Dockland, Smokestacks and Slums- In the Shadows of British Industry

This book provides a photographic study of the 19th and early 20th century British industrial scene from its recovery following the Second World War to its decline in the mid-1980s. This was an era when Britain still led the world in engineering, shipbuilding, merchant shipping, commerce and exports, not to mention international prestige. Most of the photographs date from the 1950s and '60s, and although they show poverty, pollution and often industrial decay, at the same time they have immense nostalgic and aesthetic appeal. They represent a lament for that lost industrial Britain and this might possibly be the only book to extol the aesthetic contribution that those industrial elements made to our townscapes. Much of the late-Victorian industrial architecture was a credit to our townscapes, but most has now disappeared almost without trace, converted, redeveloped and sanitised beyond recognition.