Henrietta Keeper (widely known as “Joan”), the vivacious octogenarian ballad singer who used to perform at E.Pellicci in the Bethnal Green Rd on Fridays, once invited me to round to her tiny flat to ...

The Leopard is the symbol of the Goldsmiths’ Company. Whenever I walk through the City to St Paul’s, I always marvel at the great blocks of Hay Tor granite which form the plin ...

Andy Strowman, poet of Stepney, sent me these photos and the stories which accompany them. Uncle Dave came to visit us from time to time. Maybe my mum knew in advance, it was like having royalty come ...

My father was born in 1914 in Fort Street, which ran across that site and was demolished to make way for the “new” Spitalfields market. It is strange that the Roman remains we ...

George Dodd came to Spitalfields to write this account for Charles Knight’s LONDON published in 1842. Dodds recalls the rural East End that still lingered in the collective memory and described the ...

Consequently, I was more than happy to make a trip to Rainham to pay a call upon Pamela Cilia, who proved to be a fine specimen of a bottling girl, full of vitality, sharp intelligence and strong ...

Today, the sad old pump in Shoreditch has lost its handle, had its nozzle broken and even its basin is filled with concrete, yet a lone primrose flowers – emblematic of the mystic quality that some ...

Chris plants crops in rotation to renew the soil. ‘Potatoes take quite a lot of nutrients out of the earth which is why we will follow them the next year with chard, which is not a very heavy feeder, ...

Photographer Patricia Niven and Novelist Sarah Winman visited the Freed of London factory in Well St to create these portraits of the Pointe Shoe Makers, an elite band of highly-skilled craftsmen who ...

As part of London Festival of Architecture, I am participating in an event hosted by SAVE Britain’s Heritage on Wednesday 11th June at 6pm at 77 Cowcross St, EC1M 6EJ, entitled Beyond Carbon: How ...

I was born in Balmoral Castle and I grew up in Windsor Castle …” Tony Jack told me proudly without bragging, “… they were both pubs in Canning Town.” It was a suitably auspicious beginning for an East ...

London grew rapidly from the late fifteen-hundreds, becoming the largest city in western Europe by the end of the next century. The possession of a garden was a luxury for the few, so markets were a ...