more than 95 theses

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Everybody seems to think that the Houses of Parliament are a sublime and loveable architectural embodiment of British tradition. In fact, the present Palace is a ridiculous building that is about as much to do with British tradition as my iPod. Its design was a grotesque Victorian compromise between those who favoured Gothic and those who preferred classical. Charles Barry, a classicist by temperament, did the plan and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, something of a prat, did the Gothic skin and interior detailing. The plan is good and the river frontage is explicitly classical. The rest is basically a bad three-dimensional Pre-Raphaelite painting, a Disneyesque evocation of Britain as a land of knights and churches which has come, in use, to resemble two giant pubs stuck in the middle of a truly nasty and extremely pompous club for fat philistines with occasional romantic longings and an inflated sense of their own importance. Neo-gothic, unlike neo-classical, seldom works.

Westminster Hall, in contrast, is one of Europe’s and possibly the world’s great interior spaces. It struck me dumb the first time I saw it. The hammerbeam roof is a glory of medieval carpentry. The stone structure is almost 1000 years old and its tone is utterly different from anything else on the site. Real, muscular grandeur contrasts with Pugin’s fussy mincing. The MPs, having moved into this great room, should be made to stand at all times, anything to stop them lolling like drunks on those green pub benches. Also standing, ideally on one leg, focuses the mind and would shorten debates. On entry into the hall they should be made to kneel and kiss these old stones. I am serious. Very.

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— Brian Appleyard. I could not agree more.