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.

This viewpoint will explore architect Ernő Goldfinger’s integration into contemporary British literary circles – far beyond his (frequently misreported) connection to Ian Fleming’s famous villain – and will use 2 Willow Road’s status as a National Trust property to consider how a once-iconoclastic modernism has been reclaimed as national heritage.

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.

The former house of comic actor Will Hay, a star of the 1930s and a renowned amateur astronomer.