Osbert Lancaster: a national treasure rediscovered

True to his saw that ours is ‘a land of rugged individualists’, Osbert Lancaster, in his self-appointed role of popular architectural historian, presented the 1,000-year history of Britain’s built environment from a resolutely personal perspective. Like the majority of his generation — Lancaster was born in 1908 and published Pillar to Post in 1938, following it with Homes Sweet Homes a year later — he cultivated a vigorous dislike of all things Victorian. Again and again he demolished the earnest conceits of 19th-century orthodoxy: ‘the antiquarian heresy’; ‘the great dreary moth of Victorian revivalism’; ‘the jackdaw strain inherent in every true Victorian’. Lancaster’s skill lay in the accuracy and apparent gossamer lightness of his touch. Even after he had fine-tuned his public persona as unreconstructed Edwardian, in middle age, he was never ponderous or bombastic. His disdain for the sins of our builder fathers and his prophetic outrage at the likely atrocities of future town councils were both heartfelt and wittily conveyed.