Professor Deborah Sugg Ryan is a historian, author and broadcaster. A former V&A curator, she is a specialist in the history of design, housing, interiors, products, consumerism, fashion and everyday life. Deborah is Professor Emerita of Design History at the University of Portsmouth and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
A presenter and series consultant for BBC Two’s A House Through Time, Deborah appears in all five series. She brings the changing interior of the house to life in her segments. She contributed to and was consultant to Channel 5’s Your Kitchen: 60 Years of Fads and Gadgets. Other appearances include BBC One’s Morning Live; BBC Two’s Inside the Factory, Business Boomers: Hot Property; More 4’s David Jason’s History of British Inventions; Channel 4’s No 57: The Story of a House and Heaven, Hell or Suburbia; Channel 5’s Farrow and Ball: Inside the Posh Paint Factory; Sandringham: A Royal Residence; Jay Blades: A Country House Through Time.
For BBC Radio 4, Deborah wrote and presented Fitted and Kitted, a history of the fitted kitchen for BBC Radio 4’s Archive on 4 and Trading Spaces, which looks at the history of 5 high street businesses and the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. Her other radio appearances include The Fast Furniture Fix, The Hidden History of the Window, The Hidden History of the Staircase, Laurence Llewellyn Bowen’s History of Home, as well as interviews for You and Yours, Woman’s Hour and Today and numerous independent and local stations.
Deborah is the author of three books. The Ideal Home Through the Twentieth Century (Hazar) tells the story of the Ideal Home Show from its founding in 1908 to the present. Ideal Homes, 1918-39: Domestic Design and Suburban Modernism (Manchester University Press) was awarded the 2020 Historians of British Art Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period After 1800. It was reissued as a trade book in 2020 with the title Ideal Homes: Uncovering the History and Design of the Interwar House and a new introduction on researching your house history. She is currently writing a history of the modern kitchen for Reaktion Books.
Deborah has contributed articles on domestic design and house history to the Financial Times; Who Do You Think You Are Magazine; Family Tree Magazine and BBC History and blogposts to genealogy website Findmypast. She frequently provides comments for magazines and newspapers.
Consultancy includes work with Wickes on kitchen and bathroom design and the history of women and DIY, a report on fifty obsolete objects in the home for Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) to mark the EU halogen lightbulb ban. She has worked as a consultant for all three sets of owners of the Ideal Home Show.
Deborah is an experienced public speaker and lecturer and speaks regularly to historical and genealogy societies, groups, conferences and at museum events.
Deborah has put her interest in the history of housing into practical use by renovating 6 houses, including a Grade II listed Georgian terrace, and an interwar ‘time capsule’ semi. She is also known for her vintage fashion style and is a judge for the Best Dressed competition at Goodwood Revival and Southwick Revival.
