tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873009918100574338.post6546511813577980062..comments2024-02-05T09:17:53.322-08:00Comments on Adrian Barlow's blog: Help for Heroes? A Handy Guide to Oxford (1915)Adrian Barlowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04526714501872493961noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873009918100574338.post-11811747966782115522015-08-11T10:15:04.163-07:002015-08-11T10:15:04.163-07:00Philip, Many thanks for this link to Kenneth Clark...Philip, Many thanks for this link to Kenneth Clark. Your comment has sent me back to my coffee-stained 1962 edition of his book, ‘The Gothic Revival’. You’re quite right: “A generation influenced by the poetic insight of Mr. Betjeman will find it hard to believe in the state of feeling towards Victorian architecture which prevailed in 1927. In Oxford it was universally believed that Ruskin had built Keble, and that it was the ugliest building in the world. Undergraduates and young dons used to break off on their afternoon walks in order to have a good laugh at the quadrangle.” No doubt C.R. L. Fletcher would have laughed as loudly as the rest of them. I did not mention this but, elsewhere in his Handy Guide, he suggests that the sunken quad at Keble should be flooded and turned into a boating lake.Adrian Barlowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04526714501872493961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873009918100574338.post-35472747147203601122015-08-11T08:00:05.830-07:002015-08-11T08:00:05.830-07:00Fascinating post, thank you. I'd never heard o...Fascinating post, thank you. I'd never heard of this book. There's a long history of deriding the architecture of Keble College. When Sir Kenneth Clark was at Oxford (which must have been in the early-1920s) he famously referred to it as 'the ugliest building in the world' and this opinion wasn't out of tune with times. By the time I was an undergraduate at Oxford 50 years later it was still quite normal to laugh at Keble's architecture, in spite of the fact that by then John Betjeman had been singing the praises of Victorian architecture for some years. Philip Wilkinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04893714514416441572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873009918100574338.post-57644277452698812342015-08-04T07:39:09.924-07:002015-08-04T07:39:09.924-07:00Most interesting thing I've read today - thank...Most interesting thing I've read today - thank you!tomdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03766237341387024779noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873009918100574338.post-68396641641539131082015-08-04T05:18:30.368-07:002015-08-04T05:18:30.368-07:00Fascinating, and as you say, telling. So character...Fascinating, and as you say, telling. So characteristic of a past mind-set. I wonder why it was reprinted in 1925 and what was its reception...Sandiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06145277096052536138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873009918100574338.post-16736603760032543322015-08-02T11:18:36.511-07:002015-08-02T11:18:36.511-07:00Hilary, you are quite correct - and I wonder what ...Hilary, you are quite correct - and I wonder what Hardy would have made of Charles Fletcher and his Handy Guide. He might have bridled at its sometimes patronising tone - and I’d like to think he had a higher opinion of Butterfield than Fletcher had! Many thanks, AdrianAdrian Barlowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04526714501872493961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5873009918100574338.post-91736789488511801682015-08-02T05:31:56.526-07:002015-08-02T05:31:56.526-07:00Interesting that this is only 20 years after the p...Interesting that this is only 20 years after the publication of Jude the Obscure - the ultimate outsider's guide to Oxford.Hilaryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02932487641329330100noreply@blogger.com