Let’s crash the Austin Maxi in the basement of the Victoria Centre in Nottingham, with historian and raconteur Lucy Brouwer, who runs the very entertaining and illuminating tours Watson Fothergill Walk.

Opening in 1972, the vast and vastly ambitious Victoria Centre became the nexus of all things shopping for a city on the up, where full employment was spoken of in the launch brochure. By the next decade the government’s war on miners, as well as rising unemployment and the destruction of the city’s rag trade made the Victoria Centre’s optimism look out of step with the times.

But behind its rough concrete facade you could find a cornucopia of delights: an indoor market with a stuffed bear; a multi-themed Berni Inn, and the Emmett Clock, a magnificent kinetic whimsy that held passers-by transfixed. Lucy takes us on an odyssey to see a different side of this colossal beast, the railway station it replaced, and the many businesses that have come and gone.

Alongside that beast, Lucy’s minor monster is a lost single – lost, it has to be said, at the request of the band who made it. ‘Pop is Dead’ is a Radiohead song from 1993, that is as much manifesto as it is musical bombast. Why has it been erased from the band’s history, how did it inspire Lucy to set up a fanzine, and is it actually any good?

Lucy Brouwer is a Nottingham-based tour guide and historian. You can find out more about her tours at https://watsonfothergillwalk.com or follow her on Instagram @watsonfothergillwalk or on BlueSky @notrock.bsky.social

Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod

Monstrosities Mon Amour is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

It’s a home-town kidnapping in this episode, when award-winning beer writer David Jesudason whisks me down the road to the Point cinema in Milton Keynes.

Exploring the shiny mirrored red framed pyramid, a huge landmark of 80s entertainment and a multiplex pioneer. David grew up in nearby Dunstable, and so here he pits the wonders of the sleepy glider-town against the bright new city of MK, where the Point helped hollow out his town’s high street, but also was a massive attraction to young David. Discover a world of blockbusters, arcade games and the mysterious Le Club.

David’s minor monster mirrors the 8-bit delights of the Point: the Atari 2600, an early games console from 1977 more famed for its failed ET game than for its functional simplcity.

So let’s go Back to the Future in the DeLorean* in the latest episode of Monstrosities Mon Amour.

*Austin Maxi

David Jesudason is the author of the award winning Desi Pubs, and is twice Michael Jackson Beer Writer of the Year (2023 and 2025). Journalist and Substacker: davidjesudason.substack.com

Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod

Monstrosities Mon Amour is a reader-supported podcast. To receive new episodes and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Archaeologist Rebecca Lambert is used to investigating stone circles and prehistoric sites, but when she first visited the National Theatre she found a modern henge on the south bank of the Thames.

In the year of its 50th Anniversary, we visit the original ‘concrete monstrosity’, Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre, which opened in 1976. Seen through the eyes of an archaeologist it is a very different place, a vast modern henge and a place of ceremony where rituals, stone and water come together to create somewhere of great power and presence.

Is the National Theatre like Stonehenge? Rebecca Lambert takes us through the many strange similarities - and dissonances - that show us a whole new side of one of the most magnificent modernist buildings in Britain, with startling insight and wit.

But it’s drama of a different kind that has drawn our esteemed archaeologist to her other choice, that 1987 masterpiece of muscle, the Dolph Lundgren film Masters of the Universe. Find out what still captures her imagination in its depiction of small town America and its ‘Final Countdown’-style barrage of portentous hysteria and stonewashed denim.

Join us for an episode that is part revelatory reading of prehistory and modernism, and part riot of camp. I won’t say which is which.

Rebecca Lambert is an archaeologist and curator dedicated to public engagement, accessibility, and innovative research practices. Follow her on Instagram or Bluesky, or keep up with the progress of her work at https://practisesmakeplaces.wordpress.com/ where she’s investigating artistic responses to English ‘prehistoric’ monuments - from the 1720s to the present day. Her previous work has included the intriguingly titled Underpasses Are Liminal Places.

Monstrosities Mon Amour is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new episodes and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod

Writer Tom Cox has long been fascinated by the eerie flatlands of the Fens, those drained marshlands on the edge of East Anglia.

