Letters: You can grow to hate Wagner

Disappearing England

Sir: Rod Liddle’s reference to Labour’s intention to build 1.5 million new houses (‘The great bee-smuggling scandal’, 13 July), even though there is not a shortage, leads one to worry where they will be located. The green belt was introduced for London in 1938 and the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 extended powers with local authorities for self-designation.

In 1937, John Betjeman wrote for one of his BBC talks: ‘England is disappearing and there is growing up, where the trees used to be and where the hills commanded blue vistas, another world that does not seem to be anything to do with England at all. This new world lives in ill-shaped brick horrors, for which it has had to pay through the nose. Many of these horrors, built with no regard for one another, dropped higgledy-piggledy in the loveliest of places – for all the world like huge slices of cake dropped on the top of hills by some mad celestial picnic party – these little brick horrors are poisoning England.’