A Much Maligned Town by Adam Sowan

Did John Betjemin really ask for a stiff drink when he first set eyes on Reading Town Hall? Is Caversham a spiritual slum? Who called the Bath Road a glorious boulevard? This book brings together for the first time opinions of Reading, a decidedly mixed press by sixty-five writers, visitors and residents over the past four centuries; including Pepys, Cobbett, Defoe, Betjeman, Jerome and Wilde. Some of the phrases they used to describe the town and its buildings give a flavour of the book: they refer variously to its elegant sociability, barbarous taste, energetic individuality, ugliness and prosperity, vulgar vagaries, ephemeral gaudiness, cleanliness and attractiveness, hideous villadom, sublime setting, bland drabness, and utter scrappiness. Designed by Pip Hall, the book is vividly illustrated by Peter Hay’s witty rubber-stamp images.

'To begin with the good news: some writers have found Reading variously a live town; a vigorous town; handsomely built; interesting, prosperous and pleasant; a most genial centre. Moving down the scale the praise becomes decidedly faint with phrases like useful, very useful; most unpretentious; Britain's average town; not exciting; commonplace in the extreme; not wholly Golgotha; awful, dull, flat anonymity. When it comes to outright damnation, the words are unminced: frankly depressing; frankly ugly; utter scrappiness; calculated squalor; a stupendous octopus; administratively half baked, artistically null and architecturally hideous'.
Adam Sowan in his introduction.

“…so in the café in that vile city of Reading I said I’d marry him.” Carrington to Lytton Strachey, 14 May 1921

“A very large and wealthy town, handsomely built, the inhabitants rich and driving a very great trade.” Daniel Defoe, 1724

“Reading is a credit to the beautiful river that sweeps through its valley; neat, active, bustling - a sort of miniature city, with a sprinkling of pretty villas in pleasant suburbs.” 1859

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