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"Dolphin Square - the large, imposing red brick building on the North bank of the Thames - was and is no ordinary block of flats. Created for MPs, peers and entertainers required to work in London, the Square was built on a massive scale to a high density in the mid-1930s. It was a pioneering example of concrete design, and when built was the largest single residential building in Europe. This book tells the story of the project and captures what it has been like to live in the square for figures including Sir Menzies Campbell, Alistair Darling, William Hague, Mo Mowlam, Sir David Steel, Christine Keeler, Sid James, Barbara Windsor and Princess Anne. Beginning with the antecedents of the seven-acre site, the book charts the square's changing ownership and eventual creation of the Dolphin Square Trust, which managed the flats on a non profit-making basis for 40 years. Its unique blend of quasi-charitable purpose and commercial management enabled long-standing tenants to enjoy below-market rentals before the Trust came under immense pressure to realise the value of the existing leases and sell them off in 2006 ... provide[s] a detailed examination of a major example of urban property speculation and management"--Publisher's description.
'Compelling, authoritative and as readable as the best airport thriller. It fizzes with crime, fame, power and illicit sex.' Jeremy Vine 'A timely and important book. It's quite remarkable how one building has played host to such debauchery. If only the walls could talk...' Iain Dale Designed as a city dwelling for the modern age, Dolphin Square opened in London's Pimlico in 1936. Boasting 1,250 hi-tech flats, a swimming pool, restaurant, gardens and shopping arcade, the complex quickly attracted a long list of the affluent and influential. But behind its veneer of respectability, the Square has become one of the country's most notorious addresses; a place where the private lives of those from the highest of high society and the lowest depths of the underworld have collided and played out over the best part of a century. This is the story of the Square and its people, an ever-evolving cast of larger-than- life characters who have borne witness to, and played pivotal roles in, some of the most scandalous episodes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From Oswald Mosley and the Carry On gang to allegations of systematic sexual abuse, it is a saga replete with mysterious deaths, exploitation, espionage, illicit love affairs and glamour, shining a light on the changing nature of British politics and society in the modern age.

Anthony Wright

Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee on Standards and Privileges

Published: 2011-02-03

Total Pages: 56


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Anthony Wright : Eleventh report of session 2010-11, report and appendices, together with formal Minutes
This report, from the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges (HCP 491, session 2009-10, ISBN 9780215545008) examines the claim that 6 Liberal-Democratic MPs (John Barrett, Sir Alan Beith, Sir Menzies Campbell, Sandra Gidley, Paul Holmes and Richard Younger-Ross), who, following the sale of the Dolphin Square estate in Westminster in 2005, tenants had received offers from the estate's new owners of a lump sum in exchange for moving out or paying a higher rent. The 6 members wrote to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to rule on whether their decisions in respect of the offers from the new owners had been appropriate. The report sets out the Commissioners' decision in respect of the MPs concerned.
A lively new history of London told through twenty-five buildings, from iconic Georgian townhouses to the Shard A walk along any London street takes you past a wealth of seemingly ordinary buildings: an Edwardian church, modernist postwar council housing, stuccoed Italianate terraces, a Bauhaus-inspired library. But these buildings are not just functional. They are evidence of London’s rich and diverse history and have shaped people’s experiences, identities, and relationships. In this engaging study, Paul L. Knox traces the history of London from the Georgian era to the present day through twenty-five surviving buildings. Knox explores where people lived and worked, from grand Regency squares to Victorian workshops, and highlights the impact of migration, gentrification, and inequality. We see famous buildings, like Harrods and Abbey Road Studios, and everyday places like Rochelle Street School and Thamesmead. Each historical period has introduced new buildings, and old ones have been repurposed. As Knox shows, it is the living history of these buildings that makes up the vibrant, but exceptionally unequal, city of today.
Schindler's List meets The Sound of Music as best-selling New York Post investigative journalist Isabel Vincent delves into pre-World-War-II history to recover the amazing story of two British spinsters who masterminded a plan to spirit dozens of Jewish stars and personnel of the German and Austrian opera to England and save them from a terrible fate under the Third Reich. Will resonate with readers of The Nazi Officer's Wife and The Dressmakers of Auschwitz. A Secret Aria of Courage and Suspense Europe, 1937. Two British sisters, one a dowdy typist, the other a soon-to-be famous romance novelist. One shared passion for opera. With prospects for marriage and families of their own cut down by the scythe of World War I, the Cook sisters have thrown themselves into their love of music, with frequent pilgrimages to Germany and Austria to see their favorite opera stars perform. But now with war clouds gathering and harassment increasing, the stars of Continental opera, many of whom are Jewish, face dark futures under the boot heel of the Nazis. What can two middle-aged British spinsters do about such matters? They can form a secret cabal right under Hitler's nose and get to work saving lives. Along with Austrian conductor Clemens Krauss (a favorite of Hitler, but quietly working with the Cooks) the sisters conspire to bring together worldwide opera aficionados and insiders in an international operation to rescue Jews in the opera from the horrific fate that everyone intuits is coming. By the time war does arrive, the Cooks and their operatives have plucked over two dozen Jewish men and women from the looming maw of the Holocaust and spirited them to safety in England. Packed with original research and vividly told with suspense, hope, and wonder by award-winning New York Post investigative journalist Isabel Vincent, author of nationally best-selling memoir Dinner with Edward, this singular tale reveals many new details of the seemingly naïve and oblivious Cook sisters' surreptitious bravery, daring, and passionate commitment as the two mount a successful rescue mission that saves dozens of lives and preserves the opera they love for another generation. “A profoundly moving history of vision, courage, love and commitment.”—Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of national bestseller Eleanor Roosevelt "A riveting, improbable, uplifting tale, made all the more exciting because it really happened!”—Opera great and 17-time Grammy Award winner Renée Fleming
The surprising origin story of Britain’s love affair with suburban gardening. It is said that Britain is a nation of gardeners and its suburban gardens with roses and privet hedges are widely admired and copied across the world. But how and why did millions across the United Kingdom develop an obsession with colorful plots of land to begin with? Behind the Privet Hedge seeks to answer this question and reveals how, despite their stereotype as symbols of dull middle-class conformity, these open spaces were once seen as a tool to bring about social change in the early twentieth century. The book restores to the story a remarkable but long-forgotten figure, Richard Sudell, who spent a lifetime evangelizing for gardens as the vanguard of a more egalitarian society.
After Dunkirk, the British Army was broken, the country isolated and invasion imminent. German Military Intelligence was sat the task of recruiting collaborators from among Welsh nationalists to sabotage military and civilian installations ahead of the landing. Strategic deception was one of the few weapons left. To fool the Germans into believing Britain was ready and able to repel invaders when in fact it had only the weapons salvaged from Dunkirk, MI5 invented an imaginary cell of Welsh saboteurs led by a retired police inspector. This is the true, action-packed account of how a bogus Welsh nationalist infiltrated German Military Intelligence during the Second World War.