Sunday in Handsworth

Handsworth is what you might call and "interesting" part of Birmingham. The location of race riots in the early 1980s, it's now home to a mixed community of Albanians, Poles, Asians and Kurds. It has some beautiful Sikh temples and lots of very dilapidated buildings. We viewed a beautiful three storey house here when we were looking for properties in Birmingham (moving from London), surprisingly cheap. When we asked the estate agent about the area he assured us there were no problems - which may well be true, but I'm still glad we didn't move there, unwitting as we were as southerners, and completely unfamiliar with Brum.

Today we went there to visit Soho House, Matthew Boulton's home and also home to the Lunar Society, an incredible collection of intellectuals, natural philosophers and other luminaries, including James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley and James Keir, amongst others. Incredible how influential their work was - to this day.