Melanie McGrath

For more than a century, hopping was the main event in the East End calendar, with over 200,000 East Enders descending on Kent looking for casual work picking hops. 'Hopping' captures this period from the 20s to the 50s, and shows how each place was forever altered by the other.

Kelly's Pie and Mash has been run by the same family in the Roman Road in Bow for nearly a hundred years; an East End institution. Outside its windows the Roman Road has seen an extraordinary revolution, from women's liberation and industrialisation to wars and immigration. This is the biography of that shop and of the people who passed through it, and continue to do so. Through vivid tales of ordinary lives we hear the extraordinary story of the community living around the oldest trading route in Britain, and the true heart of the East End.

The author tells the story of her grandmother's life in the East End in the 1920s and 1930s. Through Jenny we experience the life lived by thousands of women in the days when the port of London was the busiest in the world.