I'm extremely pleased to be shortlisted for a British Journalism Award alongside some truly top-tier talent

The rise of single-family housing – institutional investment pouring into new-build houses in the suburbs – shows that private capital is willing to invest in housing. It’s just not willing to invest in high-rise flats because of all the risk.

Sadiq Khan oversaw a boom in private housebuilding in London that peaked in 2019-20, with 45,676 net additions

Now the boom is over. Net additions are estimated at 31,800 for 2024-25 and will fall further as dire starts translate into completions

Definitely a contender for best list of Alternative Names on a Wikipedia page

William Boyd’s new spy novel is full of JFK conspiracy theories. Who does he think is the most entertaining culprit for the president’s assassination?

Here’s my review for @thetimes.com - link below

I reviewed the first ever Fitzcarraldo novel on the Booker Prize longlist: One Boat by Jonathan Buckley, a tale of guilt and grief on the Greek coast.

It’s intermittently absorbing with flourishes of beauty - but it evaporates in the memory.

Link to my Sunday Times piece below

Great scene from Martin Amis's Money about a one-sided tennis match between overweight alcoholic John Self and lean young Fielding, "raised on steaks and on milk sweetened with iron and zinc"

Remember American Dirt? Or more likely, remember the controversy around American Dirt? Five years on from her cancellation, Jeanine Cummins has produced a new novel about an Irish-Puerto Rican family. I liked it a lot: it's summery, romantic and a pleasure to read

Really enjoyed this fresh, smart funny romcom @riversidelondon.bsky.social - Writer/actor Keelan Kember is a winning mix of Hugh Grant and Will from the Inbetweeners

This is amazing from @londoncentric.media - the councillor who oversaw the sale of London’s most expensive council house in 2013 has now entered a prize draw to win it for himself!

Proud of my showing in the April issue of Inside Housing

🏘️I went to Cranbrook, Devon to learn how (and how not) to build a new town

🏘️Investigation into for-profits and how private capital is shaping housing (with @jennymessenger.bsky.social)

🏘️Interviewed Places for People CEO Greg Reed

It has put more pressure on councils, who now spend £2.9bn a year on poor-quality temporary housing for homeless people including hotels and B&Bs.

5.7 million households rely on housing benefit to pay their rent. This huge figure was set in motion by deliberate policy choices.

Governments since the 1980s pushed low-income families from social housing into private renting, while the Right to Buy shrunk social housing stock.

The UK spends a gigantic amount on housing benefit – £29bn in 2022 – to help people on low incomes in the private rented sector. But it’s not working.

How did we get into this mess? Let’s take a step back.

Pretty ironic hearing George Osborne narrate an ad for social housing. He oversaw the 2011 cut to grant funding that meant we essentially stopped building social rent homes in favour of more expensive “affordable rent”

Sadiq Cannes #mipim

Rare example of Martin Amis being woefully optimistic a) that we’d only be talking about Trump “maybe until February 2025” and b), sadly, that he’d still be here to see it end

Went to see Rocco and His Brothers last night, which among other things (boxing, the limits of forgiveness) is surprisingly focused on housing policy in 1960s Milan.

A poor migrant family is told to rent a room, stop paying rent to be evicted then claim public housing like “all Southerners do”

“We must remove the shackles of stigma that are too often associated with social housing“, Angela Rayner says.

“I’m committed to securing more housing investment in next year’s spending review.”