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To those of us who weren’t born during the Second World War, and that will be most of you reading this, Britain’s conflict can be a confusion of dates, battles and faces. It may be a story pieced together from British telly’s never-ending fascination with the War – the Dambusters, 633 Squadron, Dad’s Army, battleships captained by Noel Coward, Trevor Howard and Jack Hawkins. There may be rousing speeches from Churchill, horrific pictures from the death camps,  and images of East End kids venturing uncertainly into a countryside with different rules and strange accents.

And there will of course be images of unbelievable destruction. Of an East End aflame after nights of bombing, of St Paul’s standing defiant amid the smoke and rubble, of George VI and Queen Elizabeth visiting after Buckingham Palace was hit, and finally being ‘able to look the East End in the face’, as the Queen put it.

Yet amid all the horror there is certainty for us. We know the war ended, that Hitler was defeated and that London was rebuilt (eventually). For East Enders in September 1940, there was no such certainty. They had endured the frustration of the ‘Phoney War’. That was the period between Britain declaring war on Germany in September 1939 and the Battle of France in May 1940, when for eight months the combatants rattled their sabres but did little actual fighting. Everyone expected air raids but they didn’t come – East End kids had been evacuated by the thousands at the start of the war in ‘Operation Pied Piper’ but had gradually trickled back when the bombs didn’t fall.

And when hostilities did ensue things didn’t go well. Londoners had seen the Battle of France end in disaster in June of 1940, with France capitulating and the British Expeditionary Force cut off at Dunkirk. The magnificent efforts of the 700 or more ‘little ships’ that sailed from Ramsgate to rescue 338,000 British and French troops have entered folklore and we still talk about ‘Dunkirk spirit’ today. But it couldn’t disguise the fact that the Allies’ first major sortie of the war had ended in chaos and defeat.

Churchill knew that Britain was teetering on the edge and that an emboldened Hitler would press his advantage. ‘The Battle of France is over – I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin,’ he told the House of Commons that summer. And during July and August it did: the RAF and Luftwaffe fought dogfights first over the Channel then over the countryside of southern England, as the Germans sought to destroy RAF bases – and clear the way for a seaborne invasion of Britain. But the RAF wasn’t wiped out; ‘The Few’ faced down a Luftwaffe which was not only fighting over enemy territory (bad news if you bailed out) but which was pretty few in number itself. Which way, Londoners wondered, would they war turn next?

The answer came on 7 September 1940 and it was devastating. Towards the end of the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe had bombed strategic and industrial targets – the Forth Rail Bridge in Scotland, Liverpool docks and Birmingham’s factories. Then, during a raid on the Shell Haven oil refinery in Essex on 24 August, bombers had strayed over north and east London, dropping death on Islington, Finchley and Bethnal Green. Whether that had been considered or simply careless of life, civilians had been hurt and the British responded by bombing Berlin the next night.

Luftwaffe chief Goering and his boss Hitler were enraged. The Fuhrer ordered ‘day and night’ bombing of British cities. So, late in the afternoon of 7 September, East Enders heard first the drone of enemy bombers then saw the bombs themselves begin to fall.

A Ministry of Health report in 1939 reckoned that the first six months of bombing would kill 600,000 and injure 1.2 million; East Enders had already evacuated once and would do so again. But no matter how long the wait and how doomy the forecasts, the true horror would always be a surprise. East Ender Joan Shaw remembers hearing the sirens on 7 September. ‘My sister looked out of the window after the sirens had gone, and said “Oh Dad! Look up there, there’s aeroplanes and all little things comin’ from them.”

It was a massive attack, with 364 German bombers, 515 enemy fighters, and another 133 bombers launching a second wave that night. The bombs were targeting the docks of course, but Hitler was also trying to destroy civilian confidence and the will to fight. By the end of the attack, 436 Londoners were dead and 1666 injured.

George Turnbull was a member of Limehouse’s Home Guard troop. He remembers: ‘This first day of bombing was most dreadful… Explosions were everywhere, there just was not a break, bang after bang after bang… You would hear a whistle as a stick of bombs came down, then a loud explosion as they hit factories and houses… the ground shook. Then as soon as that explosion happened, another whistle and another explosion. God, this seemed to go on for hours.’

