Jimmy Wilson is an East End boy whose father tends a barrow on Brick Lane. As an eleven year old, and twelve years later after the war, he is infatuated with Pinkie, a mixed-race girl whose mother lives among "the Indians" then starting to move into the East End. This is London's East End in the 1940s – polyglot, violent, poor. The novel takes place in run-down houses, down the local, during the Blitz and at an all day wedding feast. What will happen to Jimmy? What will happen to Pinkie in these changing times?
Introduction by Rachel Lichtenstein.
Robert Poole was born in Stepney. He was in the Navy in WWII and later the Merchant Navy. He jumped ship in New Zealand, changed his name and became a radio broadcaster. Eventually the police caught up with him and he was deported back to Britain where he ran a bingo stall. London E1 was his only published book. He died in 1963, two years after the book's publication.
Rachel Lichtenstein's books on the East End include On Brick Lane and, with Iain Sinclair, Rodinsky's Room.