Monstrosities Mon Amour

<p>Archaeologist Rebecca Lambert is used to investigating stone circles and prehistoric sites, but when she first visited the National Theatre she found a modern henge on the south bank of the Thames.</p><p>In the year...

<p>Writer Tom Cox has long been fascinated by the eerie flatlands of the Fens, those drained marshlands on the edge of East Anglia. </p><p>On our way around we discuss the folk horror of scarecrows, the romance of...

<p>Get ready for an underwater adventure as we go beneath the Thames with curator and architectural historian Dr Rosamund Lily West.</p><p>Have you ever been told you’ve got a mouth as big as the Blackwall Tunnel? Or...

<p>Let’s visit an ancient Norfolk town, and instead focus on its postwar estates with one of Britain’s best loved housing historians, John Boughton of Municipal Dreams.</p><p>Thetford gets a bad rap. It isn’t...

<p>Let’s visit a wonder of Britain’s industrial heritage – the gaudy seafront excess of Blackpool, Britain’s most extraordinary seaside town.</p><p>After a summer break Monstrosities Mon Amour is back with a seaside...

<p>Turner Contemporary was the first modern art gallery in Margate this century, right? Wrong. And why are so many studio pottery teapots languishing in charity shops?</p><p>Margate, on the north Kent coast, is famous...

<p>What’s so special about this modest little bridge in a central London park? And why is twentieth century architecture’s saviour Catherine Croft a capybara superfan? </p><p>St James’s Park in London is surrounded by...

<p>How and why was the chi-chi seafront in Regency Worthing modernised in the 1960s? And what is the appeal of a Swedish prog-rock album of Tolkien’s fantasy epic?</p><p>Worthing in West Sussex, long associated with the...

<p>Where in Glasgow can you go for your niche shopping interests as well as for a night out? And what crockery pattern is the very epitome of Thatcher-Major era Britain?</p><p>Glasgow, city of thundering urban roads...

<p>Why is there a standing stone and a burgeoning counter culture to be found on a pedestrian junction of the M32? And why are good second hand cardigans just so goddam hard to come by? Join me and writer Gareth E Rees...

<p>How did an out of town retail park end up being built on the beach in Britain’s sauciest seaside town? Join me and comedian Angela Barnes to discover a new side to the place that terrifies the tourists and horrifies...

<p>‘Joyous, fun-coloured, and life-enchancing are very much the qualities we are not looking for at the moment.’ </p><p>So says Philip Downer, occasional tour guide and the man behind a hugely popular Instagram account...

<p>In this episode design and feature journalist Helen Barrett kidnaps me in the boot of her Austin Maxi and takes me to the Wiltshire town of Swindon, where we explore the American-style relics of its optimstic...

<p>Monstrosities Mon Amour is a new podcast celebrating places and cultural artefacts more usually slagged off or easily dismissed.</p><p>In this first episode writer and geek John Grindrod (that’s me talking about...