Dear Readers, on Thursday night I was delighted to be able to attend the launch party for this extraordinary book and the accompanying exhibition at the Museum of the Home (you might remember it as the Geffrye Museum). It was my first big social outing since I broke my leg, and so I was a little nervous about all those people, but it was a truly splendid occasion, a chance to meet people ‘in real life’ who were previously only known to me via the blog. One was Mark Hamsher, whose book ‘The Balkans by Bicycle’ (about his father’s cycle journey from Leipzig to Istanbul) cheered me up no end when I could only travel in my head rather than in real life, He has a second book out now, so watch this space for a review! And it was wonderful to meet The Gentle Author again, without whom the book would never have been published. If you haven’t discovered his daily blog Spitalfields Life yet, high tail it over there now.

But to return to the book – it feels very special to me for a number of reasons. I remember many of the places that it documents – in particular I remember the animal market at Club Row. My Dad took me there when I was about eight, thinking that I would love to see all the puppies and kittens and birds in cages, but instead I was terribly distressed (the market was notorious as a place where sick, illegally imported and stolen animals were sold) and he had to take me home. Poor Dad! And on the way home I was riding on the front seat (no seatbelts in those days) when Dad slammed on the brakes because he’d seen the tiniest sliver of ‘something’ between two cars. It turned out to be a child of about four who was just about to step out. Fair enough, I catapulted out of the seat and nearly brained myself, but at least no one was killed.

Looking at the photos of Bangladeshi children, living in what would now probably be described as slums in Whitechapel, reminds me that kids will be kids wherever they come from – just as my Dad and his friends used to play in abandoned cars back in the 1940s, so these children are doing exactly the same. And it reminds me of the horrible and overt racism of the 70s and 80s, and how disturbing it was to see it surface again this year.

And finally, the photos of homeless people in St Botolph’s crypt shelter and in the early days of Crisis at Christmas remind me so much of my time working in the night shelter in Dundee, I love that Hoffman has interviewed some of the people that he photographed so that you can get an idea of their lives. And perhaps this is what i love so much about Hoffman’s photos – he brings out the innate character of the people he photographs, their personality and their dignity. He never turns them into caricatures. There is an empathy with the underdog that resonates very strongly through all of Hoffman’s work. But most of all, it feels as if the folk that he’s featured, varied as they are, are my people. I too am an East End girl, my parents were from Bow and Limehouse, and when I look at the ladies in the Pensioner’s club that Hoffman photographs I see the neighbours and friends and family that I grew up with. Just as the old-fashioned Cockney accent is becoming a rarity, so are these people. I am so glad that this book has captured these moments in the life of the East End, even as it was starting to change.

You can see some more of David Hoffman’s photographs here.