The Southbank Centre is striking, polarising and now protected | Letters

Francis Bown says its grey concrete and childlike composition expressed the fatalism and despair of the time, while Helen Keats reflects on other brutalist buildsFiona Twycross, the heritage minister, is to be congratulated for finally giving London’s Southbank Centre Grade II listing (Campaigners welcome ‘long overdue’ listing of brutalist Southbank Centre, 10 February).I remember being shocked when I first saw it in the 1960s, but it has become a remarkable symbol of the zeit