Family and Kinship in East London

First published in 1957 ,and reprinted with a new introduction in 1986, Michael Young and Peter Willmott’s book on family and kinship in Bethnal Green in the 1950s is a classic in urban studies.

A standard text in planning, housing, family studies and sociology, it predicted the failure in social terms of the great rehousing campaign which was getting under way in the 1950s. The tall flats built to replace the old ‘slum’ houses were unpopular. Social networks were broken up. The book had an...