If East Enders hadn’t known what to expect, they now didn’t know when it would end. And for two months it was relentless, with only one raid-free night. Every other night, until mid-November, 100 or more bombers pounded London, with the East End the focus of attacks. By 11 November, 13,000 tons of high explosive and more than a million incendiary bombs had dropped on Britain.By the end of the Blitz, 40 per cent of the houses in Stepney would be hit and 3.5m London homes damaged. An estimated 30,000 Londoners would have been killed and 50,000 injured.

There were spectacular scenes, such as the bombing of a sugar warehouse over the river in Surrey Quays. One observer remembers ‘the scene was like a lake in hell. Burning barges were drifting everywhere…We could hear the hiss and roar of the conflagration, a formidable noise, but we could not see it, so dense was the smoke. Nor could we see the eastern [Isle of Dogs] shore’. But mainly, there was the miserable expectation that tonight would bring another attack, and another, with no end in sight.

The Blitz would end on 16 May, 1941, with most of the Luftwaffe heading east for the invasion of Russia. For East Enders it was just a respite, with another four years of war and the unexpected horrors of the V1s and V2s to come. Crucially for the Allies and London though, something had changed. Hitler and Goering had attempted to destroy first the RAF then civilian morale and in both they had failed. The Axis powers had thrown their worst at the East End, and the East End had survived.

Then came solicitor Acton Smee Ayrton, a radical Liberal who campaigned for working class representation in Parliament, and served in Gladstone’s Cabinet. And there were the first signs of the mercantile middle classes exerting political power. Joseph d’Aguilar Samuda was a Jewish businessman from the Isle of Dogs. He had begun in his father’s counting house, then with his brother Jacob became one of the most successful shipbuilders on the Thames. The Samudas’ yard, in Cubitt Town, now lies beneath the Samuda Estate. Samuda was succeeded in turn, in 1880, by historian James Bryce, who would go on to serve as Britain’s ambassador to the US, and be a pivotal figure in the formation of the League of Nations.

Lancelot Andrewes was a Stepney schoolboy, Barking born, who rose to have an extraordinary influence in and upon the Church of England. His preaching style has been variously described as ‘dull’, ‘portentous’ and ‘pedantic’. Yet one of the greatest poets in the English language claimed he was moved to Christianity by reading of Lancelot Andrewes’ sermons. A titan of science fiction paid homage to him as ‘the greatest writer in the English language’. And in a curious footnote, Guy Fawkes and his fellow plotters might long ago have passed into history had it not been for the efforts of this industrious prelate. Andrewes’ legacy rests largely on his role as one of the translators of the Bible into the ‘Authorised’ King James version, and his translation of a particular psalm.

Andrewes was born in Barking in 1555. His father Thomas was the Master of Trinity House, set up just 30 or so years before by Henry VIII and the authority in charge of England’s lighthouses to this day. The Thames and the London docks were Thomas’s home territory and he sent his sons to Cooper’s School, now out in Upminster, latterly in Bow, but in those days in the hamlet of Ratcliff (long since swallowed up by Stepney). A precociously talented scholar, Lancelot went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge at 16, became a fellow of the college at 21, and took holy orders at just 25.

Andrewes then undertook the typically peripatetic existence of the learned cleric of the day. He was a chaplain to the Earl of Huntingdon; he returned to London to serve as the vicar of St Giles, Cripplegate, then became the prebendary of St Pancras in St Pauls. He became Master of Pembroke College and a chaplain to Archbishop John Whitgift. By 1590 he was a chaplain to Queen Elizabeth, but his outspoken sermons saw his career stalling. Andrewes was typical of the new Anglicans, in a Church torn between the old Catholicism and the new ascetism of Calvin. He was a fierce defender of the power of the Bishops, and turned down Elizabeth’s offer of the bishoprics of Salisbury and Ely, considering that they made him beholden to the Crown rather than his conscience.

