On the one hand, Sir Bannister Fletcher's History of Architecture, and a collection of dour Modernist bibles on the other, Lancaster. Lancaster was certainly the best part of my architectural education. He knew that if you want Brits to take a subject seriously, you have to make it funny. Sir Osbert Lancaster (1908-86, knighted 1975), cartoonist, painter, theatre designer, architectural historian, travel writer and more, gave the British middle classes their primary education in architecture and a vocabulary to talk about it. Such phrases are all part of the architectural language now.
And for a nation that likes smart phrase-making, you immortalise building styles with names like 'Stockbroker Tudor', 'Wimbledon Transitional' or 'Pont Street Dutch'. And you animate the scene with, say, cartoon cavaliers or Thirties sophisticates at home. Fill it with funny, but accurate, drawings of buildings, townscapes and interiors, with the learning worn lightly in witty commentaries. How do you get a visually unaware nation like 1930s Britain talking about architecture and interior design? You write and illustrate a cartoon version of the History of Architecture, of course.
