In a hidden courtyard workshop close to Brick Lane, Brian Gurtler, Textile Designer & Printer, of Dot Productions has been busy these last few days producing the limited edition of one hundred of Adam Dant’s tea-towels bought by re...

Of all the painters that comprised the East London Group, I rate none more highly than Henry Silk and so I am delighted that I was able to persuade David Buckman, author of the authoritative history From Bow to Biennale : Artists of The ...

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.] film by Sebastian Sharples First published in 1980, Clive Murphy’s wonderfully candid account of Marjorie Graham - the chorus girl wh...

The first house I ever visited in Spitalfields was Jocasta Innes’. A quarter of a century ago I came here, one bitterly cold winter morning, with my friend Joshua Compston to visit Brick Lane Market, and it was an unforgettable exp...

St. Michael, Cornhill, 1912 It was these murky glass slides of City churches (and a few nearby), taken for the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society a century ago and held in the collection at the Bishopsgate Institute, that inspired...

In Bethnal Green Let me admit, this is my favourite moment in the year – when the new leaves open fresh and green, and the streets are full of trees in flower. Several times, in recent days, I have been halted in my tracks by the s...

Clive plays the giddy goat, 30th September 1992 “I’m definitely up to mischief because I’ve got a bare chest, but who the photographer is I have no idea…” chuckled Clive Murphy, the celebrated novelist and o...

Queen Anne gazes down Ludgate Hill eternally Do you ever get the feeling you are being watched from above? That there is a silent figure observing from a strategic vantage point? Many of the statues and effigies of old London – as ...

Unless I am out on the streets pursuing the subjects of my interviews, I spend most days of the week alone in the house with my old cat, Mr Pussy. When I am sitting writing, he likes to doze and thus offers undemanding company, savouring...

A new dawn for The Marquis of Lansdowne Thanks in no small part to the passionate campaign waged by you, my esteemed readers of Spitalfields Life, The Marquis of Lansdowne is saved. Yesterday, I asked “How can it be that a museum ...