Dimensions
230 x 290 x 35mm
The Francis Frith Collection.
In the century and a half since Francis Frith took his first photographs the face of Britain has changed dramatically. Hamlets have become villages, villages towns, towns cities. The canals have silted up, the railways have had their reign, now the car and the lorry rule supreme. Monumental buildings have been destroyed, new ones have arisen; woods have vanished; roads scar the landscape; hedges have been rooted up. Three generations of Friths and now a photographic postscript by John Cleare record this process in stunning detail and fidelity.
In his informed and incisive text, Philip Ziegler explains how these changes happened and what they meant to the men and women who lived in those houses, tilled those fields, admired those shop windows, ventured out on those new-fangled bicycles. Together pictures and text provide a chronicle of Britain since 1860 which, literally, is incomparable in scope and richness.
Contains 550 black and white photographs and 100 full colour photographs.