Product Description

Brick Lane today is a place of extremes – a street that's constantly reinventing itself. Blending history and reportage with personal testimony and urban myths, and interspersing these with maps and photography, On Brick Lane is a one-of-a-kind chronicle of one of London's most remarkable streets. Bringing to life the memories and realities of Brick Lane's many communities, Rachel Lichtenstein harnesses the voices of the famous, the infamous and the obscure, merging memoir, reportage, poetry, photography and local history. The result is as vibrant and fascinating as the neighbourhood it so movingly celebrates.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71643 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
A collage of beady-eyed topographical study, family history and oral testimony… an intriguing, vivid memorial (Seven/ Telegraph )

…a comprehensive, deeply researched portrait of the street… affectionate, absorbing (New Statesman )

About the Author
Rachel Lichtenstein is an artist and writer, who has lived and worked in East London. She is also a tour guide and gives lectures on the Jewish East End. She is perhaps best known for her book (and personal quest) Rodinsky's Room, a compelling psycho-geographical tour co-written with Iain Sinclair, now considered a classic of its genre.

Customer Reviews

Bringing History to life
So much seems to have been written about Brick Lane in the last few years, most notably Monica Ali's novel. But this wonderful book tells a completely different side of the story of one of London's most famous streets.

Rachel Lichtenstein, herself an artist, seems to have assembled the most amazing collection of people - both current inhabitants and people whose families have been involved with the area over the last couple of centuries: Jewish jewellers, workers at the old Truman Brewery, market workers, artists and writers whose lives have been touched by the street's history in some way. She tells their stories with great empathy and, while there is an authorial voice which carries the narrative along, she manages to let each person recount their stories with such freshness that you get a real sense of history unfolding. By the end of the book, you feel that this strange cast of characters have become personal friends.
It put me in mind of David Kynaston's wondeful book, Austerity Britain.
One of my books of the year.

Fantastic
I was really pleased to see this book released a few weeks ago. Rachael Lichtenstein writes a contemporary account of Brick Lane and its current and past inhabitants. What impressed me most about the book is that the author didn't just concentrate on one of two of the well known groups, like the Jewish and Bangladeshi immigrants. She spent time talking to artists, the infamous Sandra from the Golden Heart, and a whole host of other people that make up the area. As a former resident in the old Spitalfields Market buildings, I got a real feel for the area, and the types of people she writes about.

The area has gone through a lot of changes in the last few years, and the new crowd, "Trustafarians", as one of her subjects calls them, are now as much a part of the new Brick Lane as the more established groups. The encroachment of the City and the general gentrification of Spitalfields, and the former Huguenot homes, will have a lasting impact on the area.

Above all, I'm glad this book has been written from an historical perspective, so future generations can get a feel for some of the characters that epitomised Brick Lane in 2006/2007, and have some understanding, through first hand accounts, of the types of people that lived there in the last century.

A fantastic celebration of diversity
It would be easy to think - after Monica Ali's and the raft of more contemporary artist/designer/DJ books and articles, that Brick Lane was a street capable of being viewed from a single cultural perspective. In this fascinating, comprehensive and ultimately, very real book, Rachel Lichtenstein proves conclusively that it simply cannot.


As she gathers together faces from all immigrant populations and juxtaposes them with the stories of their offspring, and the more recent immigrants (the artists/designers/DJs), Lichtenstein does not try to make order from the chaos of Brick Lane's recent history. Rather, she celebrates diversity, perspective and the multiple facets of this long street with its equally long history. The result is complex, fascinating and completely absorbing. Perhaps most of all, the stories come from the mouths of her range of interviewees, making it very, very real.

I believe she is going to use the same technique next to document Hatton Garden. Can't wait.