Newham Bookshop events and news

Thursday 18 March at 7.30 pm at Bishopsgate Institute

Lost London 1870-1945 is a collection of more than 500 black-and-white images of the capital, arranged by region and compiled from the archive, now held by English Heritage, of the former London County Council.

Most of these images have never been published before; they were taken to provide a visual-historical record of whole districts in London as they were vanishing and are displayed here in full plate images, with text provided by English Heritage’s Planning and Development Director for London and South-East England, Philip Davies, and a foreword written by HRH The Duke of Gloucester.

The photographs truly depict a London in transition – from the late Victorian age through to wartime devastation. Images depict all social strata, from Marshalsea Prison lodgings to the Prime Minister’s bedroom, from squalid slums to aristocratic mansions.

Lost London 1870-1945 is published in hardback at £29.99.

Wednesday 10 February at 5.30 pm at Stratford Circus

It’s over a year since her last diary and Laura Brown is now in her first year of university in London, a city still struggling to pull itself together in the new rationing era. Laura’s right in the heart of it; her band, the dirty angels, are gigging all over town until a police crackdown on rioting students forces them out of the city. After a brief exile on her parents’ farm, the angels set off in a battered VW bus on a tour of Europe with the fabulous Tiny Chainsaws in the Distance.

The tour soon unravels, however, in an increasingly dramatic sequence of events that include drought in Europe and Africa, a tidal-wave of desperate immigrants, a water war in the Middle East and a city-wide face off with the army in London. Not to mention infidelity, betrayal, friendship, love and massive courage.

How long can Laura distance herself from the struggle? And more importantly, how can she keep her style and hope alive in a world on the edge of madness?

Saci Lloyd has worked as a script editor for Camouflage Films, where she was involved in several projects including a $20m Columbia Tri-Star co-production, Amy Foster. She is now Head of Media at Newham Sixth Form College.

The Carbon Diaries 2017 is published by Hodder Children’s Books in paperback at £6.99.

Thursday 11 February at 7.30 pm at Bishopsgate Institute

Anna Minton in conversation with Michael Rosen

Britons are increasingly aware of living in a society plagued by fear and unhappiness. Even when actual levels of crime are reduced, the fear of crime is up. In Ground Control Anna Minton sets out on a journey around Britain to answer the questions, how did this happen and what could we do about it?

From Manchester, which hands out more ASBOs than any other city, to Liverpool, ‘City of Culture’, gated communities to sink estates, this is a frank and excoriating look at the effect that property and planning have on our lives – often in unexpected ways. More new spaces are being created in British towns than at any time since the Second World War. But they’re all privately owned and privately controlled, and they are changing not only the very fabric of our cities, but our understanding of public space, of citizenship, of fear and of trust.

Anna Minton reaches out to all those affected by these changes. From home owners to kids on ASBOs, policemen to estate agents, Ground Control explores the psychological effects our shared spaces have upon us, and shows us how alternative models produce cultures of greater happiness.

Anna Minton is the recipient of five national journalism awards, and is the author of numerous reports for The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the think tank Demos. She is also a member of the writers’ panel for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, and writes regularly for The Guardian and the New Statesman. Ground Control is her first book.

Michael Rosen is a writer, broadcaster and longtime Dalston resident and campaigner.

Ground Control is published by Penguin in paperback at £9.99.

Friday 12 February at 7 pm at Wanstead Library

Large inequalities of income in a society have often been regarded as divisive and corrosive, and it is common knowledge that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. This groundbreaking book, based on thirty years’ research, demonstrates that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them – the well-off as well as the poor. The remarkable data the book lays out and the measures it uses are like a spirit level which we can hold up to compare the conditions of different societies. The differences revealed, even between rich market democracies, are striking. Almost every modern social and environmental problem – ill-health, lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long working hours, big prison populations – is more likely to occur in a less equal society. The book goes to the heart of the apparent contrast between the material success and social failings of many modern societies. The Spirit Level does not simply provide a key to diagnosing our ills. It tells us how to shift the balance from self-interested ‘consumerism’ to a friendlier and more collaborative society. It shows a way out of the social and environmental problems which beset us and opens up a major new approach to improving the real quality of life, not just for the poor but for everyone. It is, in its conclusion, an optimistic book, which should revitalise politics and provide a new way of thinking about how we organise human communities.

Richard Wilkinson has played a formative role in international research and his work has been published in ten languages. He studied economic history at the London School of Economics before training in epidemiology and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School and Honorary Professor at University College London.

The Spirit Level, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, is published by Penguin in paperback at £9.99.

