The road to ruins

Director Patrick Keiller made his name with London (1994) and Robinson in Space (1997), semi-documentaries recounting the peripatetic investigations into ‘the problem of England’ conducted by the unseen narrator and his fellow academic Robinson. The late Paul Scofield’s voiceover, rich in literary reference and understated satire, combined with meticulous shot composition to produce unclassifiable portraits of a country forever in decline from its literary and industrial pre-eminence.