The death of Elizabeth and the accession of James I saw an immediate turn in his fortunes. James liked his stodgy preaching style, and Andrewes’ habit of speaking favourably from the pulpit on the Divine Right of Kings did him no harm with the monarch either. He was first on the list of the committee to translate James’s new version of the Bible, and in 1605 made his start on translating Genesis.

That same year came the Gunpowder Plot. English Catholics had been persecuted under Elizabeth but hoped for greater freedoms under James. Two years into the new king’s reign, frustrations found their outlet in a plot to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament. Guy Fawkes and his cohort were thwarted of course, captured and killed to a man. The events, dramatic as they were, might have faded in the popular memory, but Andrewes decided that the events should be commemorated as a warning to Catholics and Anglicans alike. On the following November 5th, Andrewes preached a sermon outlining his plans – the ringing of church bells each year and the solemn rereading of his own sermon. Four centuries later we’re still following Andrewes lead, albeit with fireworks rather than bells.

Many of Andrewes’ sermons are unlistenably wordy to modern ears but his High Church approach to Anglicanism swayed TS Eliot, who described him as “the first great preacher of the English Catholic Church.” (to the Anglo-Catholic convert Eliot, the C of E would always be a ‘Catholic’ Church).

Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse Five and numerous other comic, satirical and science fiction works was an unlikely fan. The American writer was a humanist and fiercely critical of religion describing it variously as ‘obvious bunkum’, ‘fantasy’ and ‘an escape for lonely people’. He did, however, consider that nobody had written in English better than a 17th century priest from Stepney. As evidence, he cited Andrewes’ words to the 23rd Psalm ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ – words familiar to anybody who has picked up a Bible or spent time in a church.

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The 23rd Psalm

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Growing your own, eating seasonal fruit and veg, cutting back on food miles and waste, composting and recycling – all good advice. But it’s not from the Department of Health 2010, rather the Ministry of Food 1940.

The enemy may have changed. Today it’s global warming and threats to food security. 70 years ago it was the German navy targeting British ships bringing in precious supplies of food. But the demand to grow our own seems to call on a peculiarly English passion for getting out and getting our hands dirty.

Earlier this year Hilary Benn, the then environment secretary argued passionately that Britain must grow more of its own food, saying: “Food security is as important to this country’s future wellbeing, and the world’s, as energy security. We need to produce more food. We need to do it sustainably. And we need to make sure what we eat safeguards our health.” If Benn’s successor, Caroline Spelman, manages to get Britons doing anywhere near as well as their grandparents back in the forties, she’ll be working a miracle.

Until now there’s never been a full account of the extraordinary effort East Enders put in to keep Britain fed during the Second World War. That’s set to change, as Isle of Dogs author Daniel Smith has been commissioned to write the history of Dig For Victory, from its genesis at the heart of government, through the stories of local people involved. The book is to be published in Spring 2011 and Daniel is keen to hear from anyone who has a story to tell about those days – whether you turned over your back lawn to onions, or helped dig up Victoria Park to plant cabbages.*

The Government wasted little time after the outbreak of war in mobilising Britain’s home front. In their way our gardeners were just as formidable as our servicemen and women. The initial campaign ‘Grow More Food’ was launched in September 1939, and was soon renamed the snappier ‘Dig for Victory’.

The British public was urged to grow vital crops in their back gardens or in newly-available allotments in a bid to keep bellies full and free up the merchant navy for other vital work. It became one of the most successful and popular campaigns ever undertaken by a British government and, by the end of the war, small gardeners and allotment-holders were responsible for 10% of the nation’s total agricultural output.

Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, expressed just how important the campaign was to the nation’s well-being, saying: “This war depends just as much upon what we can do to produce more food at home as it does upon the more conspicuous explits of our fighting men on the seas or in the air or on the land.”

Though “Dig for Victory” was the creation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, it was Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food, who became its public face. A popular, avuncular figure, he even inspired a dish, Woolton Pie, which was designed to make best use of the vegetables available to all those fighters of the “Kitchen Front” (it was horrible apparently). Gardeners and cooks received a steady stream of advice not only from official government posters and publications, but also via films ashown at the cinema, articles in magazines and newspapers, radio programmes and popular songs.

