The lost bits of London .... many never knew .... a book and a film

 Now, The London Nobody Knows is one of those books which takes me back to my youth.

It was published in 1962, and describes those parts of London which many tourists, as well as Londoners never knew, and which has now pretty much vanished.

It was written by Geoffrey Fletcher who was an artist, writer, and an architectural commentator.

in the book he roams across that lost city, taking in an art nouveau pub, a Victorian music hall, a Hawksmoor church and even a public toilet in Holborn in which the attendant kept goldfish in the cisterns. 

And because I was an inquisitive kid, armed with a Red Rover, and little concept of what might happen to me, this was the city I discovered for myself. 

Of course aged just 13, I was too young to read or appreciate the book, but reading it now I can see the places I washed up in during adventures away from home.

It will also be one of the books, mother will have read because it would have appealed to her quirky sense of curiosity.

The bonus is that it was turned into a film in 1967 and watching it alongside the book is to be transported into that London which was about to leave the 1950s and its 19th century past for the shiny, modern and in retrospect not so wonderful 60s.

But the film is not just a trip across the grimy London of the early 1960s but makes some telling observations about the poverty which oozed out of the bricks as well as the plight of those left behind and excluded from the march of progress.

Location; London

Pictures, cover of the 2020 edition of The London Nobody Knows, History Press, £9.99, and cover of, The London Nobody Knows, the DVD, £4.99