Fiona Twycross, the heritage minister, is to be congratulated for finally giving London’s Southbank Centre Grade II listing (Campaigners welcome ‘long overdue’ listing of brutalist Southbank Centre, 10 February).
I remember being shocked when I first saw it in the 1960s, but it has become a remarkable symbol of the zeitgeist.
Its grey concrete and its childlike composition together express the fatalism and despair of a nation in economic and political decline.
Such a prominent display of ugliness on the banks of the Thames needs protection, for more optimistic future generations will surely wish to see it demolished.
Francis Bown
London
• The news about the Southbank Centre reminded me of a mystery coach trip I joined in 1972 as a first-year university student. Depressed by the rain-soaked grey concrete ziggurats of the Denys Lasdun-designed University of East Anglia, we fancied a change of view. Imagine our delight when the coach finally drew up outside a familiar grey concrete structure – the Royal National Theatre, also designed by Lasdun.
Helen Keats
Newport, Isle Of Wight
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