This anthology of essays has its origins in a series of annual lectures hosted by the Royal College of Art and Victoria and Albert Museum History of Design programme since 1989. Jeremy Aynsley, as organiser of the event for many years, and Harriet Atkinson, were its co-editors and they also contributed an Introduction which places the contribution of Peter Reyner Banham in British intellectual history. As the most influential writer on design and architecture in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century, Reyner Banham is not easily categorised. His life and career spanned the years of Brutalism and Pop art, the anti-Design movement, ecological critique, and the early stages of Postmodernism, all of which he held firm views about. Originally trained as an engineer, then as an art and architectural historian, Banham’s interests encompassed architecture, urban design and planning, industrial design, popular culture and Americana, as well as the iconography of objects of everyday life. His writings could cover anything from megastructures and architectural visions of the future to the humble ice-cream van.