Peter Hitchens reviews An Englishman’s Home Is His Car Park in the Daily Mail, calling Dalrymple one of the most acute voices describing the vandalising of Britain by an alliance of fanatics and idiots. The book recounts a visit to Worcester, once a handsome English city, now hollowed out by frenzied modernisation, and asks why those in charge of our heritage seem relieved to see beauty go.
He wonders if the frenzied modernisation of everything, the crazy 1960s love affair with concrete and glass, the obsession with tidying and sweeping away the old and illogical, is based on our national decline. Even though we are no longer a great power, officialdom decided, we could at least be modern, like America. And those now in charge of our heritage—councillors, planners, ministers—have come to hate the elegant, well-proportioned and pleasing past, because they know they are no good at beauty themselves. And, as they cannot create it, they are relieved to see it go.