Austin WIlliams is an architect and director of the Future Cities Project, which has a critical take on attitude towards modern living. He regularly writes on the these of urban development and architecture, and his most recent book is The Future of Community. Austin has also recently launched Mantownhuman: a Manifesto towards a new humanism in architecture.

She freed herself

Her story was challenged, her accounts of suffering were dismissed and she was even seen to have been complicit in her own capture. This book is a very touching, nuanced and determined two fingers up to those rumour-mongers.

‘The Big Society’ (or ‘Compulsory Voluntarism’)

‘The Compact Code of Good Practice on Volunteering’ continues: ‘The key element (of volunteering) that it is freely undertaken’ (my italics). Maybe the government thinks that this simply means ‘done for free’ but in fact it describes an activity ‘willingly, uncoercedly or generously’ given. As such, it is about the rights of the person who gives up his/her time.

A large central void

Several reviewers have criticised the banalities of the libretto, but, to a certain extent, this is the least of the problems. Even La Traviata opens with the line ‘You’re late. We’ve been playing cards’, but Wainwright’s words are genuinely lamentable throughout. Add to this the fact that there is no drama, no turmoil, no excitement, no arias (to speak of) and no coup de grace - and you are left with a large central void to act your way out of.

Palladio the genius

Understanding the work of the architect’s architect when there are no substansive differences between traditionalists and modernists today.