Curious Muswell Hill
=Andrew Whitehead= published by Five Leaves, May 2025 Muswell Hill is a model of the Edwardian middle-class suburb, with its broad streets, regal street names, arts-and-crafts houses and fashionable shopping parades. But look a little harder and you'll find the trace of aristocratic Russian anarchists, God-fearing African revolutionaries and insurrectionary Indian nationalists. The Kinks grew up here and made the locality almost cool with their 'Muswell Hillbillies' album. Fairport Convention started rehearsing in a house on Fortis Green from which they took their name. Muswell Hillbilly Brewers use N10 hops, grown in back gardens in Colney Hatch Lane, to add magic to their Tetherdown pale ale. In Curious Muswell Hill, historian Andrew Whitehead takes an affectionate - and mildly subversive - tour round N10. A detailed map will help you find your way around Muswell Hill's curiosities and there's lots of photographs ancient and modern. |
A Devilish Kind of Courage: Anarchists, Aliens and the Siege of Sidney Street
=Andrew Whitehead= published by Reaktion Books On 3 January 1911, in the heart of London’s mainly Jewish East End, police discovered Latvian revolutionaries wanted for the murder of three officers. A six-hour gunfight ensued, with a fire consuming the besieged building. Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary, arrived at the scene and ordered the blaze not to be extinguished. Afterwards two charred bodies were found; the elusive Peter the Painter, believed to have been the ringleader, remained at large. This gripping episode, known as the ‘Siege of Sidney Street’, was a nationwide sensation and ignited fierce debates on immigration to Britain, political extremism and law enforcement. This book unravels the full story of the siege, the Latvian émigrés and their ties to the vibrant anarchist movement in London’s East End. |
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