Suburban Childhoods

Three Streets in the Country is a subjective history of the London suburbs written by Michael Frayn and directed by Dennis Marks. It was commissioned as part of a series of authored films about British architecture and broadcast in 1979. In the film, Frayn chose to tell the remarkable story of the exponential growth of suburbia by focusing on his own childhood home district of Ewell in South West London. Through the minute details of ordinary life as perceived by an eleven year old child, Frayn and Marks painted a picture of the dream of the rural within the urban which inspired the builders of a century ago. Twenty years later, Frayn revisted the same wartime suburban streets and made them the background for his acclaimed novel Spies. Here, a screening of the film will be followed by a discussion between Frayn and Marks about their childhoods in the suburbs and their experience of making the film.