Housing - The Great British Failure

Housing – The Great British Failure (1974) by Fred Berry
Publisher: Charles Knight | ISBN: 0853142300 | Condition: Good (like a council flat with only minor damp patches)
Still standing, courtesy of Crappy Old Books

Back in 1974, when flares were wide and optimism was narrow, Fred Berry penned Housing – The Great British Failure. It’s a book that does exactly what it says on the tin: a pointed, often exasperated examination of Britain’s eternal struggle to house its citizens without either bankrupting the Treasury, enraging the neighbours, or erecting something that looks suspiciously like a concrete filing cabinet.

This copy is Good. By which we mean: the binding hasn’t collapsed like a poorly maintained tower block, the pages aren’t mouldering like an abandoned bedsit, and there are no more stains than one would reasonably expect from fifty years of being passed around seminar rooms full of gloomy urban studies students.

Inside, Berry surveys the history of housing policy from post-war promises to 1970s disillusion. Expect a tour of planning mishaps, bureaucratic logjams, utopian blueprints gone sour, and that peculiarly British ability to turn idealism into queue forms in triplicate. Reading it now, you’ll find yourself muttering: plus ça change.

Why you might want this book:

• Because it’s comforting (or terrifying) to realise Britain’s housing woes are nothing new.

• Because you enjoy grim statistics wrapped in prose that smoulders with academic indignation.

• Because displaying it on your shelf lets you virtue-signal both social concern and retro taste.

• Because if you’re stuck renting a box room in 2024, you can at least point and say, “Look, they knew it was broken fifty years ago.”

So here it is: Housing – The Great British Failure. A study of bricks, mortar, and mistakes, preserved in Good condition and sold by Crappy Old Books, where failure has never looked so collectable.

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