Christopher Woodward: In Ruins

By MARGIE THOMSON

From his opening images - Charlton Heston in The Planet of the Apes realising that he is among Earthly ruins; an 1873 engraving featuring an imagined future New Zealander visiting the broken ruins of London - Woodward easily ensnares us in his own fascination with ruins.

"When we contemplate ruins, we contemplate our own future," he writes.

"To statesmen, ruins predict the fall of Empires, and to philosophers the futility of mortal man's aspirations. To a poet, the decay of a monument represents the dissolution of the individual ego in the flow of Time; to a painter or architect, the fragments of a stupendous antiquity call into question the purpose of their art.

"Why struggle with a brush or chisel to create the beauty of wholeness when far greater works have been destroyed by Time?"

From Rome to England, from Troy to Zanzibar, from grandiose Nazi fantasies to Cuba, through the literary landscapes of past centuries Woodward leads us, his commentary full of dazzle and erudition, always making the case for ruins not just as piles of stones but as living expressions of human imaginations.

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