Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of History's Greatest Lost Buildings
Interviews
bbc radio 4
Start the Week
On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe picks through the remains of vanished buildings with the writer James Crawford. In his book, Fallen Glory, Crawford looks at the life and death of some of the world's most iconic structures. The conductor Semyon Bychkov explores why some music fades, and the enduring appeal of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. Julia Sallabank studies endangered languages and whether it's possible to revive indigenous languages on the verge of extinction. And it is origins which feature on Peter Randall-Page's latest sculpture: a naturally eroded glacial boulder carved with stories of creation myths from cuneiform to text speak.
WBUR, Boston
Here & Now
For millennia, humans have built structures not only to house themselves, but to express their personalities and aspirations. But even history's greatest structures fall prey to time and conquest, and their destruction often reflects the society that created them.
James Crawford collects 21 architectural histories in Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of History's Greatest Buildings and joins Here & Now's Meghna Chakrabarti to talk about the book.
WNYC, New York
The Leonard Lopate Show
James Crawford discusses his book Fallen Glory, which reveals the history, archaeology and stories behind some of world’s most iconic buildings and the people who inhabited them, from the dawn of civilization to today. He explores structures from the deserts of Iraq and the plains of Mongolia, to the cities of Jerusalem, Istanbul, Paris, Rome, London and New York.
KERA, Dallas
Think
Grand buildings provide frozen moments that help us to understand the life and times of the people who built them. And when these structures are destroyed, so, too, is part of our collective history. James Crawford joins us to talk about how the Tower of Babel, the Library of Alexandria and other important buildings were used and abused, which he writes about in Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of History's Greatest Lost Buildings.
the New York times
Tell Us 5 Things About Your Book: 21 Great Buildings Throughout History
“In its lifetime, the same building can meet Julius Caesar, Napoleon and Adolf Hitler,” James Crawford writes in Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of History’s Greatest Buildings. “What human could claim the same?” Crawford’s book tells the stories of 21 great and influential sites — their conception, construction and destruction — from the Tower of Babel to the Bastille to the World Trade Center. In doing so, he tours much of world history, and attempts to look into the future as well. Crawford tells us about the inspiration for the book, what he learned while writing it and more.
The Robert Elms Show, BBC Radio London
With James Crawford, Ruth Goodman and Alexander Armstrong
Author James Crawford and historian Ruth Goodman talk about their latest books and TV presenter come singer Alexander Armstrong speaks about his debut album.
heleo
Falling Towers, Disappearing Cities: How the Lives and Deaths of Great Buildings Have Shaped the World
James Sanders is an award-winning architect, filmmaker, and author of Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies. He recently joined James Crawford, author of Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of History’s Greatest Buildings, in New York for a Heleo Conversation on what the biographies of our greatest structures can teach us about the human drive for immortality, the psychological effects of our physical surroundings, and the counterintuitive importance of architecture in a digitally-focused world.
Journalism & Extracts
The independent
The lives and deaths of buildings: Should we try to preserve ruins?
The demolition of Palmyra's ruins is nothing new. By accident or design, great buildings and monuments have always been toppled. And as James Crawford says in his new book, the question has always been what to do in the aftermath
In June this year, at sunset in a high-altitude valley in Afghanistan overlooked by the mountains of the Hindu Kush, a pair of Chinese documentary-makers staged a remarkable event. To the accompaniment of music, and watched by a crowd of 150 local people, they raised a 55-metre-tall statue into a massive alcove carved out of a sheer sandstone cliff face. The statue depicted the ancient Afghan Prince Silsal in the traditional form of a Buddha. Directly alongside was another alcove, created originally to house a second, 38-metre-tall Buddha – Silsal's love, the Princess Shahnama. For some 1,500 years this pair stood together "side by side, their faces blurred", symbols of "faithfulness in effigy" – to borrow Philip Larkin's famous lines on another couple preserved in stone, the Earl of Arundel and his wife, entombed in Chichester Cathedral...
flaunt magazine
The Paste
Have you ever wondered what would happen if 3-D printing went ahead and printed an ancient city? Writer James Crawford prophesies just such things.
Imagine the scene 20 or 30 years from now. It is mid-morning, and the tourist buses have started to arrive. To the north and southwest are mountains, which rear up in pointed, shadowy curves from the flatness of the plain. To the south and east is desert, stretching into the liquid haze of the horizon. Here and there are thick groves of dark-green palms.
All of this landscape seems to look inwards, to the crowds now spilling excitedly out from behind the comfort of their tinted windows and their padded, air-conditioned seats. Very soon the chatter dies down, replaced by the clicks and whirrs of camera shutters and smartphones. This pause is staged. The tour operators let them stand for a minute or so, to look on in wonder. After all, what they see in front of them was supposed to have been obliterated by war. It should not be here. But it is here, rising up triumphant, gleaming in the sun, its stones already radiating the heat of the day: the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra...
national post
Who killed the Library of Alexandria?
Who killed the Library of Alexandria? An excerpt from James Crawford's Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of the World's Greatest Lost Buildings
In the autumn of 48 BC, the Roman General – and soon to be dictator – Julius Caesar looked out from the palace quarter of Alexandria over the vast, sweeping harbour to the Mediterranean Sea, and reflected on how quickly man’s fortunes could turn. When he had arrived in the city several weeks earlier, he had been presented by the local authorities with the signet ring and severed head of his great rival, Pompey. Caesar wept at the sight of the ring, and was too distraught even to look at the head. Pompey and Caesar, the two great Titans of Rome, had fought out a vast and sprawling civil war that would ultimately see their Republic transformed into an Empire. Pompey’s demise, as victim of a crude assassination plot after he landed in Alexandria three days ahead of a pursuing Caesar, had been a tawdry end to such an epic conflict...
elsewhere: A Journal of Place
Extract from Fallen Glory by James Crawford: Kowloon Walled City
In the aftermath of the Second World War, refugees flooded south to the Kowloon Peninsula. The only trace of the Walled City was the derelict shell of the Mandarin’s house. Yet people gravitated almost instinctively to this rough rectangle of ground. Perhaps it was the feng shui. The city had originally been laid out according to the ancient principles of Chinese philosophy: facing south and overlooking water, with hills and mountains to the north. This ideal alignment, it was said, brought harmony to all citizens. In their desperate plight some refugees may have believed that Kowloon would be a much-needed source of luck and prosperity. Others, however, recalled that this had once been a Chinese exclave in British colonial territory. The stone walls of the Walled City had gone, but the refugees were convinced the diplomatic ones remained...