I am going to write every single day and tell you about my life here in Spitalfields at the heart of London... Drawing comparisons with Pepys, Mayhew and Dickens, the gentle author of Spitalfields Life has gained an extraordinary following in recent years, by writing hundreds of lively pen portraits of the infinite variety of people who live and work in the East End of London.

Over the last twenty-five years there has been an unprecedented expansion of opportunity for Traveller and Gypsy children to attend school. Educational outreach services have developed in parallel with an increased willingness on the part of parents to put their children into school. Cathy Kiddle has studied the effects of this expansion on the lives of the children. Having worked with Travellers and schools for over twenty years, she is well placed to consider the interactions between children, parents and schools. She examines particularly the parent/teacher relationship and the effect this has on the education of the children. The book looks at education in the context of several distinct travelling groups including Circus, Fairground and New Travellers. While recognising the importance of literacy for their children, many Gypsy Travellers fear that schooling will contribute to the disintegration of their culture, strongly based as it is on family education and supportive kinship networks. Teachers, on the other hand, may have stereotyped ideas of who Gypsies are, and may have their own expectations and demands of children in school. Cathy Kiddle examines the ways in which minority groups are forced to adapt to the changing society around them. She argues that education is important for Traveller children in that it enables them to develop into independent learners and, through this, independent people, able to speak for themselves, make considered choices and act as agents in their own lives. Essentially, her study is optimistic: if parents and teachers are prepared to understand and co-operate with each other, education will help to destroy the marginalisation of Traveller cultures, not the cultures themselves. The children will be able to give their communities a voice for themselves.

Between freedom and ostracism: The world of the Irish Traveller Children

Rachel Friedman has always been the consummate good girl who does well in school and plays it safe, so the college grad surprises no one more than herself when, on a whim (and in an effort to escape impending life decisions), she buys a ticket to Ireland, a place she has never visited. There she forms an unlikely bond with a free-spirited Australian girl, a born adventurer who spurs Rachel on to a yearlong odyssey that takes her to three continents, fills her life with newfound friends, and gives birth to a previously unrealized passion for adventure. As her journey takes her to Australia and South America, Rachel discovers and embraces her love of travel and unlocks more truths about herself than she ever realized she was seeking. Along the way, the erstwhile good girl finally learns to do something she’s never done before: simply live for the moment.

One winter, Dervla Murphy and her six-year-old daughter explored 'Little Tibet' high up in the Karakoram Mountains in the frozen heart of the Western Himalayas. Dervla records their adventures, from crumbling tracks over bottomless chasms, to assaults by lascivious Kashmiris.

While working as projectionish in a porn cinema in the 1980s, Bob Mazzer began photographing on the tube during his daily commute, creating irresistibly joyous pictures alive with humour and humanity. His pictures are published here for the first time.