page_title: Senate House, London
section_title: Critical opinion
hierarchical_section_title: Senate House, London / History / Critical opinion
caption_attribution_description: English: Inside Senate House, University of London
context_page_description: Senate House is the administrative centre of the University of London, situated in the heart of Bloomsbury, London, immediately to the north of the British Museum.
  The Art Deco building was constructed between 1932 and 1937 as the first phase of a large uncompleted scheme designed for the university by Charles Holden. It consists of 19 floors and is 210 feet high.
  Today the main building contains the University of London's Central Academic Bodies and activities, including the offices of the vice-chancellor of the university, the entire collection of the Senate House Library, and seven of the nine research institutes of the School of Advanced Study. During the Second World War, the building's use by the Ministry of Information inspired two works of fiction by English writers. The earliest, Graham Greene's novel The Ministry of Fear, inspired a 1944 film adaptation directed by Fritz Lang set in Bloomsbury. The description of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four matches the Senate House. His wife Eileen worked in the building for the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information.
context_section_description: The architectural character and scale of the building has received both positive and negative criticism since its construction. Steen Eiler Rasmussen, a friend of Holden, commented that, with the expansive design, "the London University is swallowing more and more of the old houses, and this quarter – which the Duke of Bedford laid out for good domestic houses – has taken on quite a different character." Evelyn Waugh, in Put Out More Flags (1942), describes it as "the vast bulk of London University insulting the autumnal sky."
  Positive comments came from functionalist architect Erich Mendelsohn in 1938, who wrote to Holden that he was "very much taken and am convinced that there is no finer building in London." Architectural historian Arnold Whittick described the building as a "static massive pyramid ... obviously designed to last for a thousand years", but thought "the interior is more pleasing than the exterior. There is essentially the atmosphere of dignity, serenity and repose that one associates with the architecture of ancient Greece." Nikolaus Pevsner was less enthusiastic. He described its style as "strangely semi-traditional, undecided modernism" and summarised the result: "The design certainly does not possess the vigour and directness of Charles Holden's smaller Underground stations." Others have described it as Stalinist or as totalitarian due to its great scale.
  Holden recognised that his architectural style placed him in "rather a curious position, not quite in the fashion and not quite out of it; not enough of a traditionalist to please the traditionalists and not enough of a modernist to please the modernists."
caption: Senate House Entrance
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