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.