“This is what Fort William should look like?”

Stavanger – Norway’s fourth largest city, its oil capital, and a new bank headquarters with a very positive environmental story. Alastair Campbell’s article (yes, we know!) in the New European – The wooden wonder that makes me worry even more for my country – is is well worth reading.

Campbell is offered a tour of this stunning new building, the largest wooden building in Europe. Almost all the construction materials above ground are wood, and what isn’t is mainly glass.

Designed to fit in with a nearby collection of old wooden houses protected as part of a UNESCO world heritage site, the building blew Campbell away. Photos in the article show why.

Campbell’s visit was during a speaking trip, and of course Brexit came up, people sorry at what is now viewed as laughing stock Britain. Campbell admits that all the joy Stavanger inspired in him “is matched by a sense of dread about what my own country has become.”