The house is a remarkable survivor of the blitz. Although its neighbors have been destroyed by a bomb, somehow this house avoided destruction. It's still standing, even though it leans badly and must be supported by wooden struts. The house also functions as a kind of symbol of the social upheaval going in in postwar Britain. Built by Christopher Wren, it's an architectural masterpiece that, like the rest of the country, is hanging by a...
The house is a remarkable survivor of the blitz. Although its neighbors have been destroyed by a bomb, somehow this house avoided destruction. It's still standing, even though it leans badly and must be supported by wooden struts. The house also functions as a kind of symbol of the social upheaval going in in postwar Britain. Built by Christopher Wren, it's an architectural masterpiece that, like the rest of the country, is hanging by a thread, a last bit of beauty in an otherwise grim and bombed-out neighborhood. As such, it also becomes the occasion for a kind of class warfare that was also typical of the postwar era. Trevor, the new leader of the gang, comes from an educated family—his dad was an architect "come down in the world." It's Trevor's father that tells him the house was built by Wren, and that distinction makes it a target for Trevor's "anti-Architecture," the artful demolition of the house from the inside with the boys working like "worms inside an apple." In this way, the house and its fate suggest the "rottenness" of postwar Britain, as well as its lost grandeur and prestige; one has to laugh. As the truck driver says to Mr Thomas, who emerges from his outhouse to find his house a pile of rubble, "You got to admit it's funny."
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