Property News · April 8, 2016

Cheap flats and rampant sexism: postwar life was simpler, but hardly better | Emma Brockes


If present-day London makes you nostalgic for the past, Elizabeth Jane Howard’s memoir will act as a salutary correctiveFew of us need the Panama Papers as a reminder that these are dark days for London, in which tycoons have turned the capital into a large branch of Foxtons. Against this backdrop it is easy to feel a certain wistfulness for earlier eras, when the city’s principal attraction wasn’t its investment profile but its shabby charm and affordability.I have been thinking about this all week while reading Slipstream, a memoir by the late Elizabeth Jane Howard, published over 10 years ago, which contains a revealing portrait of London after the war. In 1945, Howard and her husband, Peter Scott, bought an entire house in Kensington for £8,000, roughly £200,000 in modern money, which would of course barely buy you a studio in the same spot today. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
Read more…Cheap flats and rampant sexism: postwar life was simpler, but hardly better | Emma Brockes

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