My main reaction upon reading Danny Dorling’s book was disappointment – deep, bitter disappointment. Followed by anger. From a professor, especially an Oxford professor of geography, I expected rigour. And, although Dorling graduated only in the late 1980s, I certainly expected a 378-page book about ‘The Great Housing Disaster’ to begin in the 20th century, not the 21st.

As a journalist covering property and housing since arriving in the UK in 1972, I have never stopped marvelling at the sector’s perversities. The main one remains the obsession with home ownership – from a very young age – and the accompanying tendency to look down on those ‘forced to