A Short History of British Architecture: From Stonehenge to the Shard

by Simon Jenkins

The architecture of Britain is an art gallery all around us. From our streets to squares, through our cities, suburbs and villages, we are surrounded by magnificent buildings of eclectic styles. A Short History of British Architecture is the gripping and untold story of why Britain looks the way it does, from prehistoric Stonehenge to the lofty towers of today.

Bestselling historian Simon Jenkins traces the relentless battles over the European traditions of classicism and gothic. He guides us from the gothic cathedrals of Lincoln, Ely and Wells to the ‘prodigy’ houses of the Tudor renaissance, and visits the great estates of Georgian London, the docks of Liverpool, the mills of Yorkshire and the chapels of south Wales.

The arrival of modernism in the twentieth century politicised public taste, upheaved communities and sought to reconstruct entire cities. It produced Coventry Cathedral and Lloyd’s of London, but also the brutalist monoliths of Sheffield’s Park Hill, Glasgow’s Cumbernauld and London’s South Bank. Only in the 1970s did the public at last give voice to what became the conservation revolution – a movement in which Jenkins played a leading role, both as deputy chairman of English Heritage and chairman of the National Trust, and in the saving of iconic buildings such as St Pancras International and Covent Garden.

Jenkins shows that everyone is a consumer of architecture and makes the case for the importance of everyone learning to speak its language. A Short History of British Architecture is a celebration of our national treasures, a lament of our failures – and a call to arms.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Architecture, Art

320 pages, Paperback

Expected publication January 13, 2026

About the author

Sir Simon David Jenkins, FSA, FRSL is the author of the international bestsellers England’s Thousand Best Churches and England’s Thousand Best Houses, the former editor of The Times and Evening Standard and a columnist for the Guardian. He is chairman of the National Trust.

Reviews

[Richard Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and informative. A short but reasonably comprehensive coverage of Britain’s architectural history. Of course, such a single volume has to leave out more than it puts in.

Its strength is not just the history of buildings themselves, but also the broader history, politics and arguments about architecture at various eras. How the public is sometimes interested and engaged and at other times uninterested. How members of different architectural schools absolutely hated each other. How architects can sometimes swing into huge dictatorial arrogance about what buildings should be foisted in the environment and society, and at other times can be socially passionate and caring. This is interesting stuff for anyone interested in that sort of social history.

The book could do with a few more pictures. The paperback I read had quite a few and maybe as a moderately priced book it could take no more but architecture is above all visual so it needs pictures. Also it might benefit from summary tables of the buildings and their locations he mentions. There were quite a few he talks of I’d like to go and see, but unless you are the sort of person who makes notes as you read you can’t keep track if them all.

This is not a cooly dispassionate history, but part history and part polemic, especially over the arrogance of the modernist architecture of the 60s and 70s in Britain. But then Jenkins doesn’t claim to be doing anything else. I enjoyed it.

[Joris Gillet · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a topic as 'visual' as architecture, this is not really a 'visual' book. Part of this my own fault. I read the ebook version and it wasn't until I finished the last chapter that I stumbled upon the section with the photos/pictures of a number of the buildings covered in the book. Reading the book would have been a less frustrating experience if I had realized that earlier. Because that's the other thing. There's not an awful lot of description of what the buildings look like. The book seems more interested in the politics and the people involved in the the building of the buildings, than in the actual architecture of the buildings.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a highly readable survey of British architecture, one of my favorite topics. I enjoyed the narrative laced with the author’s opinions and observations. My only complaint is that there were not enough photos of the buildings discussed. I had to keep googling them on my phone. Also I would have liked more examples from my beloved Scotland. Otherwise it was a fantastic read with a lot of detail and interweaving of the art/architecture with British history.

[Francis Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolutely outstanding book and I recommend it wholeheartedly. Jenkins offers the whole history of British architecture to the present day and makes it digestible. He covers everything, religious, civic and residential buildings from the richest to the poorest. He explains particularly well the changes in style, the role of speculative developers as well as architects and their patrons, and the debates, such as the perennial competition between Gothic and Classical architecture, and links these debates to wider social and political themes. He is excellent on Modernism and the elitism, corruption, inhumanity and lack of public debate that led to the despoliation of British, particularly northern, cities in the 1950s-70s, and that came close to destroying much of central London (eg Whitehall, Covent Garden), only prevented by a conservationist Counterrevolution in the 1970s. He has little positive to say on Brutalism and laments the lack of any focus on the street for more than a century. He also criticises the London skyline and postmodernist towers built for no purpose other than spectacle and profit. He has strong views but always writes fairly and explains. Above all he calls for everyone to learn how to speak architecture, given how important the built environment is to human happiness. This short book reflects a lifetime of architectural experience from someone who cares passionately about the subject, and I learnt so much from it.

