Ghastly Good Taste: A Depressing Story of the Rise and Fall of English Architecture by John Betjeman

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. A few foxing dots on pages towards end of book. Wear to slipcase. It is a specially bound, signed limited edition, numbered 111 of a total edition of 200 copies.

Published in 1970, this is the first revised and annotated edition of John Betjeman's original 1933 classic architectural critique.

The book is a satirical, yet fiercely passionate essay defending Victorian and Edwardian architecture. Writing at a time when these styles were deeply unfashionable, Betjeman uses sharp humour to attack both sterile corporate Modernism and blind, unthinking antiquarianism.

It includes the author's 16-page updated 'Introduction. An Aesthete's Apologia', famously critiquing his younger 26-year-old self for arrogance and sweeping generalisation and a stunning 9-foot-long folding illustration at the rear. Titled "The Street of Taste or the March of English Art Down the Ages", this detailed black-and-white line drawing was created by British architectural historian Peter Fleetwood-Hesketh.