Holly Smith
banner
holsmith.bsky.social
Holly Smith
@holsmith.bsky.social
Research Fellow @ University of Cambridge // My book UP IN THE AIR: A HISTORY OF HIGH-RISE BRITAIN (Verso) is available to buy 🇵🇸🏳️‍⚧️
Reposted by Holly Smith
I’m in this week’s @newstatesman1913.bsky.social with a review of Holly Smith’s brilliant history of house rise council housing in Britain, Up in the Air
www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...
Repopulating the high-rises
A new history of Britain’s tower blocks reveals the ways architecture and ideology have combined to ensure residents are always forgotten
www.newstatesman.com
November 6, 2025 at 11:07 AM
My book UP IN THE AIR: A HISTORY OF HIGH-RISE BRITAIN is out today!
October 28, 2025 at 9:41 AM
Catch me in the @theguardian.com today, on the history of high-rise housing. We need to remove the distorting goggles of prejudice in order to understand Britain’s extraordinary high-rise heritage. Consider looking up afresh! www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
Thumping ambition – and demolition: 10 high-rises that changed modern Britain
Eyesores and scandalously unsafe? Or utopian housing for the working classes? Here are the stories and scandals behind some of the UK’s most revolutionary homes
www.theguardian.com
October 1, 2025 at 10:28 AM
I’m beginning an archive digitisation project + looking for a high-quality portable/handheld scanner…. any recommendations?
September 30, 2025 at 9:11 PM
You can get 25% off my book UP IN THE AIR: A HISTORY OF HIGH-RISE BRITAIN at Waterstones, with the code SUMMER25 until Thursday 31 #WPreorder
July 28, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Does anybody have experience applying for the National Lottery’s Community Fund? Seeking advice & examples of successful past applications - gratefully received!
June 6, 2025 at 7:18 PM
My book is out on 28 October with
@versobooks.bsky.social 💥 It’s available for pre-order at £20: www.waterstones.com/book/up-in-t...
May 24, 2025 at 9:51 AM
do i know anybody with a good camera who might be willing to take a picture of a newspaper page at the british library for me? needs to be 300dpi at least... imaging and scanners still down after cyberattack :( can pay! ££
May 6, 2025 at 9:30 AM
does anybody know of an archive for the Guardian where I can access page numbers for articles post 2010? Gale, ProQuest and Lexis all seem to have given up paginating for contemporary articles?!
April 6, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Reposted by Holly Smith
Historians of bsky... I'm looking forward to helping put together this exciting new conference at the new Queen Mary Centre for British Studies. Call for papers deadline is 24th January! ⌛
Quick reminder about our conference, 'British History Today, 1-2 May 2025. Further details will appear on projects.history.qmul.ac.uk/qmcbs/. Deadline for papers is 24 January 2025. There have been many great ideas for panels, papers and novel formats already
November 29, 2024 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Holly Smith
I've stepped in to give @TheSAHGB seminar on 5th of December, with a talk titled 'Swedophilia: Ethic or Aesthetic? Oliver Cox, Michael Ventris and the Lure of Swedish Architecture in Post-War Britain'. I'll be showing lots of Oliver Cox cartoons.
sahgb.org.uk/whatson/swedop…. Come!
November 24, 2024 at 4:06 PM
Picked up an outrageously cheap copy of James Stirling’s Black Book of buildings and projects (1975). Wonderful pictures of a personal favourite building, the Cambridge History Faculty @camhistory.bsky.social - this is where I learned how to be a historian ♥️
November 23, 2024 at 9:38 PM
I’m giving a lunchtime talk on Britain’s community architecture movement for the Bartlett’s Situating Architecture Lecture Series at UCL - talking about self-build, squatting + student protest 🧱🔧 Come!
📍 1pm, Monday 2 December
www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/arc...
November 20, 2024 at 1:05 PM