Category: London history

  • 30 April 1978

    40 years ago today – Red Saunders recollects the RAR Victoria Park Carnival: On Sunday 30 April 1978, 80,000 people gathered in Trafalgar Square, and danced their way through the East End to Victoria Park in Hackney for the first big Rock Against Racism Carnival Against the Nazis. RAR had emerged in reaction to an alarming […]

  • From Pop Art to Community Arts

    It has been an absolute joy to work with Peter Young on a film ‘From Pop Art to Community Arts: Hackney in the 1970s-80s’ commissioned for A British Museum Partnership exhibition ‘Warhol to Walker: American prints from pop art to today’. This special exhibition explores the influence print movements have had on Hackney. Starting with […]

  • London Pride

    Bright, festive, proud, out-spoken, warm, open, welcoming..

  • Filmmaking and Hackney

    I am contributing a video piece for the 24h Hackney film as well as the Hackney archive showreel to the Open Cinema film festival on Saturday November 21 at Open School East, 43 De Beauvoir Rd, N1 5SQ. Do come along if free and up for some quirky, serious, funny, contemporary and historical footage about Hackney. Read more here

  • East End markets

    Bishopsgate Institute asked me to join Diane Burstein, London guide and author of ‘London Then and Now’, on today’s Sunday morning stroll around the East End markets – Petticoat Lane, Spitalfields, Brick Lane, Cheshire Street, Columbia Road. Mind-blowing how the area and the markets have changed since I moved to London 12 years ago. But […]

  • London Radical Book Fair

    The London Radical Bookfair 2015 in their second year running championed radical publishing – from its independent bookshops and publishers to its DIY-ers; the small press, self-publishers, and zinesters. The LRB took over Bishopsgate Institute last year as the first event of its kind to bring together UK’s radical publishing and self-publishing communities. It was a joy and […]

  • Tales from the Ditch

    Alan Gilbey, curator/guide, BAFTA Award-winning writer and East End guru: ‘Tales From The Ditch’ is an anthology of tales less told from London’s ‘little bit of rough’, as narrated by an eclectic selection of local authors, historians, storytellers and musicians, who were hidden in all the nooks and crannies of the basement of Shoreditch Town Hall. Each of these […]

  • May Day Clerkenwell

    Rowan Arts have asked me to photograph the annual May Day gathering on Camberwell Green for their Clerkenwell History project. The Muscovite in me had mixed feelings on the day when a display of Soviet-era-like ceremony took place on Red Square, for the first time since 1991. But Britain is Britain, and here are the […]

  • East End Backpassages

    Although Alan Gilbey currently doesn’t run regular walks, he does create very special events; strolls through the side streets of East London to secret venues where a dozen of local writers and performers await to tell you tales less told. These ‘Speed History’ events happen several times a year. This year’s March event took place at […]