The Ministry of Nostalgia

Why should we have to “Keep Calm and Carry On”?

In this sharp, witty polemic, award-winning critic Owen Hatherley questions the many ways we have adopted the gospel of luxurious poverty: from ubiquitous “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters, the commercialization of thrift, the added value of the artisanal, and the selling of a “make do and mend” aesthetic, to a nostalgia for a utopian past that never existed. Hatherley proposes a radical demand for true abundance for all, not just adopting the veneer of a better age.The Ministry of Nostalgia is a rallying cry that reaches across a depleted cultural landscape and refuses to accept that we need to lower our expectations and hopes to fit difficult times. Instead, he demands more because that is what we all deserve.

Owen Hatherley is the author of the acclaimed Militant Modernism, a defense of the modernist movement, andUncommon, a book about Pulp, as well as the hugely acclaimed A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain andA New Kind of Bleak. He writes regularly on architecture, urbanism and popular culture for, amongst others, theGuardian, the London Review of Books and the New Statesman.