On Brick Lane
On Brick Lane is an unforgettable journey through the vanished past, the disappearing present and the emerging future of one of Britain’s most mythologized and misunderstood streets. Home to successive waves of immigrants, from eighteenth-century Huguenot weavers to the Jewish refugees of the 1880s to the late twentieth-century Bangladeshi community, Brick Lane is at once a multicultural melting pot and sacred site, bounded by Hawksmoor churches, abandoned synagogues and newly developed mosques, with the Old Truman Brewery at its heart.
Bringing to life the memories and realities of Brick Lane’s many communities, Rachel Lichtenstein harnesses the voices of the famous, the infamous and the obscure. Tales of market traders, anarchist priests, Bengali teenagers, gangsters and celebrities interweave with her own account of over a decade of living, working and researching in the area as an artist, archivist and writer.
Merging memoir, reportage, poetry, photography and local history, On Brick Lane is endlessly alive and endlessly fascinating — just like the neighbourhood it so movingly celebrates.
‘…a comprehensive, deeply researched portrait of the street… affectionate, absorbing’
New Statesman
‘A magnificent chronicle of one of the capital’s most renowned streets… extensive research comes alive on the pages… a vibrant history’
Daily Express
