This book by David Burke (Boydell Press) looks at the 1930s Lawn Road Flats, also known as the Isokon building, and some of the residents it attracted.

Located in Belsize Park, London, it was designed by the architect Wells Coates. It was built for Isokon, a company founded to build modernist residences based on the architectural ideals of Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus. The first modernist building in Britain to use reinforced concrete in domestic architecture, it features a cantilevered stairwell and balconies. It was Grade-I listed in 1974.

On completion, the flats became populated by writers, artists and architects. Ex-residents include Agatha Christie, sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, and Bauhaus members Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius. The building also became a haunt of some of the most prominent Soviet agents working against Britain in the 1930s and ’40s. For more information visit Boydell & Brewer.