Preposterous Erections

On the way home from work I called in at Quinns bookshop in Market Harborough for a reception to launch Preposterous Erections, the new book by Peter Ashley of Unmitigated England.

I met a Conservative councillor who enjoys this blog and someone who had known the late Barry Summers, who taught me and was later a Liberal and then Lib Dem councillor alongside me, when they were both in the Labour Party in the 1970s.

Preposterous Erections, says the blurb:

brings together sixty uniquely fascinating towers from all corners of England. From the parkland Brizlee Tower in Northumberland to the coastal Doyden Castle in Cornwall, Peter Ashley tells us their stories through his own very individual photographs and his witty and irreverent commentary. 

Although there is an obvious core of eighteenth and nineteenth-century landowner's eccentricities, the more recent past is not forgotten, including the instantly recognisable Post Office tower in London's Fitzrovia and the more retiring Lewis's department store art deco tower in Leicester.

I shall review the book here one day soon. Incidentally, its title was suggested by Wartime Housewife.