As now, the start of the 1980s was a bad time for architects. The Winter of Discontent had led to the austere early years of Thatcherism, with both public and private sectors equally hard hit. I was lucky - emerging from university in 1977 in a brief upswing between two recessions, I landed a journalistic job which actually paid money. That was £3,027 a year at first, working for Building Design under the editorships first of Peter Murray, then Sutherland Lyall, then Martin Pawley. Turnover of both editors and staff was rapid in those days, but at least the concept of the unpaid intern was unknown, as was word processing. We used manual typewriters and carbon paper, and cutting and pasting meant just that.
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