Clouds of Glory

Hoxton today is one of the most fashionable parts of inner London, yet within living memory it was the capital's most notorious slum area. 'Hoxton is the leading criminal quarter of London, and indeed of all England', wrote Charles Booth in a famous report at the beginning of the twentieth century. It remained a byword for its combination of poverty and crime until the Second World War- London's busiest market for stolen goods, the centre of the pickpocket trade, home to a razor gang that terrorised racecourses all over southern England. Its main thoroughfare, Hoxton Street, was one of the East End's best- known street markets, but was known also as the roughest street in Britain. This Hoxton was swept away by the Blitz and the slum-clearance programmes. But among the people born there in its heyday is Bryan Magee, author, television broadcaster and Member of Parliament. For him it was home, for his first nine years, until he became an evacuee on the outbreak of war. In this moving and beautifully written book he recalls the vanished world of his childhood and brings it to life again in all its drama and surprise.