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Did John Betjemin really ask for a stiff drink when he first set eyes on Reading Town Hall? Is Caversham a spiritual slum? Who called the Bath Road a glorious boulevard?This book brings together for the first time opinions of Reading by sixty-five writers, visitors and residents over the past four centuries.

read an extract from A Much-Maligned Town

find out about Abattoirs to Zinzan by Adam Sowan

'To begin with the good news: some writers have found Reading variously a live town; a vigorous town; handsomely built; interesting, prosperous and pleasant; a most genial centre. Moving down the scale the praise becomes decidedly faint with phrases like useful, very useful; most unpretentious; Britain's average town; not exciting; commonplace in the extreme; not wholly Golgotha; awful, dull, flat anonymity. When it comes to outright damnation, the words are unminced: frankly depressing; frankly ugly; utter scrappiness; calculated squalor; a stupendous octopus; administratively half baked, artistically null and architecturally hideous'.

Adam Sowan in his introduction.