East End Review

Category: BOOKS

Hackney Propaganda: a look at 19th century working men’s clubs

The Mildmay Club today. Photograph: Ken Worpole

You don’t have to look far to find examples of how East London is changing, either on the streets or indeed on this very website. Continuity – our closeness to the past – is unlikely to make headline news, though to the social historian it is of equal importance.

Author Ken Worpole acknowledges the difficulty of simultaneously holding a sense of change from and proximity to the past in his excellent introduction to Hackney Propaganda: Working Class Club Life and Politics in Hackney 1870–1900.

The pamphlet, which Worpole co-authored with the lecturer and historian Barry Burke, was first printed in 1980 by Centerprise, a radical community centre on Kingsland Road sadly now defunct, and is an extended version of two talks given there in the autumn of 1979.

“The contradictoriness of the past is captured in the popular expression, ‘the good old bad old days’, in which, of course, we continue to live”, writes Worpole in his introduction, and what follows is a brief survey (40 pages) covering Hackney’s working men’s club movement and socialist organisations during the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Radical intellectuals such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Daniel Defoe and Isaac Watts are given their due in Hackney with proposed statues and streets and pubs named after them. But for working class people in Victorian Hackney, free thought and political independence were impossible without a formal education and better living conditions.

After the Reform Act was passed to extend adult suffrage in 1867 and the founding in 1864 of the International Working Men’s Association came a boom of groups and organisations representing unorthodox ideas and non-conformist thought.

The working men’s club was a hotbed of oppositional opinion. An alternative to the public house, it was a heated and well-lit environment where men could drink ale, enjoy entertainment and educate themselves.

The Borough of Hackney Club, which opened in 1873, contained a reading room and a small library, and its activities included “weekly discussions and lectures on political and social questions”.

By the 1880s, according to Charles Booth’s survey Life and Labour of the People in London, there were 115 clubs in Hackney and East London. “To many more club life is an education,” Booth wrote.

The authors look at the members and activities of several clubs of the period, clubs with names such as the Homerton Club, the United Radical Club and the
Kingsland Progressive.

Some of the clubs were explicitly socialist, distributing literature in the streets and holding meetings that were broken up by police. Others provided an audience and venue for speakers such as William Morris.

Walking through Hackney, it is difficult to gain a sense of what the borough used to look like 130 years ago, let alone feel any connection to the people who lived in those times.

But Warpole and Burke provide anecdotes and vignettes about those long forgotten people who once inhabited Hackney’s streets, which entice the reader and force us to engage imaginatively. They also draw neat conclusions about the legacy of those times on the politics of today – though the today referred to is 1980. To make Hackney Propaganda relevant to 2015 would require at least another chapter.

Hackney Propaganda: Working Class Club Life and Politics in Hackney 1870–1900 is available from Hackney bookshops and at worpole.net. RRP: £5.

November 23, 2015
High achievers with dyslexia share their stories in new book

Author Margaret Rooke with Benjamin Zephaniah

When photographer David Bailey and his art critic friend each decided to take a photograph of the same view in Cornwall, there’s no surprise whose turned out the best.
“I achieve this without being able to explain why,” says Bailey, before acknowledging that his mind must work in a way that makes him see things differently from other people.

Bailey is one of 23 contributors to the book Creative, Successful, Dyslexic by Stoke Newington author Margaret Rooke, in which well known figures from the arts, sport and business worlds describe their experiences of dyslexia.

Dyslexic celebrities such as Richard Branson, Eddie Izzard and Darcey Bussell reveal the difficulties they faced in childhood, and how, ultimately, they think dyslexia actually helped them reach the top of their professions.

For Bailey, who only became aware of the word ‘dyslexia’ when he was 30, curiosity and spark, and not the ability to spell, are the main factors for a successful life. He talks about his “uncommon sense” and how making mistakes can be the basis for a lot of art.

Margaret Rooke had the idea for the book after her own daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia, aged 13.

“It was just such a shock to us, and it took a long time for it to sink in,” Rooke says. “But I really did want her to know that she could still do what she wanted in life. I didn’t want this to be something that weighed heavily on her shoulders.”

