Enjoying the image

The Special’s editor, fresh from a motoring book podcast with The Old Car Lady, has been on a book-buying spree and alongside the history of Great Auclum Hillclimb (to be reviewed soon) picked up some Café Royal photographic titles and this, ‘The Wonder of it All’, a collection of Kieran Gabriel’s artwork.

We were lucky enough to score one of the ‘Dodgy Editions’. So what distinguishes a ‘Dodgy’ from a regular example? Put simply, the ‘Dodgy’ examples, of which 200 were made available at the start of 2026, have slightly warped pages, but that really doesn’t spoil the enjoyment – not by any means.

We’re great fans of Gabriel’s work: it unashamedly celebrates post-war architecture and his images chime in with a growing appreciation of modernist and post-modernist architecture.

But not just the grand office blocks, the early motorway services or bridges, because this book celebrates the types of 1960s and 1970s suburban houses many of us grew up in, and this book makes us re-appraise those dwellings which have a solidity no new-build could ever entertain.

And the cars – don’t forget the cars. Throughout the book, and throughout his work, Gabriel sneaks in a car or two here and there and they’re urban street-scene cars, not poncey supercars. It’s a welcome addition to some much of his art, and Gabriel deserves plaudits for that.

In all, a cracking book and one for anyone with a love of post-war architecture and the everyday cars of that period.

For more, see: prints.kierangabriel.com