One of my favourite things about Parr's New Brighton is the flawed landscape it shows ( it's the landscape that is flawed in The Last Resort, not the working classes - unless you think that people are defined by their environment).
New Brighton is a mutilated leisure landscape, a landscape that is as apparent in Britain today as it was in the eighties. But all British landscapes are mutilated, including the idealised ones that appear on chocolate boxes.
It's just that their modifications took place a long time ago and have been redefined and assimilated into a traditional ideal of Englishness.
That traditional ideal is what you find around Bath - the beauty of its mutilated landscapes, deforested hills, and managed woodland tied in with human habitation and an overwhelming obeisance to the car.
It still makes for beautiful places though, and these are two of my favourite places in the west of England - Brown's Folly and, overlooking Solsbury Hill, the Larkhall allotments.
pictures by Colin Pantall
