Between 1934 and 1939 tens of thousands of upmarket apartments were built for rent in Britain’s cities : a phenomenon that is almost completely written out of history. An absolutely fascinating piece to write and research

@Will___lloyd I must have missed the bits of Southampton or Luton that look like this, but maybe you were just paraphrasing what Owen Hatherley said in the London Review of Books a while ago.

@F9340891660 @richardpfranks @VoteSNP2019 Clockwise from top left: Chamberlain Square, Colmore Row, regency houses in Edgbaston, St Paul's Square in the Jewellery Quarter.

@Alex11583274 Yes, it’s too big

@Alex11583274 Oh, I know the basics - just don’t feel I can comment too much on Brum as it is today because I’m not actually living there

@Alex11583274 I’m sure it has. I can’t really comment too much on local politics seeing I don’t actually live in Brum these days!

@davethomas1989 The guy in the Times today has

RT @McilhaggaSamuel: Enjoyed editing this @JonNeale piece on the Arts & Crafts movement for @brumdispatch

@richardpfranks @VoteSNP2019

@arisroussinos It does actually get a reasonable number of tourists, and if you actually stop to look around properly, you’ll see why.

@arisroussinos

@lexkelandjun @OldStationSt It’s a good question. I don’t know. The image of Birmingham nationally has never been great, but then nor was that of any industrial city. I get the impression a lot of the modern stereotypes are quite recent.

@adcedere @wrathofgnon There is an intermediate stage, mid 1940s

@RichyS1111 @OldStationSt People thought he was a mad and pugnacious imperialist at the time. But he’d been converted to one later in life, well after his Birmingham mayoralty; back then, he’d been a sceptic of empire

@tomhfh Well, the Atlantic Charter and the insistence of on the removal of imperial trade preferences as a condition of Lend Lease certainly showed what one of America’s goals in the second war was, and it achieved that pretty well

So….. Last week the future was all about huge energy requirements and power-hungry AI. Turning politics and geopolitics upside down. This week it turns out it’s all wrong. I’m sure it’s somewhere between the two but just goes to show what a nervous, reactive world we’re in