Estates: An Intimate History [Paperback]

* "A rich, thought-provoking book" Observer* "Estates, a journey through the world of British social housing, is both a history and a personal reckoning" Financial Times* "A wonderful book ... explains with verve and insight how one's mental landscape is moulded by physical environment ... Simple lessons for planners, architects and developers leap off the pages " Guardian

Hanley's Estates is many things - social history, memoir, mild
polemic... honest, informed and never whimsical... well-timed and truthful
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"Articulate, savage, poignant, engaged and vividly descriptive" --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"An account of council housing (that is) not just readable but
interesting and moving" --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"This study of the rise and decline of council housing is fuelled
by unusual passion and vision" --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"Written with a passion born of first-hand experience, the author
takes a commendably balanced view... humble, honest and, yes, intimate" --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"A rich, thought-provoking book"
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"A highly engaging book" --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"Hanley writes with an ironic, characteristically Brummie sense of
humour and cutting sarcasm, which makes the book colourfully readable." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

"(A) passionate and engaging book... I think Hanley's book is
destined to create a watershed in British housing policy" --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Lynsey Hanley was born and raised just outside of Birmingham on what was then the largest council estate in Europe, and she has lived for years on an estate in London's East End. Writing with passion, humour and 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 mid-century and its decline - as both idea and reality - in the 1960s and 70s. Throughout, Hanley focuses on how shifting trends in urban planning and 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 and social history, an engaging and illuminating book about a corner of society that the rest of Britain has left in the dark.

Lynsey Hanley was born in Birmingham and lives in London. She writes regularly for the Observer, Telegraph, New Statesman and many others. This is her first book.