My Life in Houses

the long version

Margaret Forster takes us on a journey through the houses she's lived in: from the council house in Carlisle where she was born in 1938, to her beloved London house of today - via the Lake District, Oxford, Hampstead, and a spell in the Mediterranean. This is not a book about bricks and mortar, but a book about what houses are to us, and the effect they have on the way we live our lives. It takes a backwards glance at the changing nature of our accommodation: from blacking grates and outside privies to cities dominated by bedsits and lodgings; and houses today being converted back into single dwellings, all open-plan spaces and bringing the outside in. It is also a very personal inquiry into the meaning of home.