My first job in journalism was on an architecture magazine, at a time when the mutual distrust and incomprehension between the profession and the public was at its height. And one thing was more responsible for that division than anything else: concrete. In those days, architects loved concrete. They adored its plasticity, its strength, its monumentality and, mysteriously, its “honesty”. Most architectural critics went along with them, as did some malleable clients. But the public were having none of it; they loathed its grey monotony, its propensity to stain and scar, and its inhumanity. Jonathan Meades, the wonderfully opinionated documentary maker and architectural critic, is a lover of concrete, but he knows what he is up against. In Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness