Bristol - Tim Mowl

Bristol is a port that set out, a long while ago, to forget the sea. It has a harbour with miles of picturesque quaysides. Half the city's streets have glimpses of water yet it lies comfortably inland, protected by wooded hills, sprawling in linear charm along five miles of dramatic valley topography.

While neighbouring Bath sets its classical terraces primly on a slope, Bristol's Clifton throws its adventurously styled terraces around the neck of precipices and wild woodlands to achieve that ultimate paradox of Classicism fusing into Romanticism. Add to that two cathedral-sized churches of outstanding beauty. While the vile profits of Bristol's infamous 18th-century slave trade resulted in enchantingly figurative Rococo interiors, a surge of 19th-century wealth endowed the city with a financial quarter of an eclectic brilliance.

The second mystery might explain the first. For a thousand years Bristol has been badly governed. In every age, out of greed or plain stupidity, Bristolians have made the wrong decisions in developing their city, yet art and architecture have rioted in the resultant thousand errors. The aim of this book is to illustrate those errors and attempt to account for the paradox.