Monumental Lies : Culture Wars and the Truth about the Past

Author: Bevan, Robert

Theory of architecture

Published on 28 April 2026 by Verso Books in the United Kingdom.

How the past is memorialized can have a dangerous influence on the future. Monumental Lies exposes the truths buried at contested heritage sites and demands that we safeguard the material evidence of history from both malign defenders and over-enthusiastic erasure. Robert Bevan challenges us to rethink our relationship with our contested spaces, from colonial statues and the physical legacy of fascism, to fake post-conflict reconstructions and ethno-nationalist narratives about beauty and tradition. He questions symbolic power and symbolic changes and explains why wording on a plaque is never a substitute for tackling problem monuments through artistic transformations at scale.

A Financial Times Best Book of 2022