Abstract

the london journal, Vol. 44 No. 2, July 2019, 155–161 Reviews Capital Designs: Australia House and Visions of an Imperial London,by EILEEN CHANIN. Pp. 416. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2018. £25. ISBN 978-1- 925801-31-6. Hardback. This remarkable book bundles three connected stories into one. The first is about the Kingsway– Aldwych improvement, the most prestigious of the urban reconstruction schemes undertaken by the early London County Council. The second concerns the evolution and accomplishment of the project for Australia House, sited at the prominent eastern end of the Aldwych and the grandest of all the grand buildings on the LCC’s development. Among many revelations in Eileen Chanin’s book, perhaps the most striking is that Australia House was the first major dip- lomatic building in London to be wholly purpose-built. The third story recounts the ambitions of the infant Federation of Australia to make a monumental show of its representation in Britain, which it viewed as vital to the nation’s future welfare and prosperity. Let us start with Australian Federation, the strand least familiar to Londoners. Canada, the model for the so-called Dominions, was federated as early as 1867. As the six Australian colo- nies became increasingly urban and