By 1945, there were some million-and-a-half more allotment holders than at the War’s start and the national diet was healthier than it had ever been. Crops were grown on every spare piece of land, from wastegrounds and railway sidings to sports grounds and London’s royal parks. Bethnal Green was often cited as an example to the rest of the country for the way in which it absorbed the shocking destruction wrought by German bombers and fought back by converting bombed sites into makeshift vegetable patches. Bernard McCarthy, a local schoolboy at the time, remembers the transformation. “First the parks lost their railings, then the grass was dug up for allotments. And you heard lots of chickens in people’s backyards.” Lots of local children had never been to the countryside, though many would soon be evacuated there. Now the countryside came to them.

Between March 1942 and November 1946, more than 200 Ministry of Food short ‘Food Flash’ films were shown in British cinemas, each one with an estimated audience of 20 million. The Ministry of Agriculture was particularly concerned by what appears to be a black market trade in dodgy tomato plants: “Some amateurs have been taken in every year by unscrupulous people who sell them tomato plants far too early for planting outside.” This may seem small-fry compared with the threat of enemy invasion, but planting your tomatoes before the end of May was one of the biggest mistakes a gardening novice can make, as plants left out in the cold will turn a “dark, unhealthy colour”. Advice just as sound today as it was then. For Bernard McCarthy, the early lessons in self sufficiency have lasted a lifetime – he’s a keen gardener to this day. As for the rest of us, we might do well to learn from our forebears, and start digging for victory once again.

* You can check out those public information films at the Imperial War Museum’s dedicated website, which accompanies its Ministry of Food exhibition. The Exhibition, a must see for Londoners interested in the city’s past, is now on and running until 3 January 2011. Were you there or maybe you have a parent’s tale to pass on? You might even have old diaries or photos you’d be willing to share? If so, contact Daniel by email on dfv@hotmail.co.uk. Or if computers aren’t your thing, you can send your memories to us at East End Life.

The Jewish East End of London has produced more than its share of comic stars. From Henny Youngman to Alfie Bass, Marty Feldman and Bernard Bresslaw and comic writer David Kossoff … the list goes on.

But one of the unlikeliest successes – a wisecracking 4ft11in of cockney chutzpah – was Davy Kaye. So tiny was he when born at home in the Mile End Road in April 1916 that his parents, Koppel and Dora Kodeish, were told by the doctors that he wouldn’t survive. But survive he did, and after schooldays largely spent entertaining his pals, appearing in revues and shows, he made his professional debut at the Mile End Empire in 1935.

Like so many performers in music hall and variety, Kaye had to be a jack of all trades. Primarily a stand-up comic, famous both on stage and off for his sometimes cutting wisecracks, he also worked up a superb spoof of a one-man band. He would play ‘McNamara’s Band’ with hooters, cymbals and drums, discarding harmony and rhythm as the act tumbled into chaos to the delight of the audience.

When war broke out he patriotically trotted up to do his bit, only to be told by the recruiting officer ‘When we declare war on the pygmies, we’ll give you a call’. Davy did his bit anyway. Rather than donning uniform and joining ENSA alongside Kenneth Williams, Joyce Grenfell, Spike Milligan and the rest, he toured army bases and munition factories with a travelling revue. And like the ENSA veterans, he emerged at the end of the war with thousands of performances to his name and a well-honed stagecraft. It would serve him well over the next 60 years of a career in which he barely stopped working.

By now, he was also appearing on BBC Radio’s Variety Bandbox, which launched in 1941. Radio comedy was huge in those days, with millions listening to the likes of Arthur English, Max Wall, Derek Roy, Frankie Howerd and Kay himself. They became massive stars, even if the financial rewards were slim, and many of the listeners had no idea what their idols looked like.

Back on Civvy Street, the canny and industrious Kaye combined his radio work with touring in revue – a mix of stand-up, sketches, music and dance, it had become the dominant format in British theatre. He signed up with top London agent Joe Collins (father of Joan and Jackie, and later to handle Shirley Bassey, the Beatles and Tom Jones) in a long-lasting partnership.

