The Alienation Effect: a 'compelling' study of the émigrés who reshaped postwar Britain

Owen Hatherley's 'monumental' book is brimming with 'extraordinary revelations'

Book cover of The Alienation Effect by Owen Hatherley
Owen Hatherley's book is a tribute to 'achievement in the face of adversity'
(Image credit: Allen Lane)

"Between 1933 and 1940, about 100,000 refugees from central Europe came to Britain to escape the nightmare of fascism," said Christopher Turner in Literary Review. Mostly Jewish, many were also left-wing and artistically inclined. The influx included "exiles from the Bauhaus, a design school shuttered by the Nazis"; art historians Ernst Gombrich and Nikolaus Pevsner; writers Elias Canetti and Arthur Koestler; and architects Ernö Goldfinger and Berthold Lubetkin.

In this "well-researched and monumental" study, Owen Hatherley looks at the impact these émigrés had on "stagnant, stale Britain". Many, he argues, were culturally transformative, bringing avant-garde ideas to painting, photography and architecture. "Crammed with extraordinary revelations" – such as the fact that Jerry Springer grew up in a north London modernist building designed by Sigmund Freud's son – "The Alienation Effect" makes a "compelling case for immigration as a national lifeforce".

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