Country Life magazine has picked 'The Story of High Street' as one of the Best Books of 2009. Peyton Skipwith wrote:
Alan Powers's and James Russell's Eric Ravilious: The Story of High Street not only reproduces Eric Ravilious's lithographs and JM Richards' 1938 text from 'High Street' (Country Life) - copies are rare because the plates were destroyed in the Blitz - but includes informative essays that put it in context, as well as identifying for the first time a number of the shops, bars and restaurants depicted. These are nostalgically evoked in the original words and pictures, but, as Mr Powers says, Richards and Ravilious 'have left us with the key to unlocking forgotten rooms in the mansion of English culture in the 1930s'. A rare case of having one's cake and being able to eat it as well.
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