Rooke quotes the story of a friend whose son was diagnosed with dyslexia. When the friend spotted an article about how Richard Branson was dyslexic, she cut it out and stuck it to the son’s bed, and it turned out to be a turning point for the son.

“I thought it’d be great to get a whole book together with lots of different examples,” Rooke says.

With the help of charity Dyslexia Action, who put forward some of their ambassadors, Rooke was able to put the book together. One thing common to all of the stories is the importance of a positive outlook.

“When we found out that my daughter was dyslexic I didn’t have a positive response,” Rooke admits.

“But the attitude from the experts in the book and a lot of the people I interviewed was to be positive. The attributes that come with dyslexia might not help with school qualifications but they can still help your child in the world of work.”

Rooke recognises that teachers do an “incredible job” and that schools are much more “on it” when it comes to dyslexia these days. But when the educational establishment places attainment and results above everything else, including creativity, how can those who learn in different ways thrive?

“I’ve found just in the playground there’s a lot of competitiveness and kids always know who is top of the class,” says Rooke. “Even if we’re not in an age where teachers call out the results, kids do know and I would say step away from all of that because there are other ways to shine.”

Poet Benjamin Zephaniah, who holds 17 honorary doctorate degrees yet still finds the word ‘knot’ difficult to spell, ends the collection with a powerful call to arms.

“If someone can’t understand dyslexia it’s their problem, not yours,” he tells the reader directly. “In the same way, if someone oppresses me because of my race I don’t sit
down and think ‘How can I become white?’

“It’s not my problem, it’s theirs and they have to come to terms with it. So if you’re dyslexic, don’t be heavy on yourself.”

Creative, Successful, Dyslexic: 23 High Achievers Share Their Stories is published by Jessica Kingsley. RRP: £16.99. ISBN: 9781849056533

November 20, 2015
The author following in the footsteps of Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft stencil by Stewy

In Search of Mary by journalist Bee Rowlatt is a love story inside a love story. In actual fact, it is part travelogue, part biography; a history of groundbreaking feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and a walking in her shoes. Rowlatt was inspired by Wollstonecraft’s own book – Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, first published in 1796 – which narrates her intrepid travels, spurred on by a mission to recover stolen treasure for her lover, Gilbert Imlay. Rowlatt’s book, in turn, is testament to her admiration for Wollstonecraft. Or, as she admits, her outright ‘groupie’ status.

I meet Rowlatt at BBC Broadcasting House, in the midst of her busy press schedule and on the day of the book launch. Rowlatt is proud to call her own relationship with Wollstonecraft is “a full blown love affair”. A love affair which, like Wollstonecraft’s own, led her to embark across lands and seas – but in search of Mary, rather than of stolen treasure. And like Wollstonecraft, Rowlatt travelled to Scandinavia and beyond with a baby on board.

Before her overseas explorations however, Wollstonecraft’s home of Stoke Newington provided fertile ground for her radical roots. “It was absolutely critical in the making of her,” explains Rowlatt. Living in the then radical village allowed Wollstonecraft to tread new paths in more ways than one: she was a young woman living from her writing – “virtually unheard of at the time”. She also founded a school whilst living in the area, and came under the radical wing of the publisher Joseph Johnson and the Reverend Richard Price at the Unitarian Chapel on Newington Green.

The chapel today, which proclaims itself ‘the birthplace of feminism’, is still “remarkable, full of interesting people,” says Rowlatt – and it boasts perhaps the country’s only atheist minister. Rowlatt is a strong believer in honouring “these pockets of radical history, in a time when London is being increasingly scooped out and turned into luxury flats.”

What would Mary think of the area today, I ask. Rowlatt looks concerned and replies after some thought: “I think she’d be pretty appalled.”

“Wollstonecraft came from inequality and dragged herself up, so she really cared about the 99 per cent… it was the fundamental injustice that made her angry.” She eagerly adds though, that Wollstonecraft was “an inveterate optimist – it was in her DNA – she believed in the perfectibility of mankind.” And womankind, certainly.

Rowlatt was surprised to find that her attitude to motherhood and feminism changed significantly during the trip. “I started off from a position of outrage and ended up realising how bloody lucky I am,” and has come to believe that even a “toehold on both worlds” – of work and motherhood – is worth celebrating. I ask her if she thinks the same is true for men. “Don’t compare men to women,” she says, “compare them to their dads.” Like Wollstonecraft, Rowlatt’s belief in the perfectibility of mankind seems to prevail.

