Homesick: Peter Apps on how Housing Broke London and How to Fix It

From the author of the Orwell Prize-winner Show me the Bodies: How we let Grenfell happen, come a gripping story of how housing defines a city's past, present and future.

We're thrilled to welcome Peter Apps to the bookshop for a launch of hist latest deep dive into the UK's housing crisis: Homesick.

Once vibrant communities are being uprooted, schools are closing down and homelessness is rampant. It was not always like this. In the 1980s, builders and nurses could afford family-sized homes, there was abundant social housing and long-term security for private renters.

Tracing the last forty years of housing policy, Peter Apps examines this transformation, following a diverse group of Londoners as their fortunes rise and fall across the decades amid the economic forces sweeping through the city. With clear-eyed urgency, he reveals what will happen when a generation of renters retires and climate change brings fire and flood to a city unprepared for extremes.

He also gives us reason to hope, exploring the ways London can transform again: from a market for private profit to a place that once more offers permanence, safety and opportunity for its citizens. A place to call home.