Reconstruction, Englishness and Coventry Cathedral

This article considers the way in which the architect Basil Spence, despite his Scottish background and training, placed strategic emphasis upon his familiarity with and sympathy for the architectural traditions of his adoptive country of England. It explores the connections made in the 1940s and 1950s between national identity and gothic architecture, viewed by Spence as a style of vitality and integrity, and links it to the design of Coventry Cathedral, a building which simultaneously commemorated the nation's wartime dead and symbolized its post-war reconstruction. [Publishers' text].