This viewpoint will uncover how modernist animal housing was used as a prototype for bold new homes for British citizens, under the guidance of Julian Huxley and other visionaries.

In this viewpoint, Bevin Court – originally to be called Lenin Court – offers a lens for understanding how architectural modernism went from a movement associated with communist architects from abroad to a symbol of the British welfare state.

This viewpoint will reveal how Senate House, notable for the “strangely semi-traditional, undecided modernism” that puzzled Pevsner, provided inspiration for George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In the eighteenth century, Leicester House was transformed to a since-lost museum. Among its curiosities was a stuffed Hippopotamus and objects brought to Britain by the colonist Captain James Cook.