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- Harry Mount, the London Telegraph
NotebookSeptember 2000 Crudity beyond belief On the English town Walsall, and its new art gallery.
It is possible that there are uglier towns in the world than
Walsall, but if so I do not know them: and I consider myself
better than averagely traveled. But while Walsall undoubtedly
exists, it is difficult to know where precisely it begins and
ends, because it is in the middle of one of the largest and most
depressing contiguous areas of urban devastation in the world,
the Black Country of the English Midlands. There is nowhere in
the world where it is possible to travel such long distances
without seeing anything grateful to the eye. To the hideousness
of nineteenth-century industrialization is added the desolation
of twentieth-century obsolescence. The Black Country looks like
Ceausescu’s Romania with fast food outlets.
I have been to Walsall twice in my life. The first time was to visit its then principal attraction for outsiders, an establishment called the Serpentarium, which advertised itself as the l ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 19 September 2000, on page 77 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/cruditybeyondbelief-dalrymple-2360
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