I’ve written an article on the topographical films of Leytonstone (and the Lower Lea Valley) for UEL’s ‘Rising East’ journal of East London Studies, which you can read here.

In the course of the research I came across a couple of other filmic E11 references: a Bollywood film called ‘I….Proud to be an Indian’ (2004) set in a late-seventies Leytonstone terrorised by Nazi skinheads. And a 1963 film directed by Joan Littlewood, ‘Sparrows Can’t Sing’. There was also a sitcom in 1999 ‘Small Potatoes’ starring Tommy Tiernan, “Ed Hewitt runs the shambolic Screen Dreams video shop in Leytonstone, east London. He has a media-studies degree but is underachieving, consoling himself with the thought that video rental is part of the media business. His working day is enlivened (and/or complicated) by visits from three friends – sex-obsessed Rick, who works in his family’s chemists shop; aspiring photographer Juliet; and the vague Benett, currently working as shoe-hire boy at a bowling-alley.” Apparently it was another failed stab at producing a British ‘Seinfeld’ (a colleague, who also lives in Leytonstone, tells me that it was actually quite good).

I’ll be developing another project with Cathy, in Maidstone, for Architecture week in July. We’ll be posting stuff here as we go along. There’s already a link to the Wycombe work in the figure of Benjamin Disraeli, who failed to get elected as MP for Wycombe 3 times before taking the Maidstone seat.