To see properly pointy buildings, of course, one need go no further than Pointy Town. Now there is a place where the architects and builders do not fight shy of true pointiness. There is not an edifice in Pointy Town that is not pointy, certainly pointier than the Shard. Not just buildings, but statues, street appurtenances, people’s hats, even the very landscape itself – all as pointy as can be. For those keen on pointiness, it is very heaven. I am not sure if Pevsner ever went to Pointy Town, but had he done so, he would have been in raptures at the sheer profusion of pointy bits, if, that is, he was pointy-minded, which I am equally unsure whether he was or not. Let us say merely that he damn well ought to have been. “Pevsner”, after all, is a curiously pointy name, at least one suggestive of pointiness, in comparison to a name like, oh I don’t know, Stalin, for example. In spite of its meaning of “steel” or “steely”, which might evoke pointiness, “Stalin” has a softer, more rounded quality than “Pevsner”, to my ear. And Stalin himself was of course pocky, of which more later.
Insufficiently pointy?