On our way around we discuss the folk horror of scarecrows, the romance of agribusiness and the weird agoraphobia - or is it claustrophobia? - of somewhere so flat and relatively uninhabited. And we marvel too at the odd midcentury modern villages that have cropped up in this landscape of ancient and modern.

As well as that, Tom dazzles me with his love for the Rolling Stones’s psychedelic experiment, their 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request, which many fans deem a failure but which Tom rates higher than Sgt Pepper. Find out why this album is so inspiring, and how its spirit is the very antithesis of people-pleasing AI.

Tom Cox is the author of three novels – Villager, 1983 and his most recent, Everything Will Swallow You, as well as numerous works of non-fiction such as 21st-Century Yokel (on the spooky edges of the outdoors) and Ring the Hill (it’s a book about hills, obviously). You can find out more about his work on his site, where he also shares lots of new writing.

Grindrodia is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod

Get ready for an underwater adventure as we go beneath the Thames with curator and architectural historian Dr Rosamund Lily West.

Have you ever been told you’ve got a mouth as big as the Blackwall Tunnel? Or been stuck in a conversation about the traffic? Or worse still, been actually stuck in the traffic there? It’s easy to overlook what an engineering marvel the Blackwall Tunnel is, the first tunnel built in the late Victorian era, and a second opened in 1967 as part of a second age of engineering ingenuity. But why does art and architectural historian (and local) Dr Rosamund Lily West like it? And what secrets does this great unsung piece of London’s infrastructure hold for the curious Monstrosities Mon Amour listener?

After a joy ride through the tunnel Rosamund takes us for a booze-up at Wetherspoons, the pub chain people love to hate, where we marvel at their incredible historic buildings, gasp at their local interpretation boards, and polish off our microwaved curries.

Dr Rosamund Lily West is a brilliant architectural historian and academic. You can find out more about her work, her publications and her walking tours on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/rosamundlilywest/ and Bluesky @rosamundlilywest.bsky.social and at her profile on British Art Network https://britishartnetwork.org.uk/membership/members/rosamund-lily-west/

Monstrosities Mon Amour is a reader-supported podcast. To receive new episodes and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod

Let’s visit an ancient Norfolk town, and instead focus on its postwar estates with one of Britain’s best loved housing historians, John Boughton of Municipal Dreams.

Thetford gets a bad rap. It isn’t particularly well known outside of Norfolk, and in many ways feels like a lot of towns expanded in the 1960s and 70s. With a variety of housing estates demonstrating the fashions and philosophies of the day, Thetford is a town of great history, from Roman to medieval and Georgian, and also of modernity. Discover where Dad’s Army’s Warmington on Sea was filmed, where Conran’s modern furnishings were made, and where a young municipal dreamer’s fascination with postwar housing was first kindled.

And let’s also find out just why he’s so obsessed with white bread – not the plastic ready-sliced sort, and certainly not sourdough…

John Boughton’s book Municipal Dreams grew from his amazing Wordpress and Substack sites: https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com and https://substack.com/@municipaldreams

Monstrosities Mon Amour is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod

Let’s visit a wonder of Britain’s industrial heritage – the gaudy seafront excess of Blackpool, Britain’s most extraordinary seaside town.

After a summer break Monstrosities Mon Amour is back with a seaside special!

Blackpool isn’t just the Tower, the illuminations and Strictly. Where else could you get your bumps felt on the beach by a phrenologist, see a dead woman in a coffin just for fun, and experience Britain’s first carpeted amusement arcade? Kathryn Ferry has spent years researching seaside history, and here she shares her love for this, the ultimate holiday destination, a place that thrived until the rise of the package holiday. Here’s a joy-ride through unexpected murano glass mosaics, beach huts and post-war design heritage, in a place as heady as candy floss and as over the top as drag bingo. Let’s allow ourselves to enjoy laughs, thrills and memories in one of the most remarkable towns in Britain.

And let’s discover another of Kathryn’s passions too – postwar plastics, here in the form of drip-dry wonder fabric crimplene, which was invented in Macclesfield in 1959. Guaranteed to make you rush to Vinted to buy a psychedelic outfit fit for a distant relative at a 1970s wedding.

