The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Dr. Steven Parissien’s latest retelling of history through architecture, Building Britannia: A History of Britain in Twenty-Five Buildings, begins with Maiden Castle in Dorset, which dates from around 600 BC. In the words of John Cooper Powys, this resembles ‘the...
Welcome, Steven, to Aspects of History. What was it that first led you into the study of architecture and cultural history? Which came first? I was always fascinated by British history and British architecture from my earliest years, though I’m not sure why: no-one in...
‘Iconic’ is a rather overused and clichéd word these days. It’s probably quite helpful, then, to unpack exactly what we mean when we use this term for the architecture of the past or present – or rather, what we ought to mean. Many new buildings in Britain’s towns and...
The Romans too often get the good gigs, both on our screens and on the shelves, these days; the Greeks, not so much… That is the starting point of Adrian Goldsworthy’s journey east across the Mediterranean and his sweeping account of the two headline acts at the tip...
Do the good guys always win? It would be nice to think that open, democratic societies are healthier and stronger and have inbuilt advantages over authoritarian regimes. After all, in World War Two the democracies led by Britain and the USA smashed totalitarian...
