Can a 150-year history of social inequality aid our understanding of a disaster like the Grenfell Tower fire? Before Grenfell: A Hidden History (BBC Two) made a good case for it. This spellbinding documentary told the story of the working-class communities of North Kensington in London, and how the richest borough in Britain has long tolerated the country’s worst levels of social inequality.
“If you understand the history of this place, you’ll understand how Grenfell could have happened here,” we were told at the outset. And what followed, from the moment a wall was erected in 1864 to keep the newly developed Notting Hill separate from Notting Dale, the worst slum in London, was distinctly a...