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| Books |
HEART
OF DARKNESS
by
Joseph Conrad
(1899) |
Born
in 1857 to Polish parents in what is now the Ukraine, Joseph
Conrad was orphaned and aged 16 went to sea. Later he settled
in England and began to write about what he had experienced.
It was his journey down the Congo River in 1889 which would
lead to his most famous story: Heart of Darkness. Returning
to London seriously ill the following year he recuperated in
the German Hospital in Dalston in the borough and it was here
he started his novella.
Controversial because of its depictions of the local people
it is though a scathing criticism of colonialism and what it
does to people. |
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| London
| Hackney |
The
County of London was formed in 1889 from parts of the ancient counties
of Middlesex, Kent and Surrey, with
the City of London remaining an independent body.
In 1965 Greater London was formed,
taking in the rest of Middlesex (which no longer existed as a county)
together with parts of Essex and Hertfordshire and further areas of
Kent and Surrey.
Greater
London is made up of 13 Inner and 19 Outer London boroughs together
with the City of London.
Hackney once lay in Middlesex and is today one of
the 13 boroughs making up Inner London. It borders the City of Westminster
and the London borough of Tower Hamlets in the south with its eastern
border marked by the River Lea.
London Boroughs |
| Actors
and Directors |
The
film and stage actor Jessica Tandy
was born in Stoke Newington in 1909. Her earliest work was on the
stage in London but after the end of her marriage to Jack
Hawkins in 1940 she went to the US where she worked in Hollywood
and on Broadway (four Tony Awards). Her long film career was crowned
by an Academy Award for Driving Miss Daisy in 1990. She died
in Connecticutt in 1994.
Jessica
Tandy
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| Anglo-Saxons
and Danes |
|
Anglo-Saxon Kings
Danish Kings |
The
borough once lay in Middlesex which once formed the kingdom
the kingdom of the Middle Saxons, so
named because their kingdom lay between those of the East Saxons (Essex)
and the West Saxons (Wessex).
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| Writers
and Poets |
The
writer and art critic John Berger was
born in Stoke Newington in 1926. His novel G won the Booker
Prize in 1972 and in the same year his groundbreaking televison series
Ways of Seeing on art was broadcast. He left Britain in the
early 1960s and in 1974 settled in rural France.
John
Berger
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