Tony Chapman is Head of Sociology at the University of Teesside. Jenny Hockey is Senior Lecturer in the School of Comparative and Applied Social Sciences, University of Hull.

• 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