Bookend: Bloodbath

Colin Amery has written the Bookend column in this week’s issue of the Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog:

It may have been first published in 1973, but reading it again in Persephone Books’ elegant re-print, Adam Fergusson’s The Sack of Bath remains a real shocker. The fury of his polemic against the powers in Bath that seemed hell-bent on destroying everything except a few grand Georgian set- pieces in that beautiful city still has a terrible relevance today.

Looking at the photographs of acres of modest stone houses being reduced to rubble to be replaced by unbelievably low grade ‘comprehensive redevelopment’ is utterly depressing. Even more lowering is Fergusson’s account of the elevated and titled collaborators who advised the city that to build the ‘new’ and ‘iconic’ was morally superior to repair and restoration.

The ‘sack’ did change things. Conservation groups are now more empowered, and protective legislation has been strengthened.