Jonathan Meades

A perspective of surrealism from the English journalist Jonathan Meades in a suitably surreal manner.

Jonathan Meades explores the architectural legacy of Queen Victoria's reign.

A personal portrait of Birmingham - home of Balti, ELO, heavy metal, conferences, 'Crossroads' and Cadbury's - from its architecture and canals to the Brummie accent and humour. (bbc.co.uk)

An introduction to Pevsner and his series The Buildings of England by critic Jonathan Meades.

The influence and importance of Soviet architecture during the Stalin years and its role in codifying the regimes ideology. (libcom.org)

Jonathan Meades explores the architecture of Nazi Germany, from its holiday camps to its concentration camps. (imdb)

Jonathan Meades on British architecture.

Meades takes a look at neglected forms of British architecture such as caravan parks and golf courses, and at the place that famous buildings hold in the British popular imagination. (en.wikipedia.org)

These innovative, "slightly bonkers" documentaries look at neglected forms of British architecture (en.wikipedia.org)

Series in which presenters explore architecture in the footsteps of Nikolaus Pevsner. (bbc.co.uk)

After being The Times' restaurant critic for fifteen years, Meades estimated, in an interview with Restaurant magazine, that he had put on 5 lb a year during his reviewing period, which works out around an ounce per restaurant. By his own statement in the series Meades Eats, after being pronounced 'morbidly obese' he subsequently managed to lose a third of his body weight over the course of a year. (en.wikipedia.org)

These innovative, "slightly bonkers" documentaries look at neglected forms of British architecture such as caravan parks and golf courses, and at the place that famous buildings hold in the British popular imagination. (en.wikipedia.org)

These innovative, "slightly bonkers" documentaries[8] look at neglected forms of British architecture such as caravan parks and golf courses, and at the place that famous buildings hold in the British popular imagination. (en.wikipedia.org)

Meades celebrates the culture of Northern Europe, and wonders why the North suffers in the English popular imagination compared to the South. Meades travelled through the slag heaps of northern France, Belgian cities and to the redlight district of Hamburg, musing on the architecture, food and art of the places in which he finds himself. (en.wikipedia.org)

Jonathan Meades takes a quixotic tour of Scotland, a country which has intrigued him since he first encountered lists of towns only known from football coupons (bbc.co.uk)

But back in the 1950s, Ian Nairn was part of a new breed of Angry Young Men. Aged just 25 and fresh out of the RAF, he burst onto the architectural scene with Outrage, a blistering attack on the soulless destruction of Britain by shoddy post-war planners. Published in the influential Architectural Review in June 1955, it led to the formation of the Civic Trust, whose remit was to tackle the 'subtopian' eyesores Nairn had so graphically exposed. (bbc.co.uk)

When it comes to the buildings of the fascist era, Meades discovers a dictator who couldn't dictate, with Mussolini caught between the contending forces of modernism and a revivalism that harked back to ancient Rome. The result was a variety of styles that still influence architecture today. (imdb)