The Ladybird Book of Postwar Rebuilding

Since I first wrote about the Ladybird books obsession with modernism (article here) I've become increasingly fascinated by the role they played in fostering a spirit of excitement in Britain's postwar schemes to modernise. Picking up copies in second hand bookshops I've started to see a much more concerted effort to portray a positive image of the rebuilding of Britain in these books than even I'd given them credit for. With their warm and sensible illustrations and no-nonsense prose, Ladybird has an incredible knack of bringing together the historical and the contemporary, the fairy-tale and the starkly realistic, taking the fear out of everything and showing a unified, positive and optimistic vision of life. And so this selection of images portrays a top ten in that mould: The Ladybird Book of Postwar Rebuilding.

1. Prefabs. From the wartime temporary housing programme to the building of the welfare state, prefabrication was a big story in rebuilding. Here's a school from People at Work: The Builder (1965) illustrated by John Berry.

2. This is a classic Ladybird image, marrying pastoral and progress: a coal fired power station. It's from The Public Services: Electricity, artwork by John Berry (1966).

3. Hello 1950s low rise office building! Soon to be dwarfed by high rise 60s office building... Another great image from People at Work: The Builder (1965) illustrated by John Berry.

4. Here's a fearless bit of Brutalism, and a style of high rise flats recognisable from cities all over Britain. The text in this book, Homes (1975) is pretty grim for a Ladybird book (on basement flats: 'they may be dark and damp but people often live in them') but Bernard Robinson's beautiful paintings maintain a standard.

5. The concrete frame! It's Ladybird does Le Corbusier. These books love to show how things are made, and this is amazing. Another classic from People at Work: The Builder (1965) illustrated by John Berry.

6. Here we have a point block, that Swedish design so gleefully adopted by local councils in Britain to meet housing demand. I love the text on this page as much as the illustration, which is about the most joyous representation of council housing you could imagine. This is from The Story of Houses and Homes, artwork by Robert Ayton, 1963.

7. Pylons are always on hand in fiction and photography to represent the march of progress across a landscape, so why not in Ladybird too? This is from The Public Services: Electricity, artwork by John Berry (1966).

8. Here's the man (and in Ladybird's world, despite the amount of women architects there were, this was always going to be a man) drawing up these plans for the modern world. You can tell it's the modern world because of the flat roof. People at Work: The Builder (1965) illustrated by John Berry.

9. And what could be more idyllic than this swanky architect designed house, a cross between Swallows and Amazon and North by Northwest. From The Story of Houses and Homes, artwork by Robert Ayton, 1963.

10. And here we have a nuclear power station! Nuclear physics held no fear for Ladybird, where the atom was our friend. This is from the bafflingly ambitious The Story of Nuclear Power, artwork: Robert Ayton, 1972.

Read the first part of my Ladybird odyssey here and the concluding episode here.