The Lawn Road Flats : spies, writers and artists / David Burke.
The Isokon building, Lawn Road Flats, in Belsize Park on Hampstead's lower slopes, is a remarkable building. The first modernist building in Britain to use reinforced concrete and architecture, its construction demanded new building techniques. But the building was as remarkable for those who t...
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| Online Access: |
Full Text (via Cambridge) |
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| Main Author: | |
| Other Authors: | |
| Other title: | Spies, writers and artists |
| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Woodbridge :
The Boydell Press,
2014.
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| Series: | History of British intelligence ;
v. 3. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | The Isokon building, Lawn Road Flats, in Belsize Park on Hampstead's lower slopes, is a remarkable building. The first modernist building in Britain to use reinforced concrete and architecture, its construction demanded new building techniques. But the building was as remarkable for those who took up residence there as for the application of revolutionary building techniques. There were 32 Flats in all, and they became a haunt of some of the most prominent Soviet agents working against Britain in the 1930s and 40s. A number of British artists were also drawn to the Flats, among them the sculptor and painter Henry Moore; the novelist Nicholas Monsarrat; and the crime writer Agatha Christie, who wrote her only spy novel N or M? in the Flats. The Isokon building boasted its own restaurant and dining club, where many of the Flats' most famous residents rubbed shoulders with some of the most dangerous communist spies ever to operate in Britain. Agatha Christie often said that she invented her characters from what she observed going on around her. With the Kuczynskis - probably the most successful family of spies in the history of espionage - in residence, she would have had plenty of material. |
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| Item Description: | Title from publishers bibliographic system (viewed on 11 Apr 2014). |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xxiii, 273 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations |
| Bibliography: | Includes chapter notes (pages [226]-253), bibliographical references (pages [255]-261), and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781782042358 1782042350 9781782042860 1782042865 9781306516136 1306516137 |