Pevsner's 'Buildings of England'

Many of the grand schemes conceived in the heroic mood at the end of the Second World War were never fully realised or have since been whittled away, but one at least stands out as having been completed according to plan and is now well into its second round. At the end of the war Allen Lane of Penguin Books offered Nikolaus Pevsner the chance to start two great projects – the editing of a multi-volume history of art and the production of a county by county architectural guide to England. The idea for the guidebooks, to be known as the Buildings of England , derived from the Dehio Handb£11.95), just published, represents the most substantial revision yet to appear and therefore the clearest indicator of how the volumes are changing. But before venturing into the engulfing world of South London some further appreciation of the inheritance that Pevsner has left his successors is called for.