Cover -- IDEAL HOMES? -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of illustrations -- Notes on contributors -- Preface -- 1 The ideal home as it is imagined and as it is lived -- PART I Changing images of the ideal home -- 2 Privacy, security and respectability: the ideal Victorian home -- 3 The Modern house in England: an architecture of exclusion -- 4 Stage sets for ideal lives: images of home in contemporary show homes -- PART II Betwixt and between: homes in transition -- 5 'The more we are together': domestic space, gender and privacy -- 6 Travelling makes a home: mobility and identity among West Indians -- 7 A home from home: students' transitional experience of home -- 8 Fitting a quart into a pint pot: making space for older people in sheltered housing -- 9 The ideal of home: domesticating the institutional space of old age and death -- PART III Anxieties and risks: homes in danger -- 10 A haven in a heartless world? Women and domestic violence -- 11 Spoiled home identities: the experience of burglary -- 12 Houses of Doom -- PART IV Changing perceptions of home -- 13 'You've got him well trained': The negotiation of roles in the domestic sphere -- 14 The meaning of gardens in an age of risk -- 15 Daring to be different? Choosing an alternative to the ideal home -- Bibliography -- Index.