G uy O rtolano . Thatcher’s Progress

For the historian to write about Milton Keynes, observes Guy Ortolano in this important and highly erudite book, is “to turn an object of scorn into an object of study” (24). Founded in 1967 under the New Towns Act of 1965, this was one of the last “Mark III” new towns, distinct from their earlier postwar predecessors, when the zeal for expert-led planning and architectural modernism was fresher and less exposed to attack. By the 1970s, to its critics, Milton Keynes epitomized the doomed attempt at physical and social engineering, with its soulless, unadorned modernist houses and their flat, leaky roofs; its car-focused Los Angeles–style gridded road system; and endless roundabouts and concrete cows. Neatly, it also appeared emblematic of the late consensus era social democracy inspiring many of the town’s originators, which was fatally weakened by its overcentralized statism amid national economic decline. In Thatcher’s Progress: From Social Democracy...

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