Nevertheless, Rowlatt is outraged that Wollstonecraft’s legacy as a pioneering feminist and influential author “hasn’t been commemorated in the way she deserves”, and is involved in the Mary on the Green campaign, which calls for a memorial statue of Wollstonecraft on Newington Green. Rowlatt continues to be in awe of the spirit that led Wollstonecraft to embark on her juggernaut of a journey, and her own was in large part a eulogy.

In Search of Mary: The Mother of All Journeys is published by Alma Books. RRP: £12.99. ISBN: 9781846883781.

November 6, 2015
Body issues: new lit magazine Funhouse gets corporeal

Do you dare enter the Funhouse? Illustration: Felix Decombat

Funhouse is a new quarterly for young writers and illustrators, which is launching early this month. Founded by Hackney-based editor Oliver Zarandi and designer Fran Marchesi, the magazine will publish stories and illustrations that would be less likely to appear in the more established literary venues.

The first issue is concerned with the body, with a fittingly fleshy colour running throughout its 94 pages. Think not graceful nudes or svelte athletes; these bodies tend toward the grotesque, with many of the stories feeling their way into disease and bodily transformations. The illustrations feature a series of people castrating each other, being punched in the head, missing noses.

The mag’s contributors include writers such as Richard Barnett, author of The Sick Rose, Patty Cottrell, Jason Schwartz and East London based comic artist Alex Widdowson. The inaugural issue’s front cover is by Will Laren who frequently contributes to Vice.

Moving forward, the Funhouse team is hoping to attract more East London writers and illustrators for the next issue in the aim of creating a local literary community. I caught up with Zarandi a few weeks before the first issue was due to come out and asked him the magazine’s genesis.

Where did the idea for Funhouse come from?
Funhouse has been an idea for a long time, but only in the last nine months has it really come to life. The name comes from a story by John Barth – ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ – and there was one point where I actually contacted John Barth. I emailed the university he used to teach at and they put me in touch with him. He said it sounded “fine” and said I should talk to his agent. Obviously, there was no reply. The whole Barth thing made me change my mind. It made me think maybe I was doing something old-fashioned. Sometimes literature and ‘art’ magazines can be very off-putting – too serious, too much text, not enough focus on younger writers, or events where you watch people read long poems for hours on end. Fran Marchesi and I wanted to make a magazine of writing and illustration that was respectful to the artists but still has its tongue firmly in cheek. We wanted Funhouse to be a bit naughty and print work that was offbeat, dark and funny.

Why a magazine? We heard a rumour that ‘print is dead’.
To say print is dead is a bit of a limiting statement. It’s like saying novels are dead, theatre is dead or film is dead. I think the reason I chose print as opposed to something digital is out of respect for the writers. As a writer myself, I would always prefer to have something tangible, something special. A lot of writers have work online, but then maybe a year or two later that link is dead. Fran and I wanted to create something beautiful. There’s a lot of illustration in Funhouse too, so again, we want people to actually pick up this magazine, to feel it. There are a lot of great print magazines and publishers out there right now – places like Test Centre, And Other Stories, The Alarmist, Hexus – who are all creating great print work.

What were your inspirations and what direction do you hope to take the magazine in?
For our first issue, we’ve definitely taken a lot of inspiration from American literature and publishers. A particular influence is Tyrant Books and their editor Giancarlo DiTrapano, who published New York Tyrant and, eventually, Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish. It is an amazing book and Di Trapano did it his way. I’ve got a lot of respect for that. Funhouse has been a long, difficult journey. In the beginning, it was going in a lot of directions. It just wasn’t right.
But then I met Fran who designed the magazine, and we work really well together. We understand what works and we see things in the long term. Fran’s design is fantastic and we aim to publish longer works – novels, short story collections for example – in the next two years. We would like to gain a following first, however, and build relationships with writers and artists. When you look at somewhere like Galley Beggar Press and the great work they produce, it’s really encouraging.

