Building Britannia

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A history of Britain told through the stories of twenty-five notable structures, from the Iron Age fortification of Maiden Castle in Dorset to the Gherkin. 'Building Britannia' is a chronicle of social, political and economic change seen through the prism of the country's built environment, but also a sequence of closely observed studies of a series of intrinsically remarkable structures: some of them beautiful or otherwise imposing; some of them more coldly functional; all of them with richly fascinating stories to tell. Steven Parissien tells both a national story, tracing how a growing sense of British nationhood was expressed through the country's architecture, and also examines how these structures were used by later generations to signpost, mythologise or remake British history. Show more