Are you busy on Monday evening? Of course you aren’t and will probably just be watching Strictly on Iplayer while brushing your cat. But fear not, dear reader, we are suggesting a brain cell building evening that is both free and riddled with local history.

On Monday (21 January) at 7pm at Durning Library local author Jacqueline Riding will be talking about her new book “Hard Streets: Working Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London”. Focusing on the lives of Chaplin and sculptor George Tinworth (there’s a street named after him)  Riding gives us a vivid and moving exploration of working class people in late Victorian/early Edwardian Greater Kennington. This includes people both transient and well long term locals including music hall stars (many of them lived here), labourers, sex workers, and vagrants.

Greater Kennington was not a bougie home to middle class people in the Victorian era. As factories and all things smelly filled the marshlands we now call home, it was a refuge for people who didn’t have many choices in life. This backdrop of hardship gave us the Lambeth Workhouse which we have written about extensively, and massive Georgian homes in Kennington Road occupied by as many as 30 people (including the Chaplins).  At the core of this book is the optimism that informed much of Chaplins work, and illustrates greatly how creativity can offer a path out of hardship.

While this event is free, we strongly encourage you to donate a few quid to the Friends of Kennington Library who are hosting this event. Your donation is both useful and allows you to have a free glass of wine without guilt. And to steal a second one before the talk.

If you’re too busy brushing your cat on Monday you can hear Riding in conversation with an annoying American here. And if you never trust our advice you can read a review by no less than the FT!