In this lavishly illustrated book, artist Arthur Lockwood celebrates 20 years of painting change in the industrial landscapes of Birmingham and the Black Country. He has produced an elegy for a lost way of life, without pathos or bitterness but with realism. Without making judgements, Arthur Lockwood has dedicated himself to recording the demolition of nineteenth-century buildings and the construction of new landmarks such as the Bull Ring Shopping Centre in Birmingham. Alongside this, he set out to document the decline of the region's manufacturing, painting working factories and foundries before many were closed down and some of them demolished.In Oldbury he recorded the last line of working drop hammers and in Wolverhampton the last manufacturer of tacks and cut nails. In Birmingham he painted the last drop forge in the city. The book contains over 100 paintings selected from twenty years' work. Brendan Flynn, Curator of Fine Art at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, has written an introduction, noting that 'In capturing the process of change, Lockwood slows it down for us and offers an overview of the economic and social forces at large in the urban landscape. His drawings are probably the most searching examination in the visual arts of any urban landscape in Britain.'