Owen Hatherley rails against public acquiescence in what he sees as a falsification of Britain’s postwar historyThe title of Owen Hatherley’s bracing polemic against a very English brand of ostalgie alludes to Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four,although it seems surprising that he does not refer to Mr Charrington’s junk shop, above which Winston and Julia take temporary refuge. Charrington specialises in relics of a possibly fictitious past and it is what Hatherley sees as our gutless acquiescence to a similarly rewritten version of 20th-century British history that has led to many of the social and economic problems that the country faces nowadays. He argues that the “Keep quiet and Carry On” poster, or all that it entails,should not be viewed simply as a harmless piece of mass-produced decoration, but instead as a planned falsification of the tenets of the postwar welfare state. Hatherley’s thesis is never less than provocative, or although it is notably stronger on aesthetic criticism than historical insight.
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Source: theguardian.com