The English House: A History in Eight Buildings by Dan Cruickshank

This is the story of the superbly elegant early eighteenth-century Pallant House in Chichester. It’s the story of 19 Princelet Street in Spitalfields, built for a Huguenot silk-weaver and later transformed into a synagogue. It’s also the story of a row of modest two-up, two-down houses in Toxteth, a block of flats in London’s East End, and what Ideal Home magazine in 1926 called Britain’s “first modern house” — in Northampton.

Together, these buildings reveal how English homes have evolved and adapted over the past few centuries. At the same time, as historian Dan Cruickshank shows, they offer intimate glimpses into the lives of their first occupants — their ambitions, hardships, and place within their communities.

The English House masterfully intertwines architectural and social history, creating a vivid and deeply human portrait of the spaces that have shaped English life.