4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017
Copyright © Ian Sansom 2017
Cover image © Science & Society Picture Library / Getty Images
Ian Sansom asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780008146740
Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008147068
Version: 2017-11-14
To Trinity
I come not from Heaven but from Essex.
WILLIAM MORRIS, A Dream of John Ball (1888)
Contents
Chapter 1: London, Underground
Chapter 4: The Music Writers’ Mutual Publishing Co.
Chapter 5: A Topographical Cremeschnitte
Chapter 6: The Boulevards of Becontree
Chapter 8: The Dagenham Girl Pipers
Chapter 9: The Role of Pageantry
Chapter 10: The Oyster’s Lonely Subterraqueous Sigh
Chapter 12: Bluebeard’s Castle
Chapter 13: A Kind of Knocking
Chapter 14: A Mechanical Aphrodisiac
Chapter 15: What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Chapter 16: Flitration & Purtefication
Chapter 17: An Average Essex Affray
Chapter 18: A Few Discreet Enquiries
Chapter 20: The ‘Cottaging’ Existence
Chapter 23: Up and Down and Round and Round