Britain's lost cities

The destruction meted out on Britain's city centres during the twentieth century, by the combined efforts of the Luftwaffe and city-planners, is legendary.

Medieval churches, Tudor alleyways, Georgian terraces and Victorian theaters, many vanished for ever, to be replaced by a gruesome landscape of concrete office-blocks and characterless shopping malls.

Now, for the first time, Gavin Stamp shows us exactly what we have lost.

Reproduced in this haunting volume are hundreds of top-quality photographs of cities from Plymouth to Dundee, all of streets and buildings that are gone for ever.

In the accompanying text, Stamp traces their creation and destruction, remembering the massive campaign to save the Euston Arch, wantonly demolished in 1962, and mourning the loss of lovely medieval Coventry, which was already doomed by the city planners even before German air-raids intervened.

Alternately fascinating, enraging and heartbreaking, this is an extraordinary evocation of Britain's architectural past, and a much-needed reminder of the importance of preserving our heritage.