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Arts feature

Model villages aren't just for kids

Model villages deliver a cheerful jolt to unexamined notions about our own place – and size – in the world, says Richard Bratby

25 July 2020

9:00 AM

25 July 2020

9:00 AM

When you leave Bekonscot, the world looks different. The semis and grass verges of suburban Beaconsfield seem slightly wrong: too large, too assertive. It takes a minute or two to adjust your perspective — to size yourself up, or bring the surrounding houses down. In that moment, you experience the sensation described by Will Self in Scale, his morphine-addled hymn to Britain’s most celebrated model village: ‘Some people lose their sense of proportion; I’ve lost my sense of scale.

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