There was going to be an over-long and detailed comment on an American thriller. Overnight the first draft seems to have evaporated into the cyber-ether.
So, advance, the Potters!
11. Margaret and Alexander Potter: Houses
I have two copies, both extremely distressed, published by John Murray in 1948, and intended to be the start of a series, The Changing Shape of Things. First editions, no less, but even in good condition these go for less than a tenner. Shame on the values of the book trade and its customers.
Then 48 pages of superb architectural draughtsmanship, tracing the development of the English home from 'Early Medieval' castle and hovel down to 'A Borough Council Housing Estate 1947', which — heaven help us — would be 'state of the art' at the time of the original publication.
The Potters insist on including domestic detail. The animals include horses, goats, chickens, an odd cat or two, but predominantly dogs — I've counted a dozen or more. The vignettes are entertaining. There's a lot of 'Upstairs and Downstairs', involving leisured gentry and harassed house servants (women seem particularly put upon). A cynic might consider some of it cliché: the 'Reinforced Concrete Framed House, 1939' has an artist's studio on the third floor (complete with artist and artistic nude lady model -though the radiator seems to be his end), but the through-lounge/kitchen has his mural, and a bit of Bauhaus.
The 'Familiar 20th Century House Type', like many, spreads over the double page, with the over-puffed upholstery, tiled fireplaces (no central heating or telephone that I can see), and car-polishing. All very upwardly-mobile.
Oh, but a cluttered kitchen and an unattended child. Next door, the husband bathes while his lady is at her dressing table.
This suggests there may be a political subtext here. That carries over into the text:
As an indication of the general housing position to-day, it is worth noting that, according to some pre-war figures, nearly half the total number of houses in the whole country were then more than sixty years old: tenements like the Peabody building, bye-law houses, big draughty Victorian mansions (with no servants to keep them clean), 'back-to-backs', and a few houses from Georgian days. In spite of patching-up and improvement many of these houses are completely out-of-date when compared to what might have taken their place; and some of them are unhealthy and verminous. Nor are there enough of them to go round. [...]
There were, in pre-war years, plenty of houses being built of the type illustrated on this page, but the majority were 'For Sale' and many people living in the older houses could not afford to buy, and so the problem remained largely unsolved. Some local authorities built houses to be let at lower rents, but buying land and borrowing money were so expensive that most of the schemescouldv not afford to provide the shopping centres, libraries and other facilities which everybody wants, and the houses themselves had often to be cut down to a very low standard of accommodation. With this in mind, the Government is now making grants to local authorities at specially low rates of interests, and as a result it is likely that there will be more low rental houses available. The shortage is so great, however, that it will be many years before it can be alleviated to any extent.
Leave aside the glow of the Attlee government and its grants ... at specially low rates of interest, and much of that stands firm three quarters of a century later.
On the other hand, what's not to like about a writer deploying semi-colons, and hyphenating to-day?
To make up the requisite four dozen pages, fill the end-plates, and generally dispel essential knowledge, they also take us through how to build a wall (from wattle-and-daub to steel-frame) and what is involved in a rain-proof roof.
I keep my Potters alongside Osbert Lancaster, with whom they have much in common: Home Sweet Homes is also 1948. Lancaster is far jokier, more fun, but the instructive intent, even the moralising, none too distant.
Later, if this sequence continues, I think I have a couple more recent publications worth noting.
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