Kathryn Ferry’s new book is Twentieth Century Seaside Architecture: Pools, Piers and Pleasure around Britain’s Coast, published by Batsford with the 20th Century Society. You can find out more about her other books and her work at https://kathrynferry.co.uk/ and follow her on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/seasideferry/

Monstrosities Mon Amour is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new episodes and posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod

Turner Contemporary was the first modern art gallery in Margate this century, right? Wrong. And why are so many studio pottery teapots languishing in charity shops?

Margate, on the north Kent coast, is famous for its amusement palace, Dreamland, for the Chas and Dave song, and for its hipster reinvention this century thanks to David Chipperfield’s Turner Contemporary. But before that gallery opened, another modern seafront structure – the Drum – by a very different modern architect – Terry Farrell – was built here, also celebrating the work of Turner. How did the town end up with two amazing contemporary buildings on the front, and why isn’t the Drum better known – or more widely loved?

And why aren’t people going nuts over the earthy brown wonder of late twentieth century British studio pottery? Especially the teapots. Well, someone is. And I’ve met him.

And that person is writer and artist Dan Thompson, who has lived in Margate for over a decade, and whose work has involved everything from epic community action, pop ups, poetry and large-scale history pieces, and has brought him together with master potter Keith Bymer Jones among any others. You can find out more about Dan’s work on his Substack (Dan Thompson Studio - see below), on his site https://mrdanthompson.wordpress.com/ or on his online shop https://payhip.com/DanThompsonStudio.

Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod

Grindrodia is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

What’s so special about this modest little bridge in a central London park? And why is twentieth century architecture’s saviour Catherine Croft a capybara superfan?

St James’s Park in London is surrounded by spectacular acrhitecture: the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Buckingham Palace and Horseguards Parade. But in the middle, over the lake, is a polite little mid century bridge, that hides a few secrets. Designed in the mid-fifties in a Festival of Britain style by Eric Bedford, chief architect of the Ministry of Works – the man who also designed the Post Office Tower – the Blue Bridge is a modest structure that’s all about the view and not about its own presence. Now we live in an era when such modesty is unthinkable for a centrepiece in a royal park, and it is soon to be demolished. Catherine Croft, Director of The Twentieth Century Society, shares her love of the bridge, her memories of family trips and the design heritage it stands for. And also, why guardsmen were so obliging at testing it out.

Meanwhile when not thinking about saving and celebrating modern buildings, Catherine is mainly thinking about capybaras. Discover how a modernist zoo led her to a love of these giant rodents, and why they have become a Tiktok sensation.

Catherine Croft is Director of the Twentieth Century Society, an organisation that campaigns for the protection and wider appreciation of modern buildings and places. But it didn’t stop her from bashing me over the head and kidnapping me in her Austin Maxi, to wax lyrical about the charms of functional bridges and freaky giant rodents.

Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod

How and why was the chi-chi seafront in Regency Worthing modernised in the 1960s? And what is the appeal of a Swedish prog-rock album of Tolkien’s fantasy epic?

Worthing in West Sussex, long associated with the subversive observational wit of Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde, has since been scandalised by the shadow of a late 1960s concrete car park on the sea front. Between the delightful lido and the pier, the car park represents a brave new Worthing, put up at the time when Harold Pinter is nearby writing his menacing play The Homecoming and social and cultural cjhange is coming to the seaside. Fast forward fifty-odd years and that modern dream is crumbling, the car park and its bowling alley are shut. But for some the americanised allure remains.

Meanwhile Swedish prog rocker Bo Hansson’s 1972 album Music Inspired By Lord Of The Rings casts a different sort of shadow, eerie in a space-age way.

Choosing these two disparate beauties is Travis Elborough, author of many wonderful books, including one on the English seaside, Wish You Were Here; a classic work on the Routemaster bus; a history of spectacles, Through the Looking Glass; and many others. It was a delight to be bashed over the head and kidnapped by him in his Austin Maxi for this collision of seaside modernism and epic prog-rock extravagance. So don your wizard’s hat and bowling shoes, and come with us on the adventure of a lifetime*

[*Lasts apprioximately 30 minutes].

Theme tune by Lorna Rees and Rufus Rees Coshan. Logo by Richard de Pesando. You can support Monstrosities Mon Amour by subscribing through Substack or through Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/grindrod

Monstrosities Mon Amour is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.