Helen Fry in Conversation with David Burke on his book

The Lawn Road Flats

The story of a modernist building with a significant place in the history of Soviet espionage in Britain, where communist spies rubbed shoulders with British artists, sculptors and writers

The Isokon building, Lawn Road Flats, in Belsize Park on Hampstead’s lower slopes, is a remarkable building. The first modernist building in Britain to use reinforced concrete in domestic architecture, its construction demanded new building techniques. But the building was as remarkable for those who took up residence there as for the application of revolutionary building techniques. Here communist spies rubbed shoulders with British artists, sculptors and writers.. even Agatha Christie!

DAVID BURKE is a historian of intelligence and international relations and author of