Will there be cross-chat between the illustrations and the stories in each issue?
Each story will have an illustration to it, yes, but we also dedicate entire sections to artists too. We aim to give enough space to both text and illustration so the work can breathe. We are looking to change the colour scheme and ‘theme’ of each issue, too.

Who will your readers be and why will they read Funhouse?
Funhouse will appeal to those who love good quality print, peculiar stories, punchy illustration and dark humour. It’s not just a magazine for one particular set of people, either. We are really interested in publishing writers from different backgrounds and different interests – not just writers, but comic book artists, internet poets and so on. We encourage people to just email us and talk to us about any work they have.

What would be the first sentence of your dream review of the magazine?
“Funhouse has a lot of balls. And arms, and ears, and other body parts too.”

funhousemagazine.com
funhousemag@gmail.com
info@funhousemagazine.com

September 7, 2015
Opposites attract in Butterfly Fish

Writer Irenosen Okojie

Butterfly Fish, the debut novel of East London writer Irenosen Okojie, has been a labour of love. The novel follows Joy who, after the death of her mother, inherits a diary and a unique brass head. It is a novel that sees every family history as a puzzle.

Written over the course of six years, it began as a short story and developed into what Okojie sees as an epic novel.

The transition from short story to novel was strange for Okojie. “I love writing short stories because there’s an ending to them,” she says. “You can realise an idea and move on. I feel my writing got better this way. When I was writing the novel, I could see that growth. It was a weird leap. Writing a novel is like being left at sea on a little boat and being left to your own devices.”

Butterfly Fish is a story about love, loss and inheritance that departs from traditional African narratives – something Okojie’s friends found disconcerting at first.

“People have particular perceptions,” says Okojie. “There is the idea of the African story – about families going through strife, struggling, travelling around. There are middle-class Africans. That’s my background, my story. This is an epic story that transcends race and class. It’s an African story, yes – but it’s also an English one too.”

Okojie’s influences are not limited to English and African culture. The novel’s strength is its ability to make the abstract concrete. She sees Ben Okri, Gabriel Garcia Marquez as influences too.

These influences are evident when one of the characters imagines themselves being “cut into eight slices [and] served on a different platter” for each of his wives to swallow. Memories literally leak through the ceilings and intrude on the characters’ daily lives.

Butterfly Fish is a work of contrasts: abstract and concrete; love and loss; African and English; epic and intimate. It is a novel that Okojie hopes everybody will be able to relate to, regardless of where they come from.

Butterfly Fish is published by
Jacaranda Books. RRP: £12.99 (hardback)
ISBN: 9781909762060

August 11, 2015
The real mothers of invention

Gavin Weightman

Inventions aren’t born fully fledged, nor are they the work of a lone genius. In his latest foray into the past, Hackney-based historian and former journalist Gavin Weightman explores the nuances and collaboration that lead inevitably to the all-important ‘eureka!’ moment in the story of invention.

From his own school days as an amateur radio maker, Weightman has always been fascinated by how the impossible becomes possible. It is this fascination that is woven throughout Eureka: How Invention Happens, working backwards from the final product to the initial stages of exploration, the first breakthrough and the moment when it all becomes possible. “My book isn’t prescriptive,” he says. “It doesn’t tell you how to be an inventor, but rather takes a closer look at the pre-histories of inventions that involve all sorts of people.”

Social histories have dominated the genre of late. Weightman’s book may sound industrially focused, yet one of its underlying threads is the impact, even as an afterthought, of great inventions on our society. It’s as much a book about people as it is about products; not just those who dreamed up the things we take for granted today, but those who use them.

“Obviously inventions influence the human condition to some degree,” says Weightman. “Just look at social media as a result of a combination of the personal computer and the mobile phone, for example – but are we better or worse off because of them? Progress improves people’s lives and makes them easier, but I don’t think it fundamentally alters the balance of good and evil.”

This is a question that crops up more and more as we live in an increasingly digital world. There’s no doubt that, in this book, these inventions are thought of as a good thing. Weightman doesn’t subscribe to the idea that necessity is the mother of invention, instead presenting an entertaining and compelling snapshot of everyday innovators who went beyond the bounds of possibility.

