Highfield, Birmingham

[2] Under the Florence's ownership Highfield became a focal point for the cultural life of Birmingham in the 1930s, a period when the city was the focus of great intellectual ferment.

[4] Highfield also formed a focus for political activity; in 1932 the dining room was converted into a studio where artists painted anti-war posters which were paraded through the city the following weekend, and in 1933 the house was the site of the rehearsals for the play DISARM!, performed at Birmingham Town Hall, whose cast was recruited from trade unions and factory dramatic societies.

[5] Highfield became a particular focus for local writers, and formed the centre of a vibrant literary circle that included the poets W. H. Auden[6] and Henry Reed,[7] the Birmingham Group novelists Walter Allen and John Hampson,[8] the art historian Nikolaus Pevsner[1] and the radio dramatist R. D. Smith.

[11] Visitors from outside the city known to have stayed at Highfield included the philosopher G. E. Moore, the anthropologist Margaret Mead, the biologist Julian Huxley, the architect Walter Gropius, the politician Ernest Bevin, the American ambassador John Gilbert Winant,[12] the poet Stephen Spender, the artist Robert Medley, the theatre director Rupert Doone,[7] and the writers A. L. Rowse, Maurice Dobb, John Strachey and Naomi Mitchison.

[13] During the 1930s Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius was commissioned by Sargant Florence to design a modernist block of flats for Jack Pritchard's Isokon on a plot at the rear of Highfield on Kensington Road, but the plan was thwarted by local opposition.