New Addington author John Grindrod’s latest book, Iconicon, as featured on this website, has been named as The Times’s Book of the Week.
And Inside Croydon has five copies, each signed by the author, to give away in an exclusive competition for our loyal subscribers.
The book even includes a chapter devoted to Grindrod’s hometown, Croydon, or “the New New Croydon”, with a dishonourable mention for Brick by Brick in this stylishly-designed, breeze-block sized book.
Richard Morrison, The Times reviewer, clearly takes his own view of the post-war architecture of Britain, where an over-emphasis on the tall “glinting towers” – like the one in Aldgate that caught fire yesterday – has been detrimental to other aspects of the built environment.
“How about the tacky shopping-malls, dead at night and half-dead during the day, or the identical cul-de-sacs of soulless Barratt houses?” Morrison wrote at the weekend.
‘Like an invading spaceship from Independence Day’: According to John Grindrod’s new book, New Addington ‘has only gone and got itself an icon’
“The dinky yuppie flats lining gentrified canals or the rotting high-rises on grim windswept estates that gentrification never touched with a barge-pole? The superficial ‘regeneration’ schemes that leave rundown former industrial towns looking like decrepit old geezers in shiny new trainers or the bland business ‘parks’ where millions stare at screens from nine to five?
“’Surely our more everyday, prosaic places are icons too,’ John Grindrod declares near the start of his rambling but highly readable 486-page journey round the Britain that has sprung up in the past 40 years. Hence his title, Iconicon, a lexicon of the architectural ‘icons’ that surround and shape our everyday lives rather than the showcase towers designed by lofty ‘starchitects’ on all-expenses-paid ego trips.”
Remind you of anyone?
You can read about all that and much more in this thorough-going review of British architecture of the past half-century.
And you can win a copy of the book by entering our terrific competition today.
Booked in: author John Grindrod at his book launch last night
To enter our exclusive iC Iconicon competition, you MUST be a paid-up patron of Inside Croydon.
Full details of how to sign up as a subscriber can be found by clicking here.
Once you’ve done that, you then need to choose carefully your Croydon architectural icon and, in 50 words or less, write why you have chosen it and why, for you, it is an outstanding building.
There’s plenty of possibilities, whether it is a “New Manhattan” tower block built in the 1960s splurge of development, a bold civic statement of a public building, or an example of the borough’s Victorian or Edwardian suburban heritage.
Let your imagination take hold: the judges will be looking for the best examples of originality and inspiration.
The five best entries will each win a signed copy of Iconicon, and their submissions will be published on this website.
Our regular competition Ts & Cs apply. The prize on offer is a copy of the book; there is no cash alternative.
Email your entry, together with your name, address (so we can post the prize to our winners) and daytime contact phone number, with “iC Iconicon competition” in the subject field, to inside.croydon@btinternet.com before our deadline of 5pm on Thursday, March 31.
Good luck!
- Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain by John Grindrod is published by Faber (£20 hardback). To buy a copy, click here
- To visit John Grindrod’s website to find out more, click here
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
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