Collins quickly slotted Davy in as the principal comic in a revue shortly to open in London – Teddy Hinge’s Fanny Get Your Gun. It was a title which was surely an invitation to sue, and sure enough, the man presenting the rather better remembered Annie Get Your Gun at a rival London theatre did just that – though remarkably he lost. Shamelessly trading on the resultant publicity, Kaye sat up all night and overprinted the posters with ‘The Show They Tried to Ban!” – which while technically correct rather oversuggested the salacious content of the show.

Kaye was tireless. From 1954 to 1968 he was resident late night comic at London’s Embassy Club. At one point he was running to the gig after finishing his stint on stage as Benny Southstreet in the original production of Guys and Dolls at the London Coliseum. He took on other stage work too. There was Belle, East Ender Wolf Mankowitz’s unlikely idea for a musical about Dr Crippen. It swiftly closed. More successfully, he played in Androcles and the Lion, for Bernard Miles at the Mermaid Theatre.

He had now also become a recognisable face in British movies, fully playing on the comic potential of a bolshie, wisecracking cockney who only reached up to his co-players elbows. Cameos followed in The Millionairess, The Wrong Arm of the Law, Crooks in Cloisters, Carry on Cowboy (as the world’s shortest undertaker), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and many more. He often appeared alongside Peter Sellers – the two are just recognisable beneath their make-up as March Hare (Sellers) and Mouse (Kaye) in the 1972 film of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He increasingly landed parts on TV too, usually playing very much to Jewish type – Sam Bloomfield and ‘Sid the Yid’ were just two of his roles in sixties telly. Panto took care of any spare days from November to January each year, and Davy was an inexhaustible toiler for charities.

East End funnyman Bud Flanagan’s leukemia charity was a major beneficiary, as was the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme and many more. Over the years Kaye raised more than £1m, and for 40 years was a driving force in showbiz charity the Grand Order of Water Rats. But even the most tireless performer must take a final curtain call eventually. At the end of the 1980s he would sign out with a suitably absurd cameo as King Boris of Dalmatia in the BBC sitcom You Rang M’Lord? And there would be a final, nostalgic TV appearance as a guest on Barrymore. The anecdotes were all there, rather embellished perhaps – and he brought out the One Man Band for one last, chaotic performance. Davy Kaye was made MBE in 1995 for his services to charity. He died three years later, at the age of 81.

It was a baptism such as happened in City and East End churches thousands of times each year, if rather grander than most, as the Lord Mayor of London was in attendance. The year was 1616 and the venue St Dionis Church, the only extraordinary thing was that the child was Bengali and his given name of ‘Peter’ had been personally selected by King James I as his ‘Christian’ name.

The changing ethnic mix of Lodon and the East End is often presented as a simple, linear process. Huguenots arrive in the late middle ages, followed by the Irish and then the Jews in the 19th century. Enter the late 20th century and the Bengalis and Somalis come. History, thankfully, isn’t that tidy, though the major arrivals often accompany seismic historical change. So, William I’s invasion of England brought Jews to settle in London, and the East India Company’s economic annexing of India from the early 1600s brought Bengalis to London. A new book, Bengalis in London’s East End*, weaves the disparate strands of Bengali life in London back together, and the pattern that emerges is more complex still.

Bengalis seem to have been in the East End even before the East India Company got going. There is even evidence that Bengalis were on the early Company ships that headed out to India to establish stations and factories. Many of them were probably returning to a subcontinent they had never seen, the children of Bengalis who had settled in Portugal following Portugal’s own, earlier, expeditions to India. In 1607, the first East India Ships out of Wapping were recruiting crew and up stepped four ‘Indians’ – Marcus, John Mendis, John Rodrigoe and John Taro. An English first name (frequently John) followed by a Hispanic surname was common for these ‘Portuguese Lascars’.

