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Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Jan 27, Robbieb rated it did not like it. Sadly I found this book very disappointing. While I appreciate that the views expressed by the author are based on his own personal experience, there are some significant differences to my own recollections. I was born in in Poplar, East London and grew up and went to school there in the 50s and 60s.
So I believe I am eminently qualified to provide a review and critique of this book. In the Introduction the book states it will be a warts and all portrait of that childhood era and challenge Sadly I found this book very disappointing. In the Introduction the book states it will be a warts and all portrait of that childhood era and challenge what the author sees as a rose tinted view of the past. Reference is made to statistics to support this statement, but no direct source reference is provided.
My own personal experience is at odds with this statement. While I would admit that accidents must have occurred, I played on the street and adjacent railway for all of my childhood years from around and apart from the usual scrapes and grazes, cannot remember any serious accident either to myself or anybody else. In Chapter 1, the book discusses the hardships that people suffered due to inferior housing.
These include outside lavatories and having to wash clothes by hand. This picture of life in a typical East London house is accurate for many and the house where I grew up had these characteristics plus no hot water or any form of central heating.
However, where I differ is that we did not see these as hardships at all at the time, but something which was part of our everyday life. This was the way it was, but we did appreciate these things when eventually they did come along.
Finally, the small child scenario braving the weather to use the lavatory is ridiculous, has the author never heard of a chamber pot? The theme in Chapter 1 continues and references to families being glad to move out of their so called slums into modern housing is seen as welcome and positive. Later in the book Chapter 3 the destruction of communities through slum clearance is discussed and that these houses could have been upgraded to modern standards.
This is somewhat inconsistent with the first chapter of the book. This was completely at odds to my own experience of living in Poplar.
The Greenwich foot tunnel was walkable from where I lived and we often used to go through this into Greenwich and the park. In fact when we were given notice to leave our house, my mother would not accept a modern flat, but insisted on a house with a garden. We ended up moving to Kidbrooke in South East London and my parents lived there happily for over 20 years.
The piece inspired the hit American remake All in the Family , [19] among others. One Canada Square , the metre tower, was the tallest building in the United Kingdom from to , has achieved an iconic status, and is located on the Isle of Dogs. It has appeared as a location in television, film and literature. Film has also explored the issues and themes affecting the East End. Many early films were made in Hoxton, at Gainsborough Studios. With their association with German cinema realism, many of these were made in the streets around the studio.
In more modern films, gangsterism has featured.
Do you remember playing in streets free of traffic? Dancing to the Beatles? Watching a man land on the Moon on TV? Waking up to ice on the inside of the. Simon Webb has written for various newspapers and magazines, including True Detective magazine, and is the author of Unearthing London: The Ancient.
Sparrers Can't Sing , [21] developed by Theatre Workshop, dealt with issues of change in the East End — a sailor comes home from the sea, to find his home redeveloped and his family moved to a new council block. The sets were often visited by local gangsters, the Krays, who actually made a cameo appearance in the film.
His brutality is only matched by that of the IRA. The theme of a return to find a changing society is also brought out in For Queen and Country Conflict arises between them and old firm criminals, immigrant gangsters and a group of less than honest friends, raised in the East End.
Romantic encounters with a multi-cultural erotic frisson, set in Limehouse's Chinatown , are the theme of Broken Blossoms , derived from a story in Thomas Burke's Limehouse Nights and Piccadilly starring Anna May Wong as an alluring Chinese nightclub performer. These began with some short British serials —4 before the first American feature film The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu appeared in , followed by many others. Further multi-cultural encounters are featured in the film Brick Lane based on the novel by Monica Ali.
The East End also appears in the film Mary Poppins , when Jane and Michael flee from the bank, and wander into its slums, before going home safely with Bert, a chimney sweep. The British comedy-crime drama Spivs features a group of East End " spivs " British slang for a black marketeer. From the middle of the 18th century, inhabitants of the area had begun to be characterised as shiftless, untrustworthy and responsible for their own poverty. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. The Shakespearean Stage, Learn more about Amazon Giveaway.
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