Volume 30, Number 3 · March 3, 1983
The Way They Lived Then
By Noel Annan
The English Terraced House
by Stefan Muthesius
Yale University Press, 278 pp., $30.00
The Last Country Houses
by Clive Aslet
Yale University Press, 344 pp., $29.95
Among the many notions now withering in the mood of skepticism of the Eighties is the contention that the English are demonstrably English. They founded parliamentary democracy, yet they tolerate a prime minister whose powers far exceed those of George III or Peel or Gladstone. They pride themselves on being molded by religion and tradition, but England is the most heathen country in the West and one whose contempt for the past is expressed yearly in vandalism and the destruction of ancient buildings and the countryside. Peaceful and tolerant? Violent crimes multiply, English football fans are notorious as the hooligans of Europe, and the militant left is now faced by an intransigent right which despises the poor and the social services that soften their hardships. Yet there is one important physical characteristic that distinguishes England and Wales from the rest of the Continent, and indeed from North America. The system of housing the inhabitants of their cities differs from that of any other Western country—including Scotland. In the cities the English and Welsh still live mainly in terraced houses.
Review, 3567 words
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