The Alienation Effect: How Central European Émigrés Transformed the British Twentieth Century

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Owen Hatherley

The Alienation Effect

How Central European Émigrés Transformed the British Twentieth Century

Owen Hatherley

$79.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Allen Lane
24 June 2025

History; British & Irish history; Social & cultural history; Refugees & political asylum; Migration, immigration & emigration; Urban communities

Britain. Made in Europe.

In the 1930s, tens of thousands of central Europeans sought sanctuary from fascism in Britain. While the rainy, seemingly quaint island they discovered on arrival was a far cry from the dynamism of Weimar Berlin or Red Vienna, it was safe, and it became home. Yet the emigres had not arrived alone- they brought with them new and radical ideas, and as they began to rebuild their lives and livelihoods, they transformed the face of Britain forever.

Drawing on an immense cast of artists and intellectuals, including celebrated figures like Erno Goldfinger, forgotten luminaries like Ruth Glass, and a host of larger-than-life visionaries and charlatans, the historian Owen Hatherley argues that in the resulting clash between European modernism and British moderation, our imaginations were fundamentally realigned and remade for the better. In casting what Bertolt Brecht called, in a new German word, a Verfremdungseffekt, an 'alienation effect', on Britain, the aliens made us all a little bit alien too.

Provocative, entertaining and meticulously researched, The Alienation Effect opens our eyes to the influence of the emigres all around us - many of our most quintessentially British icons are the product of this culture clash - and entreats us to remember and renew our proud national tradition of asylum.

By: Owen Hatherley
Imprint: Allen Lane
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 242mm, Width: 165mm, Spine: 37mm
Weight: 1.015kg
ISBN: 9780241378205
ISBN 10: 0241378206
Pages: 608
Publication Date: 24 June 2025
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Owen Hatherley is the author of many books on aesthetics and politics, including Landscapes of Communism, Trans-Europe Express and Modern Buildings in Britain. He is a commissioning editor at Jacobin.

Reviews for The Alienation Effect: How Central European Émigrés Transformed the British Twentieth Century

The book I’ve been waiting for. A masterpiece -- James Fox A brilliant work of history. Owen Hatherley makes a fierce and elegant case for British culture as a living tapestry made ever brighter by newcomers to our strange island -- Lynsey Hanley