I don’t know much about Betjeman, but ’snob’ does seem to be adequate for a one-word description!

What historiography are you referring to? I haven’t looked very hard yet, but the American stuff I’ve seen is mostly about the nuclear era. You’re right, dispersal is another effect of bombing on town planning, but it didn’t fit in so well with my post’s title :) I can’t remember where I saw it — I thought it was Edgerton or Wohl, but it’s not — but didn’t Le Corbusier explicitly design a city that was resistant to air attack? Lots of open spaces, buildings which minimised their cross-sections from above, lots of big water features which could be used by firefighters when the water mains went out. That’s going to bug me now …

Nemo:

Ah, I’ve never read Morning of the Magicians, though I’ve heard plenty of things about it — mostly bad (the Nazi-occult stuff in there sounds like it was basically complete rubbish). But that Goebbels statement does sound plausible, I think. Certainly Hitler spent a lot of time planning how to rebuild Berlin — he was probably half-glad to see the place in ruins.

That Baker book does sound interesting — there’s a few familiar names in the excerpt which don’t normally get up in books by generalists.

Since I’m here I’ll also mention that the American novelist Nicholson Baker has written a history of the early years of WW2 that might be somewhat up your alley. If you don’t know who Baker is ( let’s just say here that he is an unusual writer) there is a story about him and his new book here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/books/04bake.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

and there is an excerpt from the book itself here:

http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?tab=1&pid=616619&agid=2

Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
Runs the red electric train,
With a thousand Ta’s and Pardon’s
Daintily alights Elaine;

Reading the rest, I think my point is only reinforced.

Coming from a family with a new town background, I have to say that rereading Slough after a few years leaves me a bit cold. Slough is a dump, sure enough, and Betjeman does a job of snarking it, but I bet it beat the piss out of 1930s Woolwich or Brixton, and there’s a metric shitload of snobbery in there. To say nothing of the “everything was better on the land, and maybe having London coventrated would get us back there – it’s only a few million dead poor people” meme.

Curiously, Betjeman managed to combine this kind of hymn of hate for modernism with reams of stuff about how wonderful the Underground, especially the Metropolitan Line, and the north-west London suburbs (built at the same time) were; out by RAF Northolt and Bentley Priory, mark. The key is of course class: Into neat West Ruislip station/Pulls the bright electric train/With a thousand Ta’s and Pardons/Daintily alights Elaine…She obviously wouldn’t ever paint her nails, and therefore she gets a slot in the air raid shelter. But she does sound fucking incredibly dull.