In the 1930s, tens of thousands of central Europeans sought sanctuary from fascism in Britain. While the rainy, seemingly quaint island they discovered on arrival was a far cry from the dynamism of Weimar Berlin or Red Vienna, it was safe, and it became home. Yet the émigrés had not arrived alone: they brought with them new and radical ideas, and as they began to rebuild their lives and livelihoods, they transformed the face of Britain forever.

Drawing on an immense cast of artists and intellectuals, including celebrated figures like Erno Goldfinger, forgotten luminaries like Ruth Glass, and a host of larger-than-life visionaries and charlatans, the historian Owen Hatherley argues that in the resulting clash between European modernism and British moderation, our imaginations were fundamentally realigned and remade for the better. In casting what Bertolt Brecht called, in a new German word, a Verfremdungseffekt, an ‘alienation effect’, on Britain, the aliens made us all a little bit alien too.
Provocative, entertaining and meticulously researched, The Alienation Effect opens our eyes to the influence of the émigrés all around us – many of our most quintessentially British icons are the product of this culture clash – and entreats us to remember and renew our proud national tradition of asylum.

Modernism is now a century old, and its consequences are all around us, built into our everyday lived environments. Its place in Britain’s history is fiercely contested, and its role in our future is the subject of ongoing controversy – but modernist buildings have undoubtedly changed our cities, politics and identity forever.

In Modern Buildings in Britain, Owen Hatherley applauds the ambition and explores the significance of this most divisive of architectures, travelling from Aberystwyth to Aberdeen, from St Ives to Shetland, in search of our most important and distinctive modern buildings. As Hatherley considers the social, political and cultural value of these structures – a number of which are threatened by demolition – two linked questions emerge: what happens to a building after it has been lived in, and what becomes of an idea when its time has passed?

With more than six hundred pages of trenchantly opinionated, often witty analysis, and with three hundred photographs in both duotone and colour, Modern Buildings in Britain is a landmark contribution to the history of British architecture.

A searching, timely account of the condition of contemporary Europe, told through the landscapes of its cities

Over the past twenty years European cities have become the envy of the world: a Kraftwerk Utopia of historic centres, supermodernist concert halls, imaginative public spaces and futuristic egalitarian housing estates which, interconnected by high-speed trains traversing open borders, have a combination of order and pleasure which is exceptionally unusual elsewhere.

In Trans-Europe Express, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the European city across the entire continent, to see what exactly makes it so different to the Anglo-Saxon norm – the unplanned, car-centred, developer-oriented spaces common to the US, Ireland, UK and Australia. Attempting to define the European city, Hatherley finds a continent divided both within the EU and outside it.

‘The latest heir to Ruskin.’ – Boyd Tonkin, Independent

‘Hatherley is the most informed, opinionated and acerbic guide you could wish for.’ – Hugh Pearman, Sunday Times

‘Can one talk yet of vintage Hatherley? Yes, one can. Here are all the properties that have made him one of the most distinctive writers in England – not just ‘architectural writers’, but writers full stop: acuity, contrariness, observational rigour, frankness and beautifully wrought prose.’ – Jonathan Meades