Goldfinger claimed to be a lifelong Marxist, but he never joined the Communist Party. In 1931, he met Ursula Blackwell, a woman of enormous resilience and wit who was then studying painting with Amédée Ozenfant. They married in 1933 and moved the following year from Paris to London, where he became more of a St James’s Marxist than a Hampstead socialist, his commanding frame set off with handmade shoes and expensive tailoring – Ursula had a substantial trust fund (from the Crosse and Blackwell empire). Soon after their meeting, he toyed with going to the USSR to build factories, and she unhesitatingly offered to go with him. Goldfinger was now caught up in the heat of mainstream European architectural Modernism, becoming the French secretary of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), but he was, in truth, a very junior figure on the wider scene.