Fake Heritage

Why We Rebuild Monuments John Darlington

Yale University Press 2020 Hb, 248pp, £25, ISBN 9780300246766

In relating the secret marriage of Henry VIII to Elyzabeth Sympleson, daughter of a wealthy London wool merchant, on 28 January 1547, this book opens with a kind of head-test (complete with portrait) that pleases this admirer of Robert Anton Wilson. I had to check that the story exists only in this book, perhaps proving that I am a bit of a Sympleson myself. Everything that follows is “real fake”, i.e. it exists. “Welcome to the Palæo-ironic Era”, declares the author, executive director of a UK charity for architectural conservation.

In this world where fakery of news and information is turning large areas of culture into the plot of a RAW or Philip K Dick tale, why does fake heritage – a practice going back to antiquity – exist? From dictatorial aggrandisement to religious belief to urban idealism, there are different reasons. Old sells; it is familiar, comforting, profitable.

China leads in replicating heritage architecture with samples from nearly every major global city, and several scale copies of the Eiffel Tower, found there. Thames Town near Shanghai is inspired by Bath and Oxford. The Austrian lake village of Hallstatt is copied in Guangdong Province. Dulwich College has a twin in Singapore. A Japanese university copied Beatrix Potter’s house.

Never mind that the Parthenon is ruined

– there’s a brand new one in Nashville, Tennessee. Many of England’s new buildings and streets are historical pastiches yet only grant-worthy examples are noted. Of Classic-revival follies, only what still remains are included, so I must mention William Beckford, creator of Fonthill Abbey, an astounding Gothic skyscraper (which collapsed). Can we get the Chinese to rebuild that, and do it properly this time?

Spurious history and archæology is booming, so the welltrodden examples found here (the Cardiff Giant, Piltdown Man, Nazis and others) would have benefited from active cases like the Bosnian Pyramids. Questions of æsthetics and intention are illustrated with personal favourites like Damien Hirst’s Treasures of the Wreck of the Unbelievable exhibition, and French recreations of caves with prehistoric paintings. The destruction wreaked by ISIL/ Daesh and subsequent efforts to reverse it, are covered, as are many other significant buildings and museums. Concisely written, and the numerous colour images are excellent. ★★★★