Behold, the twenty storey office block that Network Rail wants to plonk on top of Liverpool St Station. Note the height of Grade II*-listed Great Eastern Hotel in front and observe that this pile is ...

Now that the summer visitors are here and thronging in the capital’s streets and transport systems, I thought I would send you this fine set of postcards published by Charles Skilton, including my ...

You are invited to visit Spitalfields artist Robson Cezar’s studio in Bow as part of Bow Arts Open Studios this Friday and Saturday, 20th & 21st June, at 181-183 Bow Road, E3 2SP. Contributing ...

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 ...

‘Many of these paintings were made in kitchens, the heart of any house, café or restaurant. Places that are often a repository of things we have collected, things that have been handed down to us and ...

For years, Viscountess Boudica wrote an autobiography – absurd, bawdy and magical by turns – in daily installments. Entitled There’s More to Life than Heaven & Earth (sadly now discontinued), it was ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...