Museum Without Walls

Description

Jonathan Meades has an obsessive preoccupation with places. He has spent thirty years constructing sixty films, two novels and hundreds of pieces of journalism that explore an extraordinary range of them, from natural landscapes to man-made buildings and 'the gaps between them', drawing attention to what he calls 'the rich oddness of what we take for granted'. This book collects fifty-four pieces and six film scripts that dissolve the barriers between high and low culture, good and bad taste, deep seriousness and black comedy. Meades delivers what he calls 'heavy entertainment' - strong opinions backed up by an astonishing depth of knowledge. To read Meades on places, buildings, politics or cultural history is an exhilarating workout for the mind. He leaves you better informed, more alert, less gullible.

Jonathan Meades is a writer, journalist, essayist and film-maker. He is the author of Filthy English, Peter Knows What Dick Likes, The Fowler Family Business, Museum Without Walls and Pompey. In 2014, he published the first volume of his autobiography, An Encyclopaedia of Myself. His many films for the BBC include Abroad in Britain, Meades Eats, Meades on France, The Joy of Essex, Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness and, most recently, Franco Building.

'The scope of his ideas, the force of his arguments, the sheer vitality of his sentences: these things come at you like negative ions after a storm' Rachel Cooke, New Statesman 'For the last thirty years Britain's most consistently surprising and informative writer on the built environment' Owen Hatherley, London Review of Books 'Lively, inventive and pugnacious . . . In an English literary tradition that, sweeping up Ian Nairn, John Betjeman and Charles Dickens along the way, takes us back to William Corbett's Rural Rides' ' Jonathan Glancey, Architectural Review 'An indispensible companion to one of the most original and valuable commentators on architecture working today' Will Wiles, Building Design 'Meades is consistently, cuttingly entertaining' Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times Books of the Year 'Jonathan Meades is a consistently amusing and provocative polemicist and this book is a rollercoaster ride, though not to be consumed all in one go . . . It is all richly entertaining, invigorating and provoking' Tim Richarson, Literary Review 'One of the great revelations of Mr Meades's writing is his ability not just to expose the tawdriness and cynicism of those who manage our landscape and our past, but also to find interest and beauty in what others, affording it a passing glance, would find drab and unremarkable . . . It is an unfortunate cliche to call any book an eye-opener, but this one unquestionably is' Simon Heffer, Standpoint