{"product_id":"9780750953573","title":"Poplar Memories: Life in the East End","description":"\u003cp\u003ePoplar Memories is a vivid impression of Cockney London before and during the Second World War, set in a teeming, rundown docklands neighbourhood famous for being, well, one end of the Blackwall Tunnel. John Hector’s spellbinding account of his early life in the 1920s and ’30s conjures up a vanished era when simplicity and happiness went hand-in-hand. Halcyon days of ‘talking pictures’ and pavement buskers, Saturday night knees-ups round the piano, eel and pie stalls, chimneysweeps, ‘boxers’, Clarnico’s toffees and Lloyd Loom furniture, and a little shop called Woolworth’s selling ‘nothing over sixpence’ – unless it’s a shilling. All this was to disappear forever in the horrors of the Blitz. The author was disabled by infantile paralysis – yet he became School Captain and embarked on a successful career at 14, surviving extreme poverty, panel doctors, dockers’ riots and Hitler’s Luftwaffe with an unshakeable belief in the ordinary people of Poplar. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘Much has been written about the East End but if I was writing about Poplar in the early 1920s I would need John Hector’s books.’ Dorothy (Dolly) Scannell author of \u003cem\u003eMother Knew Best\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘John Hector is a fine writer. His vast knowledge of the years before the last war is very nostalgic and beautifully written. Being of the same age and hailing from the same area, I can vouch for his accuracy.’ Reg Varney, comedian, actor and author.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The History Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47076961583344,"sku":"9780750953573","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780750953573_p0.jpg?v=1763633966","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780750953573","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}