Brasília in North Bucks: The Unlikely Origins of Milton Keynes

The impact of Covid-19 is making us all think about organising events in new and different ways. In this talk, where our speaker will join us live from New York via Zoom, StonyWords (www.stonywords.org.uk) and MK Gallery have joined forces to help uncover other aspects of the story of Milton Keynes.

Harold Wilson's Labour government designated the new town of Milton Keynes in January 1967. The city's origins, however, lay in the more obscure work of the Bucks County Council's planning department earlier that decade. Rather than a city for the car, the county envisioned a monorail metropolis. Their goal was nothing less than to build a British rival to Brasília. Although their effort failed, its imagining made possible the subsequent designation of Britain's most ambitious postwar new town, Milton Keynes.

Join us virtually to hear Guy Ortolano, Urban Historian, talk about his research into the remarkable collection of materials on the building of Milton Keynes at the Buckinghamshire Archives which inform his recent book Thatcher’s Progress: From Social Democracy to Market Liberalism through an English New Town (Cambridge, 2019).

Tickets £5 (Zoom)