Product Description

'Every page is a delight. Every chapter made vivid by a writer who has poured heart and soul into her book'. Val Hennessy, Daily Mail The East End of London - cockneys, criminals, street markets, pub singalongs, dog racing, jellied eels ... it is a place at once appealing and unruly, comforting and incomprehensible. Gilda O'Neill, an East Ender herself shows there is more to this fascinating area than a collection of cliched images. Using oral history and more traditional sources she builds up a powerful image of this community - bringing to us, with wit and honesty, the real story of London's East End

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36074 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 376 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The heart of the East End has always been Tower Hamlets; Gilda O'Neill is enough of a partisan to regard even Hackney as a bit out of bounds. My East End starts with the earliest times--the East of London has always been where dirty industry congregated, downstream from the Court and Parliament, and it has always been where incomers started, from Flemings in the Middle Ages to Bengalis today.

The greater part of this excellent book, though, is not a competent academic run through of the sources, but an invaluable collection of oral history, in which pensioners talk about the classic East End of late Victorian times and the inter-war period, a time when grinding poverty could just about be survived with luck, when people were forced to live in each other's pockets and children played around the open door of their homes until all hours: "There was always a jigsaw on the go and everyone that called had a go at putting some pieces in. Nanny usually came round on Friday nights and always brought a bag of sweets--winter warmers--and, as she was going home, she would call out 'Goodnight, kidlets'. I said that when I grew up I would go out singing in the streets and buy her a pair of blue bloomers."

O'Neill is fascinating about both the positive and negative sides of a way of life that went forever when families were moved out to housing estates on the fringes of London and about the parts of it that have survived into a new multi-cultural East End; My East End is a good book because it has an unsnobbish respect for the voices it draws on. --Roz Kaveney

About the Author
Gilda O'Neill grew up in the East End of London. Having left school aged fifteen, she later returned to education as a mature student and went on to take three university degrees. Since 1990 she has been writing full-time and has published numerous works of both fiction and non-fiction, including two non-fiction bestsellers, My East End and Our Street. Gilda O'Neill is married with two grown-up children and lives in the East End.

Customer Reviews

A "true" step back in time
I read My East End in one day (something I have rarely done). I was hypnotised and delighted to read all the quotes. . . I could "see" the people and hear my parents and my grand-parents in the phrasing - and yet they were all brought up in Paddington (a good few miles from the East End). A true account of a lifestyle that was snatched from under our feet. If only we could interact the way they all did then, when there was real London Pride.

Brings back many memories from my childhood
Having been born, when the Old East End was on the verge of extinction, when people in suits decided that it was better to destroy communities and build the Nirvanah for the working Class out in Essex, this book brought back so many memoires for me. If anyone wants to know what life really was like, they should buy this book and then they'll understand the differences between then and now, and also the complete fiction that is displayed on their screens on a weekly basis. This book should be distributed to every school.

great read, even if it covers all south London as well!
What a brilliant read, it took me back to my childhood and the stories of my father and his parents. Just a shame the author thinks the East End is the only place such behaviours took place - I'm from south London and we were brought up just the same! Hence recommended as a great read for Londoners and those who wish to learn about Londoners - whatever side of the river they come from.