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9781839761881

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This useful book connects a number of apparently disparate stories about statues and monuments and considers the various ironies of their representation and significance, past and present. A recommended read. -- Professor Corinne Fowler, author of <i>Green Unpleasant Land</i> Robert Bevan's passionate, timely polemic is a much-needed antidote to all the horror stories about 'woke' protesters tearing down monuments. The true threat to our built-up environment, he argues, comes not from the Left, but from governments who employ all the powers of the state to re-write history in their image. It is at times a truly terrifying read. -- Keith Lowe, author of <i>Prisoners of History</i> Wide ranging and rigorous, readable and profound, this superb book argues that if we can no longer trust the tangible world around us to tell the truth, then we are in trouble. Bevan offer us solutions arguing that we need to look at ways we can layer our monuments and our city that turns sites of honour into sites of shame, that change the meaning of the past without losing altogether the vital evidence of that past from the public realm. -- Liza Fior, MUF Architecture/Art This close reading of the city is a potent response to the culture wars because it deals in precisely the historical honesty that culture warriors have no stomach for. Righteous but always nuanced, Bevan is the perfect guide to the way urban iconography distorts history and entrenches power. -- Justin McGuirk, Senior Curator, Design Museum A book that makes you sit up ... powerful -- Charlotte Mullins * Country Life *

Author Information

Robert Bevan is a journalist, author and heritage-led regeneration consultant. He is an architecture critic for the London Evening Standard. He has previously been editor of Building Design and the architecture critic for two other daily newspapers The Australian and the Australian Financial Review. He is a member of (ICOMOS), the body that advises UNESCO on world heritage.

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