UPDATED EDITIONAs a nation we are obsessed with property: prices, interior design and restoration, and the creation of a home. Now there is another avenue to explore: the history of your house.In this updated second edition, Britain’s leading house historian uncovers the hidden stories and secrets of ordinary and extraordinary homes across the country. Gain a unique insight into our social and architectural history through a wide range of houses, including new stories for this edition, from workers’ cottages to aristocratic mansions. Tudor farmhouses, Georgian mansions and twentieth-century modernist designs all have a tale to tell. From homes once occupied by famous figures such as H.G. Wells and Benjamin Disraeli to details of the everyday lives of people living in railway and fishermen’s cottages, House Histories takes the reader through the centuries of change experienced by each house.As well as providing a rich insight into the ever-changing past of dwellings up and down the country, House Histories helps readers get started on revealing the heritage of their own homes by outlining the main research sources available, how to use them and providing ample case studies as examples.

House Histories: The Secrets Behind Your Front Door

History

Backe-Hansen, Melanie

Historical Study & Educational Resources

The History Press

The history of our houses is a mystery to most of us. Now, the UK’s leading house historian reveals the secrets behind the front doors of cottages, terraced houses, mansions, and London squares. Melanie Backe-Hansen reveals the past of a wide range of houses, offering a fascinating glimpse into the lives of not just the bricks and mortar, but also the people who lived there over the centuries. She discovers that George Orwell may have based his "Room 101" on a converted flat on Oxford Street, and has profiles the former homes of P. G. Wodehouse, T. S. Eliot, H. G. Wells, and former prime ministers Benjamin Disraeli and David Lloyd George. Additionally, an easy-to-use "how-to" section allows us all to investigate the history of our own homes.

Europe

Britain’s favorite house historian investigates our most famous streets and squares. Medieval lanes, Georgian crescents, Victorian squares, and Edwardian streets all appear in this beautifully illustrated book, together with the people who built and lived in them. The many structural challenges and innovative use of building materials and design will all be covered. From London’s Portobello Road and Dublin’s Merrion Square, to Bath’s Circus and Edinburgh’s New Town, these landmark locations reveal the aspirations of city inhabitants and architects. Taken together, these 50 examples tell us much about Britain’s urban development over the past 600 years and highlights more recent attempts to preserve our architectural heritage.

Historic Streets & Squares: The Secrets On Your Doorstep

Product Description In recent years house histories have become the new frontier of popular, participatory history. People, many of whom have already embarked upon that great adventure of genealogical research, and who have encountered their ancestors in the archives and uncovered family secrets, are now turning to the secrets contained within the four walls of their homes and in doing so finding a direct link to earlier generations. And it is ordinary homes, not grand public buildings or the mansions of the rich that have all the best stories.As with the television series, A House Through Time offers readers not only the tools to explore the histories of their own homes, but also a vividly readable history of the British city, the forces of industry, disease, mass transportation, crime and class. The rises and falls, the shifts in the fortunes of neighbourhoods and whole cities are here, tracing the often surprising journey one single house can take from elegant dwelling in a fashionable district to a tenement for society’s rejects.Packed with remarkable human stories, David Olusoga and Melanie Backe-Hansen give us a phenomenal insight into living history, a history we can see every day on the streets where we live. And it reminds us that it is at home that we are truly ourselves. It is there that the honest face of life can be seen. At home, behind closed doors and drawn curtains, we live out our inner lives and family lives. About the Author David Olusoga is a British-Nigerian historian, broadcaster and BAFTA award-winning presenter and filmmaker. He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester and a regular contributor to the Guardian, Observer, New StatesmanandBBC History Magazine. His previous books include Black and British, which won the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize and the Longman-History Today Trustees Award, The Kaiser’s Holocaust and The World’s War. He was also a contributor to The Oxford Companion to Black British History. In 2019 he was awarded an OBE for services to history and community integration.Melanie Backe-Hansen is a historian, writer, and speaker, who specializes in researching the social history of houses throughout the United Kingdom. She is the author of two books, House Histories: The Secrets Behind Your Front Door (2011) and Historic Streets and Squares: The Secrets on Your Doorstep (2013), and she was a consultant on the television series of A House Through Time. She is a member of the Royal Historical Society and an honorary teaching fellow at the University of Dundee.

A House Through Time

Olusoga, David

Picador

Historic Streets and Squares: The Secrets On Your Doorstep

Arts & Photography

Architecture

Doors of London (History & Art)

Photography & Video

Sheldrake Press

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