Holly Smith

I'm very proud of this book: it has a wonderful array of work by many of my favourite historians, which cumulatively makes the pitch for understanding modern British History through the lens of the urban. Lund Humphries have done a wonderful production job, & it is a big beautiful book. Buy it now!

Thank you so much Helen, so glad to hear you’re enjoying! ❤️

Launch event for the Modern British City at
@c20society.bsky.social on 26th of January: secure.c20society.org.uk/Default.aspx...

Do come!

The book is out with @lhartbooks.bsky.social next week.

‘Sheffield has become a city of violent architectural contrasts, with some of the best recent British buildings outside London rising above a rusty black wilderness of nineteenth-century stone and brick. Such townscape demands the hand of John Piper to record it.’ - Architectural Review, Dec 1961

Drawings of new tower blocks amid the scruffy jumble of Victorian terraces in Netherthorpe, Sheffield, by John Piper - June 1961. Reproduced B&W in the Architectural Review, but I’ve always longed to find full-colour originals.

Repopulating the high-rises A new history of Britain’s tower blocks reveals the ways architecture and ideology have combined to ensure residents are always forgotten

I’m in this week’s @newstatesman1913.bsky.social with a review of Holly Smith’s brilliant history of house rise council housing in Britain, Up in the Air
www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...

so beautiful john! and so important

My book UP IN THE AIR: A HISTORY OF HIGH-RISE BRITAIN is out today!

Thumping ambition – and demolition: 10 high-rises that changed modern Britain Eyesores and scandalously unsafe? Or utopian housing for the working classes? Here are the stories and scandals behind some of the UK’s most revolutionary homes

Catch me in the @theguardian.com today, on the history of high-rise housing. We need to remove the distorting goggles of prejudice in order to understand Britain’s extraordinary high-rise heritage. Consider looking up afresh! www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

ive been scanning with my phone in a pinch… but ideally would love something with a higher dpi!

I’m beginning an archive digitisation project + looking for a high-quality portable/handheld scanner…. any recommendations?

You can get 25% off my book UP IN THE AIR: A HISTORY OF HIGH-RISE BRITAIN at Waterstones, with the code SUMMER25 until Thursday 31 #WPreorder

Does anybody have experience applying for the National Lottery’s Community Fund? Seeking advice & examples of successful past applications - gratefully received!

My book is out on 28 October with
@versobooks.bsky.social 💥 It’s available for pre-order at £20: www.waterstones.com/book/up-in-t...

do i know anybody with a good camera who might be willing to take a picture of a newspaper page at the british library for me? needs to be 300dpi at least... imaging and scanners still down after cyberattack :( can pay! ££

🫡

....that is what we call welcome news!! thanks peter

does anybody know of an archive for the Guardian where I can access page numbers for articles post 2010? Gale, ProQuest and Lexis all seem to have given up paginating for contemporary articles?!

Historians of bsky... I'm looking forward to helping put together this exciting new conference at the new Queen Mary Centre for British Studies. Call for papers deadline is 24th January! ⌛

I've stepped in to give @TheSAHGB seminar on 5th of December, with a talk titled 'Swedophilia: Ethic or Aesthetic? Oliver Cox, Michael Ventris and the Lure of Swedish Architecture in Post-War Britain'. I'll be showing lots of Oliver Cox cartoons.
sahgb.org.uk/whatson/swedop…. Come!

Picked up an outrageously cheap copy of James Stirling’s Black Book of buildings and projects (1975). Wonderful pictures of a personal favourite building, the Cambridge History Faculty @camhistory.bsky.social - this is where I learned how to be a historian ♥️

Alistair Cartwright wrote an excellent PhD on private rented rooms in London! eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/45...

I’m giving a lunchtime talk on Britain’s community architecture movement for the Bartlett’s Situating Architecture Lecture Series at UCL - talking about self-build, squatting + student protest 🧱🔧 Come!
📍 1pm, Monday 2 December
www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/arc...