Sunday 21 March at 7 pm at Stratford Circus

My Family and Other Strangers: Adventures in Family History

When Jeremy Hardy decided to explore his ancestry it was, in part, to get to the bottom of his grandmother Rebecca’s dubious claims that the family descended from a certain 17th-century architect and that, more recently, Jeremy’s great-grandfather was a Royal bodyguard. Other legends ranged from the great aunt who ran illegal hooch during Prohibition to the wronged Victorian servant girl who bore an illegitimate Hardy, not forgetting the family’s rightful claim to a large country estate.

Wild stories aside, Jeremy sets out to such diverse locations as the Croydon one-way system and the hostile waters around Malta in order to find traces of recognisable family traits and a sense of how he came to be. With wry humour and a keen eye for the absurd and the frustrating, Jeremy takes us on a by turns funny and moving journey into the world of family ancestry.

My Family and Other Strangers will be enjoyed by anyone who has tried to decipher the 1901 census records, or simply wishes they too had asked their grandparents more about their lives.

Jeremy Hardy is a comedian, known for his socialist politics coupled with a very English delivery. He is best known for his work on radio, particularly on The News Quiz and his long running series Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation. He made his television debut in the late 1980s in various comedy shows including Blackadder Goes Forth, and has also presented a television documentary about the political background to the English Civil War. To BBC Radio 4 audiences Jeremy Hardy is also famous for his incredibly off-key singing, as showcased in I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.

My Family and Other Strangers is published by Ebury Press in paperback at £11.99.

Friday 30 April at 7 pm at Wanstead Library

The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels is one of the most attractive and contradictory figures of the nineteenth century. Born to a prosperous mercantile family in west Germany, he spent his career working in the Manchester cotton industry, riding to the Cheshire hounds, and enjoying the comfortable, middle-class life of a Victorian gentleman. Yet Engels was also the co-founder of international communism – the philosophy which in the 20th century came to control one third of the human race. He was the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, a ruthless party tactician, and the man who sacrificed his best years so Karl Marx could write Das Kapital. Tristram Hunt relishes the diversity and exuberance of Engels’s era: how one of the great bon viveurs of Victorian Britain reconciled his raucous personal life with this uncompromising political philosophy.

Dr Tristram Hunt is one of Britain’s best known young historians. Educated at Cambridge and Chicago Universities, he is lecturer in British history at Queen Mary, University of London, and author of Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City. A leading historical broadcaster, he has authored numerous series for BBC Radio and Television and Channel 4. A regular contributor to The Times, The Guardian and The Observer, he is a Trustee of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

The Frock-Coated Communist is published by Penguin in paperback at £10.99.

Saturday 6 March at 3 pm at Stratford Circus, Theatre Square E15

Novelist, poet, Children’s Laureate 2007-2009 and author of over 140 books, Michael Rosen will be reading from his latest books Michael Rosen’s A-Z: The Best Children’s Poetry from Agard to Zephaniah, All About Me, Bear Flies High, Red Ted and the Lost Things, I’m Number One, Nasty! and many more. This event will also preview Michael’s Big Book of Bad Things with a saxophone accompaniment. Come along to this fantastic opportunity to meet Michael Rosen at this book reading and book signing.

Michael’s event will be followed at 4.30 pm by a free fund-raising event in the foyer of Stratford Circus for Book Aid International, with guest readers including Lynn Brown MP, Nicholas Clee, Bernardine Evaristo, John Hegley, Nicolette Jones, Elizabeth Laird, Pete May and Michael Rosen.

Sunday 7 March at 3 pm at Stratford Circus

Sunset lives a life of luxury with her beautiful ex-model mum, her world-famous ex-rocker dad and two little celeb siblings. But life on the red carpet is no compensation for rowing parents, constant nagging, intensive media scrutiny and no real friends. Destiny, on the other hand, is an only child living on a rundown estate with a sickly but devoted mum who constantly tells her that she’s really the daughter of a famous former rock star…When the two girls meet in unlikely circumstances, they are surprised to find in each other something they’ve been missing all their lives…

Jacqueline Wilson is an extremely well-known and hugely popular author who served as Children’s Laureate from 2005 to 2007. The Illustrated Mum was chosen as the British Children’s Book of the Year in 1999 and was winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award 2000. Jacqueline has won the prestigious Smarties Prize and the Children’s Book Award for Double Act, which was also highly commended for the Carnegie Medal. In 2002 Jacqueline was given an OBE for services to literacy in schools and in 2008 she was made a Dame.

A brilliant writer of wit and subtlety — The Times

She should be prescribed for all cases of reading reluctance — Independent on Sunday

Has a rare gift for writing lightly and amusingly about emotional issues — The Bookseller

We Have Recently added A nice new location map on our contacts page, and whilst doing that, got playing with Google street view and thought it might be a good idea to have an animation of street view to help people find the shop if they were not familiar with the area. I did one which shows the route from Upton Park tube station to newham Bookshop you can have a look at it here.

I’m Not sure how much use it is as a navigation aid but its fun to look at…..