The East End: Four Centuries of London Life - Couverture souple

The East End as an idea is known to every Londoner, and to many others, though its boundaries are vague. Alan Palmer's historical overview of the area (first published in 1989 and revised in 2000) takes its extent to be the traditional limits of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, Hoxton and Shoreditch, the docklands and their overflow into West Ham and East Ham. And at the heart of the East End lies Spitalfields, home to a transient, often radical and hard-working population. Though it is often seen as London's centre of industry and poverty, in comparison to the well-to-do West End, the East End has always been a diverse place: in the seventeenth century, Hackney was a pleasant country retreat; Stepney and the docklands a bustling world of sailors and merchants. The book traces the development of the area from these roots, through the nineteenth century-when the East End became notorious as the home of radicals, exiled revolutionaries and the very poor, its crowded streets the scene of murder, riot and cholera-to the bombing of the first and second world war; and the subsequent decline and regeneration of the twentieth century.

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 through four centuries of life 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.