This year marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of a special edition of the prestigious Architectural Review. The June 1955 supplement was devoted to a now-famous single essay called ‘Outrage’, Ian Nairn’s critique of the ways in which Britain’s towns and cities were being rebuilt from the rubble and ruins of the Second World War. Nairn’s vividly written essay is based on what he saw travelling from Southampton to Carlisle and his belief that character and individuality in architecture was being lost to a drab urban sprawl that he termed ‘subtopia’ (see ‘Cathedrals of Commerce’ in CA 426). He went on to develop these ideas in articles for the Observer and the Sunday Times, in books on London and Paris, and in programmes for the BBC, between 1967 and 1978.
In those television programmes (some are still on BBC iPlayer), he travelled round Britain in a blue open-top Morris Minor that was almost an extension of his own personality; and some 58 years later, that car has been rediscovered. The Twentieth Century Society set out to find it for the anniversary with the help of members of the Morris Minor Forum and it turns out that the car, first registered on 1 April 1969, has been lovingly restored and now lives on in Cornwall.
A confirmed ‘Minorphile’
It will not be the first time the car has been overhauled. Describing himself as a ‘confirmed Minorphile’, Nairn wrote an article for the 7 August 1977 edition of the Sunday Times in which he described the reconditioning work carried out to the car by Charles Ware, proprietor of the Morris Minor Centre at Twerton, located in the western suburbs of Bath.
