The phrase “an important contribution to the literature” is barbed. Usually, it means the reviewer thinks a book is a very good idea, but should be much better. Sadly, that is what John Darlington has written.
But first, the positives. Darlington’s writing is engaging, in a style academic enough for those who want it and accessible enough for those who do not. He presents a huge selection of case studies, drawn from ancient times to the present day. Entertainment value alone makes it a worthwhile read. There is much in it that, I suspect, most of us did not know. To my shame, I had no idea that there were people living in Palmyra well into the 20th century, nor had I even heard of the Cardiff Giant. The book is interesting, entertaining and even amusing, subjecting attempts to (re)create heritage to a question – “Why?” – that is rarely asked. Its scope is vast, covering such unlikely page-fellows as Damien Hirst, Saddam Hussein and Beatrix Potter, via ancient Japan and modern Bulgaria. One cannot but be impressed by its breadth.
Breadth is where the problems begin. Given that almost any form of heritage fakery can serve as an example, even the title is misleading. The book is not about rebuilding monuments. The Introduction skips briefly through the issues without leaving the impression that the author has fully got to grips with them. The meaning of “fake heritage” is left impossibly broad. The succeeding chapters purport to deal with particular motivations for faking heritage, such as ‘Fame and Fortune’ (Ch 1), ‘Art and Aesthetics’ (Ch 2), ‘To Educate and Entertain’ (Ch 3), ‘What This Says About Me’ (Ch 4), and so on. Occasionally, there is a superficial attempt at theoretical discussion, as in chapter 8 on ‘Protection Through Replication’ or chapter 9, ‘The Future of Fake Heritage’.
In general, it falls flat. Anything that does not fit neatly into the categories the author has devised is clumsily handled. Darlington seems unable to grasp that many of the private, individual motivations he proposes are phenomena in need of explanation, not sufficient in themselves. Why somebody should choose to express fame or social position through fake heritage is, in fact, the question he should try to answer. Instead, context is lacking. Take, for example the reconstructions of Ypres and Warsaw, discussed in chapter 7. Vague references are made to “modernism” and “traditionalism”, without any attempt to explain what those might mean, nor how they provide an answer to the question of why monuments are rebuilt. They float in the text as if all is clear. The Romantic and Picturesque movements are treated similarly brusquely elsewhere, and social conditions like class and status are passed over with minimal comment.
In other places, it is unclear how the motivation Darlington suggests applies to the case in hand. The book frequently reads as a series of fascinating but unconnected anecdotes. The Chinese facsimiles of European towns discussed in the chapter 3, ‘To Educate and Entertain’ have nothing to do with education or entertainment, discussion of Kohl Mansion in California (Ch 5) offers no explanation or link to either the title of the book or chapter (‘The Time Machine Effect’) whatsoever, and the Ise Jingu temple in Japan (Ch 6, ‘In God’s Name’) is not even a fake. It is a great disappointment that the singularly brilliant observation that destroying monuments is an attempt to fake heritage is shoehorned uncomfortably into the heel end of a chapter in which it clearly does not belong.
Why we rebuild monuments is of importance to anybody involved in conservation and restoration. Fake Heritage poses a refreshingly original question. It just does not answer that question.