'That Prussian pedant', 'Herr Professor Doktor': these were two
of the jibes John Betjeman levelled at Nikolaus Pevsner, who, it
must be said, received them with great restraint. Betjeman and
Pevsner were polar opposites, the one giving voice to an alluring
threnody for the destruction of our historic landmarks, the other
articulating the case for international modernism. Their different
outlooks are most obviously manifested in the "Shell County
Guides," edited by Betjeman, and the magisterial "Buildings of
England" series, which within the confines of impeccable
scholarship, represents Pevsner's credo. The former is imbued with
a most agreeable dilettantism that is strikingly successful in
capturing ambience, the latter brilliantly and in compelling detail
anatomizes individual buildings.
Betjeman and Pevsner personified two opposing sensibilities and
in this most engaging book Timothy Mowl shows how 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.
'This entertaining analysis of Betjeman's dislike of what he
believed Pevsner stood for is a subtle and unique contribution to
twentieth-century English social and cultural history. Mowl has
written an absolutely gripping story, full of irony and surprise,
about two men who were so similar yet so totally different.' David
Watkin
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