Farrow and Ballification

Farrow and Ball Paint Swatch

Ordinary things contain the greatest mysteries, someone once wrote. Yes, and the strongest ideologies. One of the things that makes English Heritage’s urban gentrification guide (see previous post) so odious is the way it assumes a position of complete normality, as if no one could possibly argue with its premise. And yet it represents a very specific cultural position behind which lurks an intersection of taste, class and politics.

The obsessive desire for preserving particular aspects of our built heritage (or rather certain versions of it) is, paradoxically, a recent thing. English Heritage itself was set up in 1983 with wider powers than previous national conservation bodies. Membership of the National Trust has trebled since 1981, growing to 3.5million by 2007. Both these institutions represent a marked shift in our attitudes to heritage since the early 1980's, a situation that parallels Thatcherism's rejection of the post war welfare state and the technological optimism of the 1960's.


Using paint to brighten an exterior, taken from the Reader's Digest DIY Manual.

If you look at interior design and DIY books from the late 1960's and '70’s one of the things that strikes you is the lack of interest in preserving the original features and historic detail in Victorian/Edwardian houses. The 1974 edition of the Reader’s Digest DIY Manual (a fine thing and about the same size as a Victorian terrace) for instance happily suggests ways to place MDF panels over old mouldings, rip out Victorian fire places and paint garishly over exterior brickwork (usually in dark brown and/or orange). Apart from a certain invigorating lack of taste the manual is significant in illustrating the way that attitudes to historic architecture have changed over the years.


Transforming A Victorian Home to Suit the '70's, taken from the Reader's Digest DIY Manual.

The manual suggests in its own how-could-you-possibly-argue-with-this way for a different concept of living in traditional housing than English Heritage's interactive gentrifier. Completely un-hungup on notions of authenticity, nothing could have been further from the mind of the mid-‘70’s home improver than unearthing and fetishising period features. Lowered ceilings, conversation pits, T&G cladding and hammocks (for some reason) predominate.


How To Improve a Victorian Hallway, taken from the Reader's Digest DIY Manual

The section on refurbishing a Victorian hallway is particularly salutary. With an admirable lack of deference the manual suggests removing every feature that might be found desirable today: timber mouldings, high ceilings, original paneling. Elsewhere, pebble dashing, oversized dormer windows and other crimes against English Heritage's taste dictats are described in a series of lovely 'how to' diagrams.

Ultimately though English Heritage's sanitised version of the urban streetscape with its heritage paint shades and expensive bread shops is as historically suspect as any other era's. For all its assumed sensitivity it is ultimately more about a certain kind of pervasive middle class aspiration than it is about conserving the past. It's just that right now the two things have converged.

Why Kiera Knightley Should Be Purchased By The National Trust

Review: Pride and Prejudice.

So, I’m in the Rio cinema in Dalston – possibly the most multi-cultural place in the world - and everyone here is white and middle class. Outside, the cars on Kingsland Road throb past with their neon glow and the kebab shops light up the street and yet, in here, all you can hear is the sound of horses hooves on cobbles and silver spoons clinking on china. The thought occurs: why would anyone want to make a film like this now? Isn’t it about as relevant as Quinlan Terry’s houses or Viscount Linley’s furniture? Well, I happen to have a soft spot for Quinlan Terry, but still, the whole idea of period drama is rather worrying: a curious fixation on a world of restrictive manners and social segregation. Is this what we should be thinking about in 2005?

Then there is the film itself. The whole thing is bathed in a honeyed autumnal glow. It begins with the sun rising over a misty swathe of English countryside and gets progressively more picturesque after that. This film is as stylistically intense as Sin City. The quality of light in it was so seductive that after it I felt like hiring a lighting crew to follow me around. What’s it all about? Well, basically, there’s the Bennet family who are farm people, a bit coarse but basically good sorts. They have five daughters and no son or heir, so the house and farm are due to be given over to a male cousin, who is, as Jane Austen put it, a bit of a knob. The father is an amiably sardonic farmer. The mother is a petty bourgeois social climber obsessed with marrying off her daughters to the highest bidders. The eldest daughter Jane is beautiful, honest and shy. The second eldest Elizabeth is beautiful, honest and sharp. Into this scenario rides Mr D’Arcy, an impossibly wealthy bachelor, and his friend, the only slightly less wealthy Mr Bigley. The Bennets and the two bachelors meet at the village disco – sorry, local dance - where Mr Bigley promptly falls in love with Jane, and Mr D’arcy and Elizabeth begin their tortuous and acerbic on-off courtship.

Most of the action – if that is the right word – takes place within a succession of house interiors where the manners are adjusted subtly according to location. The Bennet’s house is filmed in a succession of painterly scenes, somewhere between Breugel, Pieter de Hooch and the sort of sentimental pictures of young children chasing chickens that the Victorians used to hang in their nurseries. Pigs waddle in and out of shot, mud squelches underfoot and there is a rich choreography of honest farm folk and quacking wild fowl. The house, a mix of Queen Anne and Georgian with classical embellishment is lovingly pictured in all its flaking and scuffed glory: a sign presumably of both the Bennet’s near impoverishment and of our heroine Elizabeth’s straightforward honesty. Beginning with the girlish honesty of Jane and Elizabeth’s conversations at home, social interaction becomes ever more elliptical and strained as they move through a succession of ever grander residences. Basically, the posher the house the more mean spirited the people living in it. Except for D’Arcy who has the grandest house but also the best taste. In one scene, Elizabeth wanders through his copious hallways, her eyes lingering over the suggestive physicality of a series of Grecian statues. She is clearly the only other person in the film capable of appreciating such beauty.

Away from the claustrophobic civility of the interiors, Elizabeth’s enthusiasm for walking is seen as evidence of her free spirit. The countryside is depicted as free and natural – a naturalness, of course, that is mediated through the whole biscuit tin and tea towel world of the English picturesque tradition. When the camera is not focusing on the all round loveliness of the English landscape, it is focusing on the all round loveliness of Kiera Knightly. Her character is, of course, the moral heart of the story, showing that honesty and depth will win out over frippery and snobbishness. But, appropriately, her face is always perfectly made up, her ‘kohled’ eyes and flawless skin as ‘natural’ as the perfect countryside behind her.

Always a sucker for shots of rolling hills accompanied by swirling classical music, and entranced by Knightley’s triumphant goodness, I was utterly seduced by it all. Coming out, Kingsland Road was something of a shock. But, you know, in a good way.