskin affected his critical writi...

Landscape has been central to definitions of Englishness for centuries. David Matless argues that landscape has been the site where English visions of the past, present and future have met in debates over questions of national identity, disputes over history and modernity, and ideals of citizenship and the body.Landscape and Englishness is extensively illustrated and draws on a wide range of material – topographical guides, health manuals, paintings, poetry, architectural p...

Why should we have to “Keep Calm and Carry On”?In this brilliant polemical rampage, Owen Hatherley shows how our past is being resold in order to defend the indefensible. From the marketing of a “make do and mend” aesthetic to the growing nostalgia for a utopian past that never existed, a cultural distraction scam prevents people grasping the truth of their condition.The Ministry of Nostalgia explodes the creation of a false history: a rewriting of...

‘England’ and ‘Englishness’ have received much attention in the twenty-first century, not least in debates over Brexit. About England explores how these concepts have been imagined since the 1960s, covering themes including politics, popular culture, geography, art, architecture, film and music.David Matless navigates the country’s complex cultural terrain, revealing the ways in which the national is entangled with the local, the regional, the European, the international, t...

Re-forming Britain considers the nature and practice of architectural modernism in inter-war Britain in a new light. Bringing hitherto little considered protagonists and projects to the fore, it argues that rather than being an imported idiom, the new architecture in Britain formed part of an ongoing attempt to make a modern nation.Spanning the period 1925-42, the book focuses on the key sites from and through which architectural modernism emerged in the UK. Part one consi...

'Fascinating and timely. Required reading for every developer, planner or councillor who holds London in trust today' Griff Rhys Jones'Accessible, clear and readable' Rowan Moore, The Observer________________________LONDON: a settlement founded by the Romans, occupied by the Saxons, conquered by the Danes and ruled by the Normans.This unremarkable place - not even included in the Dom...