In Suburbia - better out than in?

The first of a series made for BBC Radio 4 by Ian Hislop. I enjoyed this very much.


In spite of the fact that so many of us live, and choose to live, in Suburbia, it's still described as, at best a cultural backwater, and at worst a cultural desert. Indeed the cultural output of suburbia is often songs, novels and films that describe a striving to escape from this land between the city and the country, or in cultural terms between rural Idyll and Bohemia. 

Ian Hislop has long been fascinated by this cultural snobbery, and in three programmes he talks to leading cultural figures who either come from or celebrate Suburbia and Suburban life. 

Hanif Kureishi, author of 'The Buddha of Suburbia' is a not so proud son of Bromley, Comedian Lee Mack is star and writer of the suburban comedy 'Not Going Out' which is now the longest running sitcom on British Television and still uses the familiar tropes of suburban aspiration, gentle class conflict and stability to garner laughs, and JC Carroll of The Members, is the composer whose Punk anthem 'The Sound of the Suburbs' made the tedium of car washing and noisy neighbours a 'badge of honour'. 

All of them discuss their mixed feelings about suburbia, if and how it's changing, and why it remains a place where so many people aspire to live. He also visits the suburbs themselves and chats to The 'Suburban artist' of Woodford, and he looks back at the way the suburbs have developed from their Medieval reputation as the place to dump everything you don't want in the city, to the industrial revolution when the Romantic suburb emerged allowing a new middle class to find a place between the castles and mansions of the aristocracy and the slums of the workers.

 In the first programme he concentrates on that historical development and how it was reflected from Chaucer and Shakespeare to The Diary of a Nobody and the quintessential figure of suburbia, Mr Pooter, as well as the whimsical reflections of Betjeman and the withering verse of Stevie Smith.

Also consider the sitcoms set in the suburbs: One foot in the Grave, Terry and June, The Good Life, Butterflies, Keeping up Appearances, The Inbetweeners, Neighbours etc.

He references John Betjeman's 'Middlesex' poem.

There is also a contribution from Graeme Davison, an emeritus professor from Australia, who has written a great deal on the suburbs such as this piece for Inside Story on urban sprawl.
There is a reference in this piece to a former GA President Patrick Abercrombie:

In 1948, Sir Patrick Abercrombie toured Australia, preaching the lessons of his 1944 London Plan. “Decentralisation,” “satellite cities,” “green belts” and “model suburbs” quickly became part of Australian public discourse.

He describes how the suburbs were where people placed the things they didn't want, and even Chaucer described them in negative terms.

Shakespeare also mentions them in the play 'Henry VIII'. 

No mention yet of two books that also tackle this area. 
There is Geoff Nicolson's 'The Suburbanist'.


Finally, if you want a teaching resource on the suburbs, I wrote one a few years ago for the Royal Geographical Society.


Peter Stiff also researched and wrote some articles on the suburbs while completing a Fawcett Fellowship. He wrote these notes here, and some other pieces.

I've also created a Suburbia playlist - feel free to suggest other songs that could be added to this.

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