ABSTRACT
Most if not all capital cities of Western Europe have a place that could be described as their ‘front room’. This place attempts to give palpable expression to its host’s social and political aspirations. It is most usually a place to be looked at, and only occasionally used; somewhere that will impress the neighbours and overawe the country cousins […] in all their manifestations they are the sole and absolute province of the ruling class, who of course decide what will be recorded and how. The mass of the population gain, or have gained admission, both metaphorically and actually, to such places on sufferance only.
