Stylistic Cold Wars: Betjeman Versus Pevsner - Tapa dura

John Betjeman and Nikolaus Pevsner were opposites. Both, however, had a profound influence on the way Britain looks today. This work charts their contemporaneous rise as style warriors. In Pevsner's case, it examines his transformation from a respected German art historian, specializing in Mannerism, to the determined exponent of international modernism, intent on the imposition of a functional townscape upon post-war Britain. In Betjeman's case, it explores his conversion from idealistic young journalist, acclaiming the dawn of the machine age, concrete, steel and all, to the great lyric poet, who, in mourning the destruction of our historic landmarks and towns, effectively launched the Heritage Industry. As Timothy Mowl reveals in this study, the two rivals became, behind a polite facade, irreconcilable foes who fought for the supremacy of their alternative visions until the same fatal illness struck them down.

Timothy Mowl has written revisionist biographies of Horace Walpole (1996) and William Beckford (1998), and academic studies on Elizabethan and Jacobean style, Inigo Jones and John Wood the Elder in the same questioning spirit. The two books which have led him to this present analysis of the tensions between John Betjeman and Nikolaus Pevsner were The Sack of Bath - And After (1989), co-written with Adam Fergusson, and Cheltenham Betrayed (1995). Both concerned the defence of places threatened by the pervasive British uncertainly on all matters of architectural style and urban values.