News

 

This is a review sent to me by Stephen Kay, in which he discusses televised architecture in general and Ian Nairn in particular.

Cardiff City Council wants to demolish the Coal Exchange. Recently sound enough for the Fire Officer to allow it to be used as the superbly historic and richly patinated venue for the audience to gather at the end of National Theatre Wales’ performance odyssey around Bute Town, it has now become so dangerous as to require demolition. What would Ian Nairn have said of this proposed act of civic vandalism?

Mention of Ian Nairn no longer provokes the question of who he is, or was. An article by David McKie in the Guardian saw Gillian Darley’s seminal volume “Villages of Vision” back in print. Darley and McKie have now collaborated on a book reviving Nairn;  “Ian Nairn; Words in Place.” And on Thursday night a number of the usual suspects contributed to a BBC 4 programme “The Man Who Fought the Planners”. Drawing on Darley and McKie’s book, this programme certainly have included much of Nairn’s views and many outings on camera, but transcended architecture to look directly at a human life.  His strengths and his ability to fuel ways of looking at townscape, to shamelessly judge and compare elements of the vernacular, the traditional, the modern, and the utterly valueless were as honestly pictured as his sad decline into an extended alcoholic. Hagiography or academic analysis it was not, profoundly moving human drama it certainly was.

Nairn’s appearances were a surprise to anyone not having seen him before – it wasn’t Betjeman or Pevsner on screen. He had more in common with an actor displaying existential angst, a performer interpreting his reading of Jack Kerouac by driving a Morris Minor into a scrapyard. Former colleagues and fellow writers remembering him were one or two soloists, and sometimes a male chorus. Whilst Bill Patterson’s stately narration was offstage, Gillian Darley’s contribution was sustained, not only in a studio or library but at places Nairn had been filmed, period footage juxtaposed with today.

BBC 4 currently has a wealth of architecture, ranging from 1980s archive, through semi-hagiographies of “Brits That Built the World” to Jonathan Meades, whose programmes the BBC Media Centre announce as “lavish and sometimes surreal collage.” The archive BBC coverage of contemporary architecture had a budget that ran to commissioning music from Hans-Werner Henze, the semi-hags sink to supermarket or hotel lift music. The Darley/McKie book is published by Five Leaves Press, which raised the question of whether the programme would be accompanied by the music of Nick Drake. It wasn’t, but perhaps some of it should have been. From both men acute observation, both similarly idiosyncratic, sometimes elided delivery, and both great talent ended too soon. At the chime of a city clock Nairn may have delivered his opinion, the clock in many a bar slowly and sadly tolled his decline.

St

 

Now that the transmission date of The Man Who Fought The Planners: The Story Of Ian Nairn has been confirmed as February 20th at 10 pm, on BBC4 (where else?!) I thought a picture or two of the very very chilly shoot last February might entertain Nairn fans. My contribution to Kate Misrahi’s film consisted of a lot of clambering up and down chares (the steep alleys that still link the city with the quayside, see above), quite a bit of standing on the castle roof, avoiding puddles of melting snow and looking out over the railway tracks (see immediately below),  and a nice long sit in the Lit and Phil (the Literary and Philosophical Society library, below that) where the major part of the interview took place. My co-author of Ian Nairn: Words in Place, David McKie did similar stints, both outdoors in the snow and indoors in the town library,  in Wigan.

 

There’s a strong possibility that Nairn’s London will be back in print later this year. So David McKie and I, as co-authors of Ian Nairn: Words in Place have divided up London and its extremities (from Uxbridge to Dagenham was his ambition) and are looking around to see which of the almost fifty-year-old entries needs an indication of current condition – or its loss. To start at the end, Dagenham church, for example, is still there, but even more isolated than it was in Nairn’s day, stranded in Ford Motors’ company town, now gone belly-up. The churchyard is a nature reserve, the building is, viewed from the outside at least, in good condition, but the surroundings are dire. But without Nairn, I would never have found it. Equally, round the back of Fenchurch Street station, in the City, is French Ordinary Court. When Nairn was tramping around, the alley was threatened by development; now that development itself is elderly, but the entrance off Crutched Friars is there, as atmospheric and promising as its name (though it does not, on closer examination, deliver much beyond the street approach). Watch this space – I plan to fill the dank days of early 2014 with more dispatches from the Nairn’s London front and, very soon, hope to reveal when and by whom it is to be re-published.

Here are some early responses

Nairn, in his raincoat and Morris Minor, was an unlikely Icarus. He flew, he burned, he drowned. As alcoholism is now recognised as a disease, we should perhaps simply say that that is what killed him, but it might also be possible to guess that, in asking architecture to fill an emotional void, he was seeking the impossible. Also, that, in wanting officialdom to feel as intensely about places as he did, he was doomed to disappointment. But anyone who cares even slightly about their surroundings should be intensely grateful for his attempt. –Rowan Moore, The Observer

I am far from alone in having the awkward, melancholic architectural writer and broadcaster as one of my heroes: partly for his deep conviction that the built environment mattered, partly for his insistence – in defiance of modernist orthodoxy – that people mattered more. One day no doubt Nairn will get a heavy-duty biography, but for the time being this elegant, rather slighter treatment does the job with charm and just the right degree of critical affection. –David Kynaston, The Guardian, Books of the Year, 2013.

Richard Strachan blog
‘As a writer and broadcaster Nairn was unafraid to speak his mind, and Darley and McKie perfectly capture his belligerence and critical force….This excellent collection of essays is an ideal introduction to a powerful writer and personality who has languished in obscurity for too long.’

Ian Nairn: Words in Place is published November 14 by Five Leaves Publications. David McKie and I take part in the LRB bookshop event on 19 November, chaired by Owen Hatherley.

 

 

On November 27 I am giving the Soane Annual Lecture on Nairn’s London at the Art Worker’s Guild

 

 

 

My article in the London Library magazine, ‘Ian Nairn’s London’ will be in the winter 2013 issue – due mid November.
 

 

September 12th talking about John Soane and St Pancras at St Pancras Old Church.

September 23rd talking, with others, about Ian Nairn at the Barbican

Lowdham Book Festival Scroll to page 12 to find the details of my Vesuvius talk early on the final day of the Festival, Saturday June 29th.
It’s a great little celebration of books (and more) in an intriguing part of England, close to Southwell and Newark and not so far from Nottingham. Lowdham even has its own railway station (photo courtesy of Lowdham.org) – so no excuses.

Ten days in the USA filled my head with impressions. First visits to Charleston and Savannah revealed towns that are immeasurably different, even if both are in the southern states, both antebellum. Live oaks are veiled in Spanish moss, a reminder of the humid, extreme, climate.

A nice sight for an author! a lovely great heap of their books handily positioned to catch exhibition goers leaving the fantastic, poignant show Life and Death Pompeii and Herculaneum  at the British Museum until 29 September 2013.

Thursday 2 May I’ll be talking about how one volcano caught the imagination of the world, from classical times until now.
A joint enterprise between Ealing Libraries and Waterstones.
Venue The Green Room, Ealing Central Library, Broadway Centre, W5 5JY.
Free but they recommend advance booking. Look forward to meeting you there.
Enquiries: 020 8825 9278

Looking out from the Rubicon. Shard far left, London Eye towards the right. Kings Cross sheds in their glory. Soon ten storey bocks will obstruct the view, leaving just two chinks.