Norman Foster

You still had rationing.

So you had a little book and when you went to buy food or clothes, then

You could only buy depending on the number of coupons, like postage stamps, that you'd got left.

But that period was the first nuclear power station, was the first commercial jet.

It was the de Havilland Comet, was...

in terms of cars, created the R-Type Bentley, 120 miles an hour, hour on hour.

It cost twice two houses at that time, the semi-detached.

So this was an extraordinary era.

Now, since then, for a whole variety of reasons, many of them political, it's no longer.

the leading at that level of innovation, manufacturing and so on.

And the factors are quite complex.

Some of them are political and others social.

So you do have this cyclical and you can look at the rise and fall of empires and the relationship between

the way in which that might be celebrated, either through the technology or the architecture of the time.

And the architecture of the Festival of Britain at that time was absolutely extraordinary.

And that was the achievement of one administration.

But literally, when the next administration came down, for whatever reason,

would surmise that it was seen as a threat.

So it was demolished.

The only element which is still standing on the South Bank, and you know there is the Festival Hall, of course, but that was part of that creation.