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I love this. People need things like this, even if it seems ridiculous to modern eyes. But it brings value to our lives.

1985, I was 12. This was fun to watch , thanks :--))

I particularly remember him in Newcastle, he must have been horrified. Swan house was and is particularly horrible.

A city and country now destroyed

czcams.com/video/lvoXJ1Ye9R4/video.html

Agree 100%! Most of the new buildings in England after WW2 could be considered as brutal graffiti or vandalism.

Brilliant

The young Guardsman is in the Grenadiers and you may have noticed that he keeps saying just Sir to the General not yes Sir or No Sir. In the Grenadiers they dont use the words yes or no when replying to officers. Its the tone they use when just saying Sir, that implies a yes or a no, yet another tradition of the Guards

Peter Blake also had some strong comments about America "Gods Own Junkyard". Throwaway culture.

Absolutely brilliant. Loved this. Watched this years ago. Happy memories.😊

Just come across him, heard of AC Taylor & Benjamin but l am 56, older than he was, passing away. Love his reaction to the mediocre & ugly, can't help but think he was looking for another era, before his time. A more magnificent one

Nairn's London is such an enjoyable book. You don't even need to know the places featured. He seems to have especially loved Edwardian gin palaces. Cheers Ian.

I’d never heard of Ian before watching this. Now I feel like he’s a friend, and sad that there weren’t more like him at the time..

I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.

Never heard of Ian Nairn before watching this as it appeared in my recommended. What a fantastic documentary - thoroughly enjoyed and no doubt will find out more about this brilliant man, Ian Nairn - what a visionary.

It's become a small, mean, cheap and ugly country. Nairn's misfortune was that he saw it all too clearly.

An absolute superb film, thank you.

he had the nerve to call out the vandals of the 1960s and 70s who did immense damage to our cities! great man...

Thanks for posting this, brilliant stuff.

I enjoyed Nairns work, even as a teenager in the 60s, the emotion was so strong and almost funny in a way. I moved to Normandy in 1990 because I wanted to live in the countryside. The postwar ’planners’ messed up the architecture (if you could call it that), and they also messed up the population levels, when they decided anyone could come and live here. Anything remotely attractive in England costs half a million quid, and even then you’re stuck with the posh brigade. In France it’s probably about like England in the 30s. I wanted to move back for a long time, but not anymore.

Still have my 80s reprint of Nairn's London that I found extraordinarily exciting when I got it as a present. Thank you for this

Another brilliant British documentary .

Southern Ontario....pay attention to this one

Iain Nairn was my hero, at the time he published “Outrage” I was a junior town planner in Blackburn working on the redevelopment of the town centre. I hated that it would destroy the character of the very heart of my home town. The work taught me a great deal but I hated it so much that in 1960 I moved elsewhere. Subsequent visits to family confirmed my sadness at the destruction. However, I was astonished to learn that Nairn visited when the redevelopment was complete and pronounced it to be “good, of its type.” I think the observation was included in his sequel “Outrage Again”.

I'll tell you he saved something very grand. Piece Hall in Halifax which, when he visited was close to destruction. Look at it now! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_Hall

Ian must have been inspired by the Tartarian architecture that is to be seen all over England and Europe and the world. Consider how monumental, how beautifully crafted the old buildings are, who built them, there are many videos on you tube outlining the Tartarian contribution to great buildings. The current buildings are examples of brutalism.

Stopped watching at 52.27. it's just too sad. The destruction of Britain that Beeching's rail "review" was the birth of the shitfuckery that is the British rail "system" we have today.

The only problem with Nairn was that he seemed to be a professional complainer, which is very British, and never offered alternatives or engaged in discussion with those who might. I feel the same about Jonathan Meades, brilliant but incomplete.

He wouldn't survive a walk through contemporary Manchester.

Thanks for the upload. Watched it twice in a row on the very same day. 👍🏻👍🏻

Tory Northampton, still a tory shitepit

Fundementally, Ian Nairn was a priveleged bloke who didn't get how other people could need stuff and how people might need "ordinary" houses or places to work. All too often, what he offered was complaining about people doing stuff - not actually doing stuff himself, but complaining about other people who did. I like him, but all too often he offers no real solutions, only criticisms and he's the origin of the modern problem - the misty nostalgic who does nothing but moan.

He lived opposite me. Very shy in real life, and seemed very unhappy

What a wonderful program about a man whom I knew absolutely nothing about but now in a strange way I miss. well done Bill as well.👏👏👏👏👏

Watched his programmes as a teenager.

I wonder how he would feel about today's steel & glass horrors

God, Nairn was right! I started saying what he says about ‘modern’ mass architecture at about the same time ( I am younger) but just didn’t have his genius for description- yes, post war mass-building projects should NOT have put in the hands of architects who were inclined to ‘go off on one’. Remember, most successful vernacular architecture was usually the product of local builders using pattern books for detail, but had a bloody better idea of style and and a practical knowledge of disposition of space then a whole waggon full of so-called architects. Things were always better when more sympathetic architects consulted with putative residents who were gong to have live in properties. ‘Projects’ should also be treated with suspicion as planners and architects usually are working in diametrically opposite criteria, but both marred by not having. Clue how the building(s) will sit in the landscape, but let’s not get into corporate corruption; look at what happened to to the redevelopment Deptford in the ‘70s, and the residents are still stuck with blight for sometime to come!

A captivating chronicle of serial vandalism.

This perpetrates the myth that planners are uniquely to blame for what they don’t like. Not politicians, developers, architects and their clients, highway engineers. Nor that we need to build to house the population

He was right all along.....and yet even today, some still dismiss him or deride him as a fringe person with minority views. Most people at the time probably agreed with him. Now though, we're repeating the mistakes of the 60's and 70's - but with even worse quality buildings that will be torn down by the 2050's. Seems like we just dont learn from history.

I Wonder what Ian would have thought of Dundee's V and A museum,having a non descript,square box ,more suited to an edge of town industrial estate,built right in front of it,spoiling the view from the city center? One of the dumbest things built in modern times.

Britain is run by communists. Fact.

Loughborough . The council planers destroy this lovely town. And put concrete blocks over it.

Good lord! Not a single diverse enriching person in the background of these pictures.

I remember his programs very well, throughout the 70s. He proved that you don't need to be a fuddy-duddy, a toff, a Luddite to appreciate the lived-in of Britain's towns and cities. He, like many of us since, realise that we were cheated by the so-called intellectuals who just wanted change for change's sake, views that have since been proven false. RIP Ian Nairn.

I remember seeing his TV programmes and feeling empathy with his viewpoint, as I was vaguely aware of the unsympathetic changes being perpetrated in the 1960s and 1970s. It is only in the last two decades that I now understand what he meant and how much heritage we have lost. It speaks volumes that the BBC was then prepared to air such programmes, when nowadays they would avoid anything controversial or against the establishment.

He must be turning in his grave. Lazy farmers selling off their farms to greedy property developers and builders.

I watched it, then watched it again. Thats how interesting i found it. Bravo

deffinatly was ahead of his time. I saw him and his sidekicks in the Bull & Bush pub in Manchester one afternoon in May, which is a beautiful time to explore the parks and gardens in Lancashire.

Maybe he and Fred Dibnah would have gotten on well.