Reyner Banham Revisited

Reviews / Votes

[Williams'] fascinating new study of Banham's life . . . leaving the reader with a rich sense of a man with ideas and what they mean today. * The RIBA Journal * A truly ambitious task . . . this book invites readers into the universe of one of the most brilliant and uncategorisable critics of modern architecture, cities and mass culture. * Domus * Williams uses Banham's books to define seven personas, or hats that Banham donned throughout his working life . . . He brings Banham's journalism, documentaries, and other output into the fold, painting a nuanced and complex, if incomplete, picture of the critic's life. The incomplete nature of the biography is hardly due to Williams, who is attentive in his readings of Banham and thorough in his research. Some of the latter took place at the Getty, where the Banham Papers are located, but as Williams admits, Banham destroyed most of his notes and first drafts. * Archidose * Unusually for a critic, Banham has been well-served by biographies and monographs, most of them coming from American architectural academia. What makes Reyner Banham Revisited so interesting is the way it retells the story of this critic, historian, journalist, and TV and radio presenter in a British context, one which has particular attention to class. * Owen Hatherley, Tribune * Richard J. Williams's excellent and lively account of what he describes as 'The Multiple Banhams' - how Reyner Banham reinvented himself from the aeronautical engineer to the scholarly pupil of Nikolaus Pevsner, then unshackled himself as an advocate for Brutalism and prolific journalist in New Society. * Charles Saumarez Smith * Richard J. Williams allows us to excavate Banham's magnificent ambivalence about modernism. To Banham, modernism was not orderly at all, especially by the sixties. But he embraced its perversities with surgical irony. Williams traces Banham's prescient journey step by step. An important addition to Banham studies. * Norman Klein, author of The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory, and Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles * In today's world of technology and consumerism, Reyner Banham's prolific writings are as fresh and relevant as ever. Richard Williams insightfully reveals how this California cowboy from East Anglia reimagined architectural history, way ahead of his time. * Annmarie Adams, Stevenson Professor, McGill University, and author of Architecture in the Family Way, Designing Women, and Medicine by Design. *