“In researching my book, one of the most significant things I discovered is that those who have produced something practical have been largely outside the mainstream of science. It’s not that we don’t need scientists and engineers, it’s just that they don’t seem to think about who might need, or want, the item in question.”

Weightman’s book emphasises the importance of the amateur in the creation of some of the most ubiquitous technologies that surround us today – the aeroplane, the television, the bar code, the personal computer and the mobile phone. Their very status as unknowns meant they had very little to lose, were able to experiment and test without the pressure of commitment to existing techniques and technologies. By focusing on the everyman behind the eureka moment, Weightman is redefining a historical narrative, taking an original approach to the ingenuity of invention that’s at once scientifically revealing and socially intriguing.

It’s often a process of elimination, a hobby that turns into something far more serious as the boundaries are pushed. “There’s definitely an element of chance, of stumbling across things when it comes to invention,” says Weightman. “While some of the people I explore in my book, like the Wright brothers, had an idea of who might be interested in their creation, they usually hadn’t thought too far ahead, and just didn’t know how it would go.”

This pattern emerges throughout this narrative, as time and again industry leaders declared the telephone unlikely to take off in Britain, or dismissed the television as a load of rubbish.

Often, existing technology is what halts progress and creates resistance. Eureka: How Invention Happens explores how innovators have circumvented what seemed like insurmountable obstacles in their pursuit of the limits of reality. So when it comes to the creation of what still seems unimaginable to us today, like the flying car, what’s stopping us?

“Sometimes it’s the failure of imagination, and sometimes it’s the resistance of the very industry who you’d think would produce it. Amateurs will give it a go first, before bigger industry moves in; I believe the working robot will be created by someone totally unexpected. Industries should go on perfecting their products, and leave the inventing to amateurs and outsiders.”

Eureka: How Invention Happens
is published by Yale University Press.
ISBN: 9780300192087 RRP: £20.

August 10, 2015
Book review: London Overground – Iain Sinclair turns cultural archaeologist

Questing: Iain Sinclair. Photograph: Anonymous Bosch

Iain Sinclair is no stranger to vast, impossible circuits. At the turn of the century, he conducted a series of walks along the M25 that amounted to its entire length, and drew from the experience an unprecedented document of poetic psychogeographical prose. It was a celebration of pilgrimage, a postmodernist jaunt through time and territory – to nowhere. Now, 15 years on, he’s turned his attention to the tracks of the ‘Ginger Line’ in London Overground.

The Hackney-based writer took inspiration for the project from a group of eccentric students he came across at New Cross Gate, on one of his regular suburban treks. He was headed, like Chaucer’s convoy, in the direction of Canterbury. The friends – “kids from Goldsmiths in fancy dress”, he assumes – had taken to gathering at random locations on the line to party at a moment’s notice.

In conversation with this “boho rabble”, garbed in gypsy skirts and goat masks, Sinclair finds his subject. “When they spilled out into Shoreditch,” he writes, “I realised that I had blundered once again into a version of London about which I knew nothing. And I would have to find some way to investigate. As he passed my window, the goat held up a finger to his lips. A warning I was foolish enough to ignore.”

His investigation takes the form of a day’s tramp around the railway: 35 miles and 33 stops in the company of filmmaker and close friend Andrew Kötting, whose presence is rich with a complex comic energy akin to his unique brand of documentary. Starting at dawn in Haggerston, the pair’s circumnavigation cuts through Wapping, Peckham Rye, Clapham Junction, Imperial Wharf, West Brompton and so on, before arriving back in the dead of night to Hackney.

Along the way, Sinclair interrogates the lay of the land and excavates meaning from forgotten and never-before-told narratives, inspecting the city’s detritus with wry humour and irresistible poetry. His grumbling observations of how the Overground has altered London are barbed and brilliant: “The railway smoothes history into heritage, neutralising the venom. Every Halt absorbs the last, until the necklace achieves a uniform, dull sheen. Faked pearls on a ginger string.”

Beyond the signature politics of development, regeneration and gentrification – climaxing in a fluke meeting with Boris Johnson “in full cry… barking like a seal” at Old Street Roundabout – the journey is an act of cultural archaeology. Sinclair dedicates swathes of razor-sharp prose to the likes of J.G. Ballard, W.G. Sebald and Leon Kossoff, riffing on Chelsea Harbour, manipulated histories and the railway as muse, respectively.

