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The part of Limerick we lived in is Georgian, you know, those Georgian houses. You see them in pictures of Dublin.

The house I grew up in was a tall Victorian town house in Bristol. There were very big rooms, which were under-furnished and always cold.

I looked around, and I saw cottages everywhere. I thought it was time they lived in apartments.

I grew up in a commissioned house in the next suburb over, Mount Abbot. It was a two-bedroom house with me, my brother, and my two sisters. Mum and Dad slept in the lounge, and we didn't have wallpaper.

In Limerick, a family that was dysfunctional was one who could afford to drink but didn't.

I have a vernacular house on the seaside in Northumberland and an Edwardian semi in south Manchester. They're both exactly as big as they need to be. I can't be doing with an ostentatious, big house - you can only be in one room at a time.

After having dispatched a meal, I went ashore, and found no habitation save a single house, and that without an occupant; we had no doubt that the people had fled in terror at our approach, as the house was completely furnished.

The bungalow had more to do with how Americans live today than any other building that has gone remotely by the name of architecture in our history.

Our house was destroyed in 1943, and I moved the family to a cottage I owned before the war in the Bavarian Alps. This cottage was meant for a very few people, and at the end of the war, there were about 13 people in this very small house.

Certain citizens claimed I had disgraced the fair name of the city of Limerick, that I had attacked the church, that I had despoiled my mother's name, and that if I returned to Limerick, I would surely be found hanging from a lamppost.