The East End: Four Centuries of London Life - Softcover

Alan Palmer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0719566401 ISBN 13: 9780719566400

Publisher: John Murray, 2004

Synopsis

For centuries the East End has been synonymous with poverty and sweated labour, with Cockney solidarity and popular protest. The poverty is still there but now, once again, East London is beginning to reshape itself. Alan Palmer takes us back over 400 years in this great melting pot which was once the very centre of Empire trade. People as well as goods have flowed in and out of it, from the Huguenot weavers of the 17th century to the Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis of today.
Its story is one of extremes - of small deprived streets and great Hawksmoor churches, of great social campaigners like George Lansbury and out-and-out criminals like the Krays. This book, with an introduction by London's great chronicler Peter Ackroyd, seeks to capture the spirit of the East End and its people, of those who have left their mark on it and those whose lives were marked by it for ever.

About this title

Review:

'Witty and elegant' (Evening Standard )

'An excellent account of one of the liveliest and most fascinating areas to be found in any city in the world' (Leon Garfield )

'A splendid piece of history ... a monument to a vanished quarter of London' (Financial Times )

'A good social history of an area and its changes' (Sunday Telegraph 20040606)

'A delightful, anecdote-laden insight ... Palmer does very well in constructing a distinct history of the area ... an informative and entertaining read.' (BBC History Magazine 20040409)

'Alan Palmer's absorbing history of London's East End stretches back more than 400 years and evocatively captures the flavour of this unique area.' (Glasgow Herald 20040612)

'One of the best accounts of a world now vanished.' (Contemporary Review 20041001)

'captures the spirit of the place and its people' (Publishing News 20040213)

About the Author:

Alan Palmer grew up on the fringes of east London and has his own eyewitness accounts from the 1930s and 1940s. A schoolmaster in north London for nearly twenty years, he has written more than thirty books including The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire, Dictionary of the British Empire and Commonwealth and Victory 1918. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1980.

About this edition

• Publisher: John Murray
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0719566401
• ISBN 13: 9780719566400
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224