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Estates: An Intimate History | 
 enlarge | Author: Lynsey Hanley
Publisher: Granta Books
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £2.85
You Save: £5.14 (64%)
New (18) Used (4) from £2.34
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 33891
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.6 x 0.9
ISBN: 1862079854
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.58509410904
EAN: 9781862079854
ASIN: 1862079854
Publication Date: January 7, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW - ***Delivery usually * 2 - 3 * working days - From Aphrohead of SOUTHPORT, Lancs, uk *** . Priority Airmail used Worldwide on International orders. Thanks from all at Aphrohead.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 A personal and revealing study June 16, 2008
Cornisle (newcastle upon tyne)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Having grown up on the same estate as Hanley and also having moved away to university never to return I can heartily recommend this book. The experiences she describe of growing up in Chelmsley Wood, even down to the Corona man coming every Friday with the pop, relate so much to my own personal experience. I'm certainly not nostalgic for the place but as with Hanley it has a surreal pull that makes you want to go back and look at the place. The idea that the senior school had a no uniform policy is something I particuarly remember, that school having a rough reputation! I honestly can't believe that Hanley has managed so well to describe the experience she felt, that of being a partial outsider but also very much a person moulded by that estate. That contradictory experience clearly shapes her views in later life towards estates when she has moved away from this particular area of Solihull.
An excellent read.
 The story of a life March 22, 2008
Riccardo Warner (London, England)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Both of the concept of council housing and the author's own. Keenly felt, written with absolute conviction, this is compelling stuff. Lynsey Hanley had clearly been waiting all of her brief life in order to commit this to print. Unmissable.
 Not as good as the other reviewers suggest March 18, 2008
Avid (London, UK)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book doesn't quite work. It seeks to be a personal memoir and an account of public housing policies but falls short in both. For example, while there are references to the author's childhood, these are fleeting and not all that interesting or personal. And, while there is some information on Government housing policy, this is unoriginal and relies too much on a few sources (such as Anne Power's work for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). Another annoyance is that in various places the author condemns people who look askance at people who live on estates and then does exactly the same herself - the section on shellsuits near the end is a perfect example of this. The author is also deeply confused about various things - especially the aims of national politicians, which are caricatured mercilessly but apparently unintentionally. On page 171, she writes, 'I like to think I know what I'm talking about.' This sums up the book perfectly - slightly arrogant and not as good as it thinks it is.
Excellent and refreshing February 28, 2008
Eric Ambleside (North Yorkshire)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Lynsey Hanley has written a refreshingly personal and honest book in "Estates", which is partly a history of social housing in the UK and partly a personal account of her own upbringing on one of Birmingham's big estates.
The two sides of the story Hanley tells are meshed together beautifully, feeding into her central theme of how difficult it is to escape the "walls of the mind" that keep so many people trapped in these places.
She is quite warm and almost nostalgic in the descriptions of her home estate, less so about the sadly typical dump school which she and the other local kids were forced to attend, where a general air of hopelessness was allowed to pervade the atmosphere.
She's now even less complimentary about the estate in East London that she has rather ironically found herself marooned in, as a homeowner in a decaying environment trapped in a long and tortuous decision making process - to demolish or not to demolish.
The author is entirely open and honest about the inherent contradictions in her views and personal position, which could so easily have left her open to unfair charges of hypocrisy.
Excellently written, intelligent, and indeed optimistic in many ways, this is an outstanding work and I look forward to whatever Lynsey writes next.
 Good but assumes readers are socialists January 31, 2008
S. A. Richmond (London, UK)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This was a good book to read, and it gives a great analysis of housing policy and conditions over the past 100 years in Britain. The author uses some good case studies, including the Wood estate which she grew up on near Birmingham.
One word of caution. The author is quite subjective when it comes to putting forward her own view on who could qualify for publically funded housing, and what type of housing this should be. She rightly points out that the main beneficiaries of council housing these days are the "undeserving poor", and I agree that this is unfortunate. However, the author seems to think that a house with a garden is a right of everyone. I'm not so sure about that.
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