The most impressive of these diversions is given to Angela Carter, whom the author met on numerous occasions prior to her death in 1992. Sinclair’s moving trudge through Clapham inspires an overwhelming urge to read Wise Children and Nights at the Circus. In the same vein, his time in Hampstead impels a trip to the brief London residence of Sigmund Freud, who is described as a fabled force akin to Sherlock Holmes.

Of the house, which is now a ghostly and meticulously-preserved museum, the traveller writes: “Although it existed, and glowed a fiery red in our evening reverie, this blue-plaque address – 20 Maresfield Gardens – was as mythical in the psychogeography of London as the rooms associated with Sherlock Holmes at 22b Baker Street.”

For anyone unfamiliar with Sinclair’s work, London Overground is an ideal place at which to start. It’s shorter and somewhat lighter than previous publications, but is still crammed with nourishment. It’s another fine addition to the literature of our city.

London Overground: A Day’s Walk Around the Ginger Line is published by Hamish Hamilton
ISBN: 978-0241146958. RRP: £16.99

July 21, 2015
Food in Art – book review: a peek inside the great larder of art history

The Old Man of Artimino by Giovanna Garzoni, 1650. Courtesy of Galleria Palatina, Florence

If it wasn’t so inconvenient to bring a chunky hardback art book on an Easyjet flight, I’d suggest Gillian Riley’s Food in Art: From Prehistory to the Renaissance as a ‘top holiday read of 2015’.

A museum gift-shop buy with an academic styling, it doesn’t look or feel the part.

But what better than to read up on the origins of pesto while lazing on the Italian coasts, or peek inside the tomb of the wealthy ancient Egyptian scribe Nebamun (the real thing is on show at the British Museum), from the banks of the Nile?

Authoritative as it ought to be – Riley is a leading food writer and historian – this is a book about the mystery as much as the certainties of art’s centuries-old relationship with food.

With her guidance we discover what’s missing from our collective knowledge and the question marks over the meaning of the preparation, preservation and consumption of food in an array of artworks.

Few would be better placed than Riley to fill in the gaps using her expansive imagination.

Riley answers questions I never knew I had about the great larder of art history; such as why the men of ancient Mesopotamia drank their beer with a straw, or why the Renaissance botanist Ulisse Aldrovandi commissioned a portrait of his pet monkey clutching an artichoke.

And there are lessons aplenty to be learned, starting with the wisdom of Paleolithic cave painters; hunters for whom meat was never blindly taken for granted, but the subject of awe and intricate study in a time when “animals ruled the earth, and man was a puny creature”.

The Emperor Rudolph II, c.1590, Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Courtesy of Skoklosters Slott, Stockholm

Riley’s sixth book examines the countless layers of symbolism in the many meals of art history, as depicted in all forms from ancient wall paintings, fine art, mosaics, and frescoes to illuminated manuscripts and stained glass.

For those familiar with the author’s food columns in the Hackney Citizen, documenting intrepid culinary adventures in her Stoke Newington kitchen, expect the same hunger-inducing, poetic prose, and even more to learn here.

It’s a handy volume for those of us who need a narrow lens with which to recall forgotten history lessons, organised into snippets that can be dipped in and out of with ease.

Perhaps unwittingly, Riley’s descriptions of the micro-breweries of Mesopotamia offer much-needed perspective on contemporary foodie culture, reminding us that making your own beer is neither a laughable hipster fad nor a unique cultural advancement of our generation – it’s just something humans have done for thousands of years.

And as for the humble cabbage, its varied role as artistic muse deserves a chapter all of its own, as we discover its long lost identity as a celebrated preventer of hangovers. And, then, ridiculously, as temporary placeholders for the heads of the sick in 15th century psychological experiments – not to be tried at home.

Filtered through Riley’s irreverent, witty and ever-imaginative style, Food in Art is a guide through the sprawling past of art’s many interpretations of food, from the divine to the profound, and crucially the dark, humorous and absurd.

From the practicality of Ancient Egyptian illustrated breadmaking techniques, to the strange vanity of Roman mosaic floors designed to look covered in the remnants of a lavish banquet, mice and all, Food in Art calls for some self-reflection.