[David White · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want people to point at buildings, laugh, cry or get angry. I want them to hate and to love what they see. I want them to speak architecture.

Simon Jenkins is my favourite writer on architecture. It does help that I usually sympathise with his opinions, though like a longtime wine connoisseur he can be hard to please. He also writes in a way that is accessible to the wider public, knows the value of a good metaphor or quip, and explains the things you intuitively thought about buildings but couldn't quite put into words.

The first two-thirds of the book are a brisk summary of the various styles that appeared in Britain up until the mid-20th century. If you've read his other books, this is familiar territory; this is the third time I've read him remark on the eloquence of the letter proposing a new cathedral at Salisbury. It is straightforward, informative and rounded, documenting how styles came and went over time, with a few stories here and there to stop it getting too dry. It gets more lively when we get to Victorian times, when there was no longer a nationally favoured style but a 'Battle of the Styles'. It's amusing just how pointless and petty these arguments got, as well as the sheer randomness of the results. For example, in the debate about what style should be used for the Foreign Office building:

Scott submitted an initially Gothic proposal... the Liberal opposition leader, Lord Palmerston, took up the cudgels to stop it. To him, Scott was 'going back to the barbarism of the Dark Ages for a building which ought to belong to the times in which we live'. He said this in the new parliamentary chambers whose Gothic style had been chosen specifically for its Britishness.

About two-thirds of the way through, the book shifts gear. From the Second World War until the 1970s, architects, planners and politicians sought to raze large swathes of British cities to make way for cars and concrete boxes. Many of these buildings turned out to be unsuitable and unpopular. If you ever see locals campaigning to have a hated building demolished, it was probably built in that era. The expense and damage of these misguided schemes was enormous; what else they wanted to do was even worse. In London alone, they came close to destroying Covent Graden, Piccadilly Circus and much of Whitehall.

Jenkins is not always fair to the modernist planners. Colin Buchanan is portrayed as advocating the razing of Britain's cities, but he actually warned that "to drive motorways through them on the American scale would inevitably destroy much that ought to be preserved". His report was a very reasonable response to an era when car use was rocketing. Likewise, Jenkins notes T. Dan Smith's role in razing Georgian streets in Newcastle, but not his role in protecting Grey Street. However, it is hard to deny the ego and hubris that many of them had, as well as their indifference or even contempt towards ordinary people. Since the 1980s, architects and planners have done better, but the mistakes of the past still get repeated. Ironically, the heir to the throne turned out to be better attuned to not just the public's tastes, but also their needs.

Jenkins enhances these chapters with his own experiences, including witnessing working class families being cleared from their homes in Manchester and intervening to save the City of London Club.

[Alexander Titcomb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this book. Authoritative and detailed, you can feel Jenkins' enthusiasm throughout. It also richly catalogues the debates between styles and gives colour to the egos of long-gone architects, I definitely felt for the men who designed fantastic stately homes in the hope of a royal visit from Elizabeth I that never came.

The tail end of the book is where it really shines. Jenkins is absolutely acidic in his criticism of post-war utopian Corbusians, and rightly so. But it leaves room for love of some modern (but not most modernist) buildings.

I think this is best read with the glossary and Google Images handy.

[Luncik · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive book on British architecture even though it is titled a “A short history of British architecture”. My favourite part is when Simon Jenkins points out that the New Zealand Building is the “bleakest patch of architecture in London”🤣 - I couldn’t agree more! I lived for a couple of years in Piccadilly area and whenever I passed the New Zealand Building, I couldn’t stop staring, fascinated by its ugliness in contrast to the buildings up Pall Mall.

[SophieJaneK · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good history of architecture with a particularly thoughtful insight into town planning ( or lack of) and the devolution of Britain's city centres and highstreets with its link to architecture. It also recognises the so often overlooked relationship between architecture and mental health. Very interesting.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice little book about the progression of architecture in Britain. Think this flows best in audiobook form so you can look up the buildings whilst listening. 7/10.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Structure: 10/10
Content: 8/10 - more needed on style and how they were built and explaining architectural techniques and where they arose
Style of writing: 7/10 bit haughty and subjective

[Leoni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got excited at mention of garden cities only for it to glaze welwyn and not once talk about Letchworth😒