The First World War brought far reaching changes to England. These included a huge expansion of the suburbs, the massive growth of motoring and a debate about how England should look in the future. This was not a simple battle between conservationists and developers; it was a search for the soul of England.

This is a part of the lecture series, English Architecture: Into the Modern World.
Simon Thurley's four lectures complete his survey of English building from the Saxons to the present day. The theme is modernity and tradition. This is the story of how British architects struggled to find an architectural language that met the needs and aspirations of a society in a state of rapid change while negotiating deep and popular traditions and beliefs. Two World Wars shook the nation producing the seemingly contradictory emotions of nostalgia and progress. Out of this has come the world in which we live.

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