Return to Ladybird Modernism

Back to an optimistic vision of the future from the past

Ladybird books beautifully chronicle thirty years of British postwar progress. Not just in abstract ways, from books on plastics or nuclear power, or by representing the kind of domestic set-up familiar to middle class kids round the country, but also through images of specific places you could go and see and visit. Through the illustrators’ work, be it John Berry, Robert Ayton, Bernard Robinson, Ronald Lampitt and the rest, an optimistic version of British culture was captured in their non-fiction books, series such as the People At Work books, The Story of… or How It Works.

I’ve selected a few images here of places illustrated in the 1960s and 70s when they were still new, capturing those moments in time before time and taste and politics have changed many of them utterly. BBC Televeison Centre now flats; the Post-Office Tower soon to be a hotel; the precincts of Coventry badly treated; Euston Station in endless turmoil thanks to the mess of HS2. But here are some happier memories of those places, because we all need a bit of cheering up now and again.

COVENTRY CATHEDRAL

I particularly love the image of the fleche being hoisted onto the cathedral by rotodyne, one of Basil Spence’s typical theatrical flourishes.

COVENTRY PRECINCTS

Ronald Lampitt captures here something really pleasing of the early Blitz rebuilding complete with municipal planting and open space.

LONDON AIRPORT

Before it was Heathrow John Berry caught that transitional moment of turboprops before the big jets arrived.

KINGSTON BENTALLS

Kingston Bentalls, a modern building from 1935 dressed up in historic drag and explored in John Berry’s In a Big Store.

EUSTON STATION

John Berry’s images of Euston show the space and light of the building, before the clutter of privatisation began to eat into the structure.

BBC TELEVISION CENTRE

A heroic diagram of a building that had perhaps more influence over the inner lives of the British in that period than any other…

TELECOM TOWER

… or the Post Office Tower depending which edition of this book you have.

WYNDHAM ESTATE

Lovely to see some social housing featured too, the Wyndham Estate in Camberwell, which is still there and perhaps the least altered of all of these structures – other than Coventry Cathedral, of course.

Thanks Ladybird. Still making me smile after all these years.