As the decades wore on, more and more Bengalis settled in the East End. Some, of course, were slaves, many of them ‘earning’ their freedom, many of them escaping. Owners would post notices offering rewards for the return of their ‘property’, rather as people today would post a bill for a missing cat. Many more were Bengali seamen settled in London as free men, perhaps sending for their families or more likely setting up home with local women. Conditions were frequently appalling and the East India Company in 1782 records lascars arriving at its Leadenhall Street offices ‘reduced to great distress and applying to us for relief’. Charities sprung up, and as early as 1786 there was a ‘Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor’.

Increasingly the men were housed in barracks or hostels – although the numbers grew there didn’t seem to be Banglatowns to match the Chinatowns of Limehouse and the other port cities. The East End does seem to have been more welcoming than many ports though. Seaman Sona Miah describes coming to London in 1937, having jumped shipped at Glasgow, because ‘London very good … people were respect coloured people’.

The historical links between London and Sylhet are beautifully outlined in words and pictures – you’ll discover as much about the East India Company as you’ll ever need to know – and the writers entertainingly depart from the historical timeline into social history. A trip down Brick Lane today confirms the incredible vibrancy and colour of Bengali dying and textiles, but the authors confirm it goes back centuries. Daniel Defoe was one of many grey-clad Englishmen who protested at the shocking colours and fabrics that arrived from India including the ‘diaphonous muslins of Bengal’ which ‘cost little pay and are tawdery gay’.

Meanwhile, the massive offices constructed in the East End by tea merchants such as Lipton’s (whose warehouse dominated the corner of Bethanl Green Road and Shoreditch High Street before it was bombed in World War II), Brooke Bond (on Whitechapel High Street), Kearly and Tonge and many others bore testament not just to the British love of a brew but to the movement back and forth between Bengal and London of goods and people. The Bengali city of Kolkata (Calcutta in post-partition India) is today a city of 15m people. Extraordinary to think that it was founded by English sailor Job Charnock as a village back in 1687. It soon became a port for the East India Company, and by the 1850s would be dispatching tons of the fragrant teas of Darejeeling, Assam and Chittagong to London.

There are some lovely anecdotes too. The authors note what was (possibly at least) the serving of the first curry in Britain, in 1809. Provincial administrator Robert Lindsay had distinguished himself in Sylhet first by antagonising the local people with his tax-collecting activities and then dealing with an angry mob by taking refuge in the local mosque and shooting a holy man. Returning to England he might have hoped to forget the past, but it was reawakened by a visit from Syed Ullah, one of the holy man’s followers. A potentially uncomfortable encounter seems to have gone rather well, with Ullah returning to Lindsay’s home to cook curry for the company.

Back in the Indian subcontinent, Britain’s often bloody and brutal rule reached a conclusion of sorts in 1971. Having suffered brutal subjugations in the aftermath of the 1857 rebellion against British rule, the terrible famine in 1943 that cost some 3m lives, and then the 1947 partitioning of Bengal between India and Pakistan, East Pakistan successfully fought for its independence in 1970-71, emerging as Bangladesh. In the years before and after independence, Bengalis arrived in the East End in greater numbers, and so was born the modern Bengali East End, centred around Brick Lane. East Enders of all colours and creeds would do well to remember it’s about a lot more than just curry though.

The immaculately researched and constructed Bengalis in London’s East End charts this long and usually buried history. My only complaint was the frustrating message ‘not yet available’ when I searched for the title on Amazon. It’s a huge oversight that must quickly be rectified. For anyone wanting to understand one of the strongest cultural threads in the fabric that is modern Britain, this book is an essential, combining good scholarly research, assiduously sourced material and a hugely entertaining read. And that shouldn’t be limited to those of us who can pick it up from the bookshops of the East End.

*Bengalis in London’s East End by Ansar Ahmed Ullah and John Eversley, published by Swadhinata Trust, ISBN 9780956574503.

Many apologies to any of you who have been searching in vain for this site over the last few weeks. After much head scratching and running round in circles, it appears that some ******* (make up your own rude word) hacked into the site and destroyed all the posts, changing the character set of the type so it’s now all unreadable. Why? Who knows. I’m now faced with the prospect of restocking the site manually, sigh. So it may take some time. So bear with us. There will be a new improved eastlondonhistory.com appearing in the coming weeks.