A House Through Time
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In recent years house histories have become the new frontier of popular, participatory history. People, many of whom have already embarked upon that great adventure of genealogical research, and who have encountered their ancestors in the archives and uncovered family secrets, are now turning to the secrets contained within the four walls of their homes and in doing so finding a direct link to earlier generations. And it is ordinary homes, not grand public buildings or the mansions of the rich, that have all the best stories.
As with the television series, A House Through Time offers readers not only the tools to explore the histories of their own homes, but also a vividly readable history of the British city, the forces of industry, disease, mass transportation, crime and class. The rises and falls, the shifts in the fortunes of neighbourhoods and whole cities are here, tracing the often surprising journey one single house can take from an elegant dwelling in a fashionable district to a tenement for society’s rejects.
Packed with remarkable human stories, David Olusoga and Melanie Backe-Hansen give us a phenomenal insight into living history, a history we can see every day on the streets where we live. And it reminds us that it is at home that we are truly ourselves. It is there that the honest face of life can be seen. At home, behind closed doors and drawn curtains, we live out our inner lives and family lives.
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David Olusoga is a British-Nigerian historian, broadcaster and BAFTA award-winning presenter and filmmaker. He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester and a regular contributor to the Guardian, Observer, New Statesmanand BBC History Magazine. His previous books include Black and British, which won the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize and the Longman-History Today Trustees Award, The Kaiser’s Holocaust and The World’s War. He was also a contributor to The Oxford Companion to Black British History. In 2019 he was awarded an OBE for services to history and community integration.
Melanie Backe-Hansen is a historian, writer, and speaker, who specializes in researching the social history of houses throughout the United Kingdom. She is the author of two books, House Histories: The Secrets Behind Your Front Door (2011) and Historic Streets and Squares: The Secrets on Your Doorstep (2013), and she was a consultant on the television series of A House Through Time. She is a member of the Royal Historical Society and an honorary teaching fellow at the University of Dundee.
