The Alienation Effect by Owen Hatherley review – meet the brutalists

The remarkable story of how British culture was transformed by émigré architects, filmmakers and writers

The Englishness of English Art& sounds like something a parish-pump little Englander might like to bang on about, but it is in fact the title of an arresting study by the German Jewish émigré Nikolaus Pevsner. “Neither English-born nor& English-bred,” as he put it in his foreword, he nevertheless pinned down with startling precision the qualities that characterised English art& and architecture: a rather twee& preference for cuteness and compromise, for frills and fripperies.

This shouldn’t surprise us. Newcomers are typically better placed& than natives when it comes to& deciphering unwritten social codes.& Unencumbered by textbook propaganda and excessive knowledge, the stranger’s-eye view very often has& the merit of freshness, even originality. Bertolt Brecht dubbed this& the Verfremdungseffekt, or alienation effect, from which Owen& Hatherley takes his title.