Gavin Stamp’s Interwar: British architecture 1919–1939 is a remarkable exploration of a contentious era in British architecture, shaped decisively by the trauma of the Great War. A scholar of this period when few others took an interest, Stamp provides a much-needed counterpoint to more conventional – and lazier – narratives that sideline other styles as revanchist cul-de-sacs off the shining highway to modernism. Rather, his approach gives equal weight to the eclectic array of architectural movements that flourished side by side, from Art Deco and neo-Georgian to the revivalist tendencies of the Tudorbethan, even stretching to Egyptian-inspired designs.

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