Books & Digital Picks

MICHAEL PORTILLO Michael O’Mara, 272 pages, £20

This month’s family history inspiration

In his latest book, Michael Portillo looks at aspects of Britain’s history through the stories of its buildings, including a prison, a deserted village, a submarine and a cinema, combined with eyewitness accounts.

Although the book is centred on buildings, some stories, such as the Kray brothers and Jack the Ripper, are too prominent – they are hardly ‘hidden’. I wanted more of the lesser-known anecdotes – for example, the life of archivist Harold Johnson, who set up home at Shepton Mallet Prison during the Second World War when documents were sent from The National Archives for protection from air raids. I loved the imagery of his children playing while he cared for the Domesday Books and other records.

The best tales are those that shed a light on society. For instance, the ordinary people who ensured a Second World War US serviceman was not the victim of a racist miscarriage of justice; the ‘X-ray martyrs’, the radiographers whose health was destroyed after volunteering as guinea pigs; and the creation of Brighton’s sewer system.

A strong connection is made village taken over by the Army in the Second World War, and the broken promise that villagers could return afterwards, also deserves a wide audience. effectively to tell the story of seaside resorts before finishing with the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton and an uplifting tale of reconciliation.

Gill Blanchard is the author of Tracing Your Ancestors: Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk (Pen & Sword, 2018)

‘A strong connection is made between people and place’

SOCIAL HISTORY The construction of Victorian sewers on the Kingsway in Hove, 1897

between people and place through the eerie remains of secret installations at Orford Ness and the Cambridge nuclear bunker. The story of Imber, thePortillo’s recollections of music and cinema are the most heartwarming part of the book. He uses the tattered remains of Brighton’s West Pier very