About

When Hilary Thomson and her husband Ian bought a flat in Ennerdale Road, Kew, it was immediately clear there was more to this 1960s block than met the eye.

To start with, the front was built in a concave curve. A neighbour mentioned a rumoured link to the German Bauhaus movement. Then a vital clue was discovered in a pile of old documents … and so began a fascinating detective trail that revealed not only the building’s emigré modernist architect but also the (perhaps even more extraordinary) history of the site’s previous owner. It is a detective story that takes us from Paris to bohemian Hampstead, from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to the Palace of Westminster, from Arts and Crafts to Constructivism and ends, appropriately enough, in the Kew Gardens Library and Archives.