The Great Indoors by Ben Highmore, book review: Halls, heating and indoor toilets - the way we live now

When did people first "flop" down into settees rather than "take their seat"? And did anyone ever decide overnight that from now on we would eat meals while watching TV? These are some of the questions Ben Highmore asks in his exploration of the way our domestic lives have changed since the turn of the 20th century.

Among the book's many surprising titbits is the fact our love for Scandi-inspired, stripped-back interiors is nothing new. As early as 1919, Our Homes and Gardens magazine looked to Scandinavian countries as inspiration for a mild modernism that embraced clean lines.

The decluttering of the home in the early 20th century was not so much a question of aesthetics as one of necessity. With the rise in the number of middle-class households that could no longer afford domestic help, the home had to be easy to clean. Out went Victorian bookshelves filled to the brim with knick-knacks, and in came more practical solutions to living, such as the kitchen-diner.

It is these small domestic shifts leading to greater cultural change that Highmore is most interested in. The introduction of central heating is another example – and the way it allowed residents to leave the living room to roam their homes. With this came the possibility for teenagers to spend long hours locked away in their "bedsits", the prolonged reading of low-brow journalism on the downstairs toilet, and the ability to hold lengthy conversations on the telephone in the hallway – when the telephone was still kept there.

For decades the telephone stood in the hallway, an intermediate space in the house that allowed new technology to come into the home without welcoming it entirely into the hearth. The hall became a semi-public space for conducting often very public conversations, allowing the Victorian stiff upper lip to slacken – if only a little bit.

Highmore is at his most engaging when talking about hallways and stairs, likening the transitional spaces to the Freudian concept of the "unhomely" – a peculiar feeling we have when we find something weird at the heart of what is most familiar. For a child, the stairs can be a strange portal into the unknown, or offer the chance to steal a first secret glimpse of adult life.

But in other chapters the analysis falls short, and relies heavily on archive material to tell the story of the evolution of the home. While a Freudian reading of the disgust for the inside toilet, the demise of the microwave and the initial disdain for the duvet seems unavoidable, it finds no home here.