A nostalgic look back at the docks of London the 1960s.

“This meticulously researched account underlines the importance of the capital’s docklands . . . from Roman landing to modern financial centre.” —Discover Britain The River Thames has been integral to the prosperity of London since Roman times. Explorers sailed away on voyages of discovery to distant lands. Colonies were established and a great empire grew. Funding their ships and cargoes helped make the City of London into the world’s leading financial center. In the nineteenth century a vast network of docks was created for ever-larger ships, behind high, prison-like walls that kept them secret from all those who did not toil within. Sail made way for steam as goods were dispatched to every corner of the world. In the nineteenth century London was the world’s greatest port city. In the Second World War the Port of London became Hitler’s prime target. It paid a heavy price but soon recovered. Yet by the end of the 20th century the docks had been transformed into Docklands, a new financial center. The History of the Port of London: A Vast Emporium of Nations is the fascinating story of the rise and fall and revival of the commercial river. The only book to tell the whole story and bring it right up to date, it charts the foundation, growth and evolution of the port and explains why for centuries it has been so important to Britain’s prosperity. This book will appeal to those interested in London’s history, maritime and industrial heritage, the Docklands and East End of London, and the River Thames.

______________________________ The huge word-of-mouth bestseller – completely updated for 2019 THE LONDON THAT TOURISTS DON’T SEE Look beyond Big Ben and past the skyscrapers of the Square Mile, and you will find another London. This is the land of long-forgotten tube stations, burnt-out mansions and gently decaying factories. Welcome to DERELICT LONDON: a realm whose secrets are all around us, visible to anyone who cares to look . . . Paul Talling – our best-loved investigator of London’s underbelly – has spent over fifteen years uncovering the stories of this hidden world. Now, he brings together 100 of his favourite abandoned places from across the capital: many of them more magnificent, more beautiful and more evocative than you can imagine. Covering everything from the overgrown stands of Leyton Stadium to the windswept alleys of the Aylesbury Estate, DERELICT LONDON reveals a side of the city you never knew existed. It will change the way you see London. ______________________________ PRAISE FOR THE DERELICT LONDON PROJECT ‘Fascinating images showing some of London’s eeriest derelict sites show another side to the busy, built-up capital.’ Daily Mail ‘Talling has managed to show another side to the capital, one of abandoned buildings that somehow retain a sense of beauty.’ Metro ‘Excellent . . . As much as it is an inadvertent vision of how London might look after a catastrophe, DERELICT LONDON is valuable as a document of the one going on right in front of us.’ New Statesman ‘From the iconic empty shell of Battersea Power Station to the buried ‘ghost’ stations of the London Underground, the city is peppered with decaying buildings. Paul Talling knows these places better than anyone in the capital.’ Daily Express ‘[London has an] unusual (and deplorable) number of abandoned buildings. Paul Talling’s surprise bestseller, DERELICT LONDON, is their shabby Pevsner.’ Daily Telegraph ______________________________

The early years after WWII saw older men who had sustained the Docks through the War years and had learnt their skills in the early decades of the Twentieth Century, still working with a discipline little changed since Victorian times. AE Smith worked in the Royal Docks from 1947 until their demise three decades later and was an eye-witness to the events and conditions described here. Wide ranging yet detailed, this account describes the people, cargoes, equipment and craft involved in the manhandling of hundreds of tons of disparate items out of ships' holds and into barges or onto the backs of lorries. Focusing on Royal Mail Lines and their general cargo stevedores, Furness Withy, this record is a last look at a working environment long since extinct as recalled first hand by someone who knew the formidable commitment involved in achieving their work rates.

This fascinating selection of photographs traces some of the many ways in which the Port of London has changed and developed over the last century.

With a workforce of over 100,000 men, women and children, and reaching out to all four corners of the earth, London's Docklands, formerly the Port of London, at one time formed the largest and most comprehensive system of docks the word has ever known. The Museum of Dockland, an independent branch of the Museum of Lodnon, is devoted to keeing its memory alive and has now produced this lavishly illustrated volume. DOCKLAND LIFE examines every aspect of the port: the working river and its various docks; where the ship repairs took place; the warehousing and construction; the quaysides and the dock trades. The text is comprehensive and definitive, but above all it is the stunning sequence of images, drawn from a library of over 25,000 photographs, which conveys the human drama of life and work in the port of the Empire. This new edition examines the redevelopment of the Docklands which includes the construction of the Millenium Dome.

Paul Newland's illuminating study explores the ways in which London's East End has been constituted in a wide variety of texts - films, novels, poetry, television shows, newspapers and journals. Newland argues that an idea or image of the East End, which developed during the late nineteenth century, continues to function in the twenty-first century as an imaginative space in which continuing anxieties continue to be worked through concerning material progress and modernity, rationality and irrationality, ethnicity and 'Otherness', class and its related systems of behaviour.The Cultural Construction of London's East End offers detailed examinations of the ways in which the East End has been constructed in a range of texts including BBC Television's EastEnders, Monica Ali's Brick Lane, Walter Besant's All Sorts and Conditions of Men, Thomas Burke's Limehouse Nights, Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor, films such as Piccadilly, Sparrows Can't Sing, The Long Good Friday, From Hell, The Elephant Man, and Spider, and in the work of Iain Sinclair.