For Lisa O'Donnell, the past is a dangerous place. Born into a world dominated by her father's notorious reputation, even her name marks her out. But Lisa's determined to make a new life for herself and so, adopting a false identity, she takes a respectable job in the city.

The Flanagans, Tanners and Lovells all live on the top floor of a crumbling Victorian tenement in the heart of London's East End. It is 1936 and Britain is in the grip of the Depression. Soon the actions of Martin Lovell have repercussions for all the families.

In the 1940s, nearly a quarter of a million East Londoners decamped annually for the hopfields of Kent. This book records the memories of some of them. It not only pays tribute to the creative genius of the working class of London's East End, but examines the role of memory and oral history in our understanding of the past.

Gilda O'Neill's The East End traces the East End of London - cockneys, criminals, street markets, pub singalongs, dog racing, jellied eels. London's East End it is a place at once appealing and unruly, comforting and incomprehensible. Gilda O'Neill, an East Ender herself shows there is more to this fascinating area than a collection of cliched images. Using oral history and more traditional sources she builds up a powerful image of this community - bringing to us, with wit and honesty, the real story of London's East End. 'Every page is a delight. Every chapter made vivid by a writer who has...

A companion volume to O'Neill's previous work, 'My East End', this book focuses exclusively on the oral testimony of East Londoners as they tell their own funny, sad, hopeful and sometimes shocking stories of what it was like to live in our street.