Walthamstow Through Time


Book Description

This fascinating selection of photographs traces some of the many ways in which Walthamstow has changed and developed over the last century.




A People's History of Walthamstow


Book Description

Walthamstow is well known as the home of William Morris, a former greyhound racing track and the boy band East 17. It's also been home to communities of people for thousands of years. This history tells the unique story of Walthamstow from the area's first Iron Age settlements to its Anglo-Saxon place names, medieval manors, agricultural hamlets and Victorian terraced housing. It includes the area's history in the twentieth century as a suburb of London. The development of Walthamstow is told from the perspective of the people who have lived there and who have helped to shape the place known around Britain today. Their stories are captured using photographs and illustrations, which bring to life how they have lived and worked over the years.




Walthamstow Through Time


Book Description

This fascinating selection of photographs traces some of the many ways in which Walthamstow has changed and developed over the last century.




This Is Memorial Device


Book Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2017ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE MONTHLRB BOOK OF THE WEEKCAUGHT BY THE RIVER BOOK OF THE MONTHSHORTLISTED FOR THE COLLYER BRISTOW PRIZE This Is Memorial Device, the debut novel by David Keenan, is a love letter to the small towns of Lanarkshire in the west of Scotland in the late 1970s and early 80s as they were temporarily transformed by the endless possibilities that came out of the freefall from punk rock. It follows a cast of misfits, drop-outs, small town visionaries and would-be artists and musicians through a period of time where anything seemed possible, a moment where art and the demands it made were as serious as your life. At its core is the story of Memorial Device, a mythic post-punk group that could have gone all the way were it not for the visionary excess and uncompromising bloody-minded belief that served to confirm them as underground legends. Written in a series of hallucinatory first-person eye-witness accounts that capture the prosaic madness of the time and place, heady with the magic of youth recalled, This Is Memorial Device combines the formal experimentation of David Foster Wallace at his peak circa Brief Interviews With Hideous Men with moments of delirious psychedelic modernism, laugh out loud bathos and tender poignancy.




The Year I Stopped to Notice


Book Description

'This book is a delight ... the world is full of little surprises, momentary little fountains of pleasure and beauty, that could be visible to all of us if we learned to stop and notice as Miranda Keeling does.' Philip Pullman 'An odd, beautiful book ... Buy an extra copy to give to someone you love.' Neil Gaiman January: A man walking along Caledonian Road falls over onto the huge roll of bubble wrap he is hugging, perhaps for just this sort of situation. Inspired by her popular Twitter account, The Year I Stopped to Notice brings together Miranda Keeling's observations of the magic, humour, strangeness and beauty in ordinary life. Through the changing seasons, on city streets and on buses, in parks and cafes, Miranda notices things: moments between friends, the interactions of strangers, children delighting in the world around them, the quiet melancholy of lost items on the pavement. Accompanied by stunning watercolour illustrations from Luci Power, Miranda's poetic vignettes take us on journeys of discovery and share with us the joy of stopping to notice. September: On a sweltering, packed rush-hour train, my arm suddenly feels lovely and cool, and I look down to see a shopping bag held by the woman beside me - full of just-bought cartons of milk.




A Toynbee to Remember


Book Description

This book is based on 500 letters exchanged between Will and Lizzie Toynbee living in Walthamstow, East London, and their son Stan, who was in Egypt in during First World War. The family was well known in Walthamstow through their involvement in the Brotherhood Movement. Will was president of the Marsh Street Men's Own and Lizzie was president of the complementary Marsh Street Women's Own meetings, which had broken away from Marsh Street Congregational Church. By 1914, the movement had grown from its beginnings in a West Bromwich Congregational Church in the Midlands to a mainly nonconformist membership throughout Britain of 1,200,000, shortly before the war broke out. By the time Stan Toynbee enlisted in the army early in 1915 when the correspondence began, Will was speaking all over the country on the government campaigns. This and Lizzie's experiences and feelings of Stan's absence so far away, form the basis of the 500 letters, which are the reason for the book.




This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City


Book Description

Join John Rogers as he ventures out into an uncharted London like a redbrick Indiana Jones in search of the lost meaning of our metropolitan existence. Nursing two reluctant knees and a can of Stella, he perambulates through the seasons seeking adventure in our city’s remote and forgotten reaches.




London's Houses


Book Description




Fried & Justified


Book Description

AN UNCUT BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A wild rock 'n' roll fairground ride of the damned.' OBSERVER 'Excellent.' NEW STATESMAN 'Entertaining . . . recalls twenty heady years at the centre of the British music business.' FINANCIAL TIMES A candid frontline account of an illustrious gonzo career as an independent music publicist during the post-punk heyday of the 80s and 90s, featuring an introduction by Bill Drummond and a new foreword by Julian Cope. Mick Houghton worked with some of the greatest, most influential and downright dysfunctional cult groups of the post-punk era and beyond - Ramones, Talking Heads, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Undertones, Felt and Sonic Youth among them. But the three acts Mick is most closely identified with are Echo & the Bunnymen, Julian Cope, and the KLF. As confidant and co-conspirator, he navigated the minefield of rivalries and contrasting fortunes which make Fried & Justified such a candid, amusing and insightful picture of an exciting and inspirational period for music.




Rivers of London


Book Description

My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (and as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit - we do paperwork so real coppers don't have to - and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluable, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. Now I'm a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden ... and there's something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair.The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it's falling to me to bring order out of chaos - or die trying.