• What was life like in Waterloo in the Thirties and Forties? • What was an “airy”? • How, where and when do you wash discreetly if you don’t have access to a bath? • What qualifications are required before you are allowed to take a neighbour’s baby out in its pram? These are just some of the topics covered by Gwen Southgate in her fascinating memoir of growing up in Waterloo in the Thirties: Coin Street Chronicles: London’s...
Travelling to London on business or pleasure and staying in one of the apartments or hotels in Vauxhall on the South Bank of the River Thames? Albert Apartments? Comfort Inn? Dreamhouse? Travelodge? Novotel? Park Plaza Riverbank? St George Wharf? Thames View? Then do a little planning, and before you go buy a copy of the popular Vauxhall Society paperback guide Vauxhall: A Little History. In any of these hotels or apartments you’re not far from London’s best-known sights such...
TVS committee member Gabriel Gbadamosi will be talking about his debut novel Vauxhall at an event organised by the Tate South Lambeth Library on Wednesday. Gabriel Gbadamosi is a local resident, playwright, poet and critic. He has held fellowships at Goldsmiths and Cambridge Universities and was a Wingate Scholar researching theatre and performance in Africa. Gabriel was a director of the Society of Authors and is a presenter of BBC Radio 3′s Nightwaves. Vauxhall is his debut novel. The...
Vauxhall: A Little History is a full-colour paperback by Ross Davies, Chairman of the Vauxhall Society. Described by the London Evening Standard as ‘must-read for members of Parliament’, Vauxhall: A Little History is, writes Vauxhall author, film and TV star Joanna Lumley, a book that ‘wears its learning lightly and charmingly’. Novelist Will Self says ‘This is local history written with a light touch, but backed by heavyweight learning,’ while Vauxhall MP Kate Hoey adds that it’s a book...
In 1922 the names of 574 local men who perished in the First World War were carved into the panels of Stockwell’s War Memorial. Who were they? The book contained the stories of the jack-the-lads, fraudsters and underage volunteers, as well as seasoned soldiers, steady family men and hardworking artisans. They were bank clerks, printers, prison officers, railwaymen, barmen and plumbers, Christian and Jew, volunteer and conscript, young and old, brothers, fathers and sons. Their stories and secrets, told...
Kennington resident Gary Hicks has contributed a page on advertising pioneer Thomas Bish to the Vauxhall Society’s History section. Bish, whom Hicks describes as “a strange mixture of idealist and spiv” helped raise the equivalent of £2 billion for good causes, and made a mint in the process. Royalty and politicians courted this early media star and society figure, who was one of the best-known men in the land and allegedly more famous than the prime minister himself. In 1821, with his...
As part of the Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival Lambeth Archives invite you to the launch of their new book Lambeth Architecture 1914-1939 at the Prince of Wales, Brixton (opposite the Ritzy Cinema and Lambeth Town Hall – entrance is next to Barclays Bank). Historian and town planner Edmund Bird is heritage advisor to the Mayor of London’s Design for London. This, his second collaboration with Lambeth Archives, covers Lambeth Architecture from 1914-1939, a period of great development in...
Vauxhall Memories captured on film Vauxhall Memories is an oral history project The Vauxhall Society’s Gabriel Gbadamosi is delivering for Vauxhall Gardens Community Centre with the co-operation of Lady Margaret Hall and Covent Garden Market Authority. As a first step Monica Alcazar has shot a short film in which VGCC’s over-sixties are seen and heard swapping memories of favourite foods and memorable meals. Be our guest at two screenings of Monica’s film and to meet the Vauxhall Memories team...
Much More of This, Old Boy…? by Peter Paterson, is the best memoir of a life in print journalism I have read since H. L. Mencken’s rollicking Newspaper Days (1941). Mencken, however, wrote of the reporter’s life in the Baltimore of the early 1900s. Paterson looks back on the Fleet Street of only yesterday. His title refers to the words engraved forever on any old hack’s heart, if he or she has one. Before email (i.e. yesterday), a reporter...
We recently rediscovered , written by Mary Chamberlain (born in Lambeth in 1947) and published by Virago in 1989. It paints a fascinating picture of life in Lambeth in the 20th century through oral history and her own experiences. You can pick up a copy for 1p on Amazon.
