Lynsey Hanley was born & raised just outside of Birmingham on what was then the largest council estate in Europe, & she has lived for years on an estate in London`s East End. Writing with passion, humour & a sense of history, she recounts the rise of social housing a century ago, its adoption as a fundamental right by leaders of the social welfare state in the mid-century & its decline
- as both idea & reality
- in the 1960s & `70s. Throughout, Hanley focuses on how shifting trends in urban planning & changing government policies
- from Homes Fit for Heroes to Le Corbusier`s concrete tower blocks, to the Right to Buy
- affected those so often left out of the argument over council estates: the millions of people who live on them. What emerges is a vivid mix of memoir & social history, an engaging & illuminating book about a corner of society that the rest of Britain has left in the dark.