It’s a good opportunity to take a good long look at our ‘selfies with Spiralizer’, or the meaning behind Instagrammed kale salads of the 21st century. Rewriting Riley’s book in a thousand years’ time, what will the food historians make of us?

Surely, as ever, we’ll be seen as we are; very vain, a bit clever and somewhat ridiculous.

Food in Art: From Prehistory to the Renaissance is published by Reaktion Books. RRP: £30. ISBN: 9781780233628

June 15, 2015
Why life as an outsider isn’t what it seems

Outsider theorist: Robert Kelsey

Feeling cheated by an education system “too linear and too rigid” to accommodate those who didn’t conform, Robert Kelsey left school with only one O-Level.

But instead of allowing feelings of inadequacy and ignorance to paralyse him, he has gone on to become the owner and CEO of a successful PR agency and a best-selling author too.

Kelsey’s latest book The Outside Edge, sets out to help fellow ‘outsiders’ succeed despite their disadvantages.

The Hackney-based author suggests London is the outsider capital of the world, with Hackney having the city’s highest concentration.

In the book Kelsey argues that spotting an outsider is not a matter of race or gender, but a combination of up to twelve characteristics including sensitivity and cynicism.

However, unlike other social observers, Kelsey denies that being alternative is a prerequisite to success.

“Despite the myth peddled by [Malcolm] Gladwell (and others), the attributes of genuine outsiders are usually highly disabling – with most successful outsiders no more than insiders with an attitude,” he writes.

The book is a manual towards identifying one’s own outsider status and reframing disadvantage or suffering towards success.
Kelsey sees Hackney as a destination for outsiders and argues that “it has managed to stay relevant through all of the changes, from something almost anarchistic to entrepreneurial”.

In particular, he sees the transformation of Shoreditch into a hive of entrepreneurship as a logical mutation of the radicalism that characterised Hackney through the 1970s and 80s.

In his opinion, Hackney has an attitude of ‘anti-collectivism’ – a refusal to conform, and instead maintains a population of fierce individualists.

Frequent references to contemporary culture and popular philosophers make the book’s theory more accessible and engaging.

Above all, Kelsey’s mission is a human one, as he states that an original perspective on the world more often leads to suicide than to conquering the world, “a depressing conclusion that every word in this book is aimed at preventing”.

The Outside Edge is published by Capstone ISBN: 9780857085757 RRP: £9.99

June 5, 2015
Jenny Lewis: the photographer behind One Day Young

Birth-day snapper Jenny Lewis. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

“Can you stop talking to strangers?” ask six-year-old Herb and eight-year-old Ruby, as their mum Jenny Lewis chats to women at playgroups and playgrounds, reassuring them about their pregnancies. “Don’t worry about it, you’re going to be fine,” she can be heard saying. What struck me when I met Lewis was her positive and contagious energy.

Giving birth is both one of life’s marvels as well as it’s most fundamental experience. Lewis captured this by photographing 150 Hackney women at home with their one-day-young babies within the course of the past five years.

There is something deeply emotive about the 40 portraits published under the title of One Day Young. Each picture is strong individually but it takes the series to realise the similarities between them all. Only then do you notice how Lewis has systematically managed to capture the domestic surroundings of one of the most intimate moments of a woman’s life with true honesty and real intensity.

All of the photographed women seem grounded with a similar inner strength, confidence and selflessness. There is a combination of tenderness and raw intimacy in the relationship photographed. But there is also a much less tangible relationship that filters through: the one the photographer had with her subjects.

In each of the portraits, you can detect the sincerity of a photographer who cares about the women she photographed who are essentially all her “next door neighbours”, living in the same borough and who, in her own words, she finds “fascinating and inspiring”.

The captions that pace the book hint on the depth of the open-hearted discussions Jenny might have had with some of those women, evoking life and death, anxieties and hopes for the future.

One Day Young is published by Hoxton Mini Press. ISBN: 9780957699885 RRP: £12.95

Meredith and Lina, taken from One Day Young. Photograph: Jenny Lewis

Jen and Nora, taken from One Day Young. Photograph: Jenny Lewis

June 5, 2015