Bethnal Green

Not an area of London I know very well despite it only being a mile or so away.  There is a month long walking festival at the moment called "Literary Footprints 2025" where Blue Badge Guides lead small groups around interesting areas of London focusing on how they were represented in mainly fiction books.  Bethnal Green has a surprisingly rich literary history which illustrates its poor and, at times, violent past.  We had excerpts from stories about the Kray twins (that's the motto of their boxing club bottom left), Monica Ali's inside take on the Bangladeshi community in "Brick Lane", and how George Orwell's "1984" was inspired by the time he (deliberately) got himself arrested in Bethnal Green in order to experience prison.