Other books

The New English Landscape

by Jason Orton & Ken Worpole

Published by Field Station | London
October 2013, reprinted October 2014

This important study of contemporary landscape aesthetics, with 22 colour photographs by Jason Orton, has been widely acclaimed in the architectural, design and landscape press.

It discusses landscape as heritage, as a rich pictorial tradition in art, as an ecology, and, perhaps most importantly, as a site of crucial contemporary debates about the value and meaning of place in a modern, post-industrial society.

88 pages, Fine Art Print Quality, designed by Matter. £15

For well over 40 years Ken Worpole has been one of the most eloquent and forward-thinking writers in Britain. The New English Landscape, a collaboration with photographer Jason Orton, is a characteristically fine-grained and suggestive book, beautifully written and designed.
Icon Magazine

We regret to say that The New English Landscape is now out of print.

Dockers and Detectives

Five Leaves Press, 2009

Dockers and Detectives has now been enlarged and re-published.

This pioneering study of twentieth-century working class reading and writing in Britain revived a number of literary reputations, such as those of Alexander Baron and James Hanley, as well as distinguishing distinct regional cultures and narrative styles still existing in Britain.

He succeeds in making the reader want to rush out and read the books he is discussing because he tells a story well, and that in itself is still rare in books about literature.
City Limits

Buy it here: Dockers and Detectives at www.inpressbooks.co.uk

350 Miles: An Essex Journey

with photographer, Jason Orton
Essex County Council, 2005

This handsomely designed – and much acclaimed - book explores the landscape and history of the Essex coast, rivers and estuaries.

The authors have uncovered in words and images a haunted littoral of piers and power plants, mudflats and louring skies… Essex has never looked so mystical.
The Independent

Buy it here: 350 Miles: An Essex Journey online

Last Landscapes: the architecture of the cemetery in the West

Reaktion Books, 2003

A wide-ranging book containing more than a hundred and forty photographs by Larraine Worpole explores the way death transforms ideas about landscape and architecture, historically and in present-day Western society and culture.

Detailed accounts are given of Viking burial islands in central Sweden, Etruscan tombs and early Christian catacombs in Italy, the 17th century Portuguese-Jewish cemetery 'Beth Haim' at Ouderkerk in the Netherlands, and famous 19th century 'cities of the dead' such as Bologna's La Certosa, Highgate in London and Père-Lachaise in Paris.

Furthermore, this book explores the achievements of the great cemeteries of the modern era, such as the exquisite Stockholm Woodland Cemetery by Asplund and Lewerentz, and Aldo Rossi's rationalist city of the dead at San Cataldo, in northern Italy.

One of the most thought-provoking books of the year.
The Independent

Buy it here: Last Landscapes: the architecture of the cemetery in the West at www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

Here Comes the Sun: architecture and public space in 20th century European culture

Reaktion Books, 2000

This first collaboration with photographer Larraine Worpole, examined how European architects, planners and social reformers tried to remake the city in the early 20th century in the image of a sunlit, ordered utopia.

It concentrates on a whole new repertoire of building types including open-air museums, libraries, health centres, promenades, linear and sports parks, promenades and lidos.

This beautifully produced book makes a host of thought-provoking links between private faces and public places.

It will surely make you see familiar and forgotten architectural landmarks in a new light.
The Architect’s Journal

Buy it here: Here Comes the Sun: architecture and public space in 20th century European culture at www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

Hackney Propaganda: Working Class Club Life and Politics in Hackney 1870–1900

By Barry Burke & Ken Worpole. £5

First published in 1980, this facsimile reprint tells the story of the vibrant culture of working class club life and politics which existed in Hackney in the late 19th century, providing details of club affiliations, names and addresses, lecture lists, poetry readings, outings, brass bands, bunfights and demonstrations, which made the borough ‘the most heretical…in the metropolis’.

Buy it here: Hackney Propaganda from www.amazon.co.uk