Ten of the best books about houses

Ben Highmore is the author of The Great Indoors: At Home in the Modern British House.At the Guardian he tagged ten top books about houses, including:

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

Today this is often dismissed as part of a 1930s social tourism performed by posh Oxbridge types who wrote for a left-leaning London audience about the horrors to be found "Up North". Actually the book is both a fastidious examination of how humiliation is given material form by impoverished housing and how class might be less a form of consciousness and more a deeply ingrained and embodied set of habits.

Read about another book on the list.

The Road to Wigan Pier is among Robert McCrum's books to inspire busy public figures.

--Marshal Zeringue