This documentary looks interesting from a personal as well as historic perspective; having been born in the area and grown up nearby, my feeling of identification with the district in which Grenfell Tower is located has been strengthened along with its reputation by the extraordinary upsurge of community solidarity that has come in the wake of the tragedy, (symbolised in the yellow heart lapel badge), which will surely be its lasting legacy to a more hopeful world than the one otherwise presented today in the media. Here's the Radio Times blurb:
When Grenfell Tower in North Kensington caught fire in June last year, the ensuing tragedy exposed a deep division between rich and poor in this part of London. Here, residents of the community around the burnt-out building reveal how their borough came to be seen as one of the most unequal places in Britain. They also share their memories of the events that shaped their neighbourhood, from exploitation by slum landlords such as Peter Rachman to the Notting Hill race riots of 1958 and the construction of Grenfell in the 1970s. Narrated by Danny John-Jules.
Poverty has always been a blatant feature of the area: this was vividly brought home in the series of programmes The Secret History of our Streets a few years ago, one of which being on Portland Road. The beginnings of the Notting Hill Carnival are surely also bound to get a mention, as also the Christie Murders, Portobello market's place in the iconography of 1960s Swinging London, the community campaign to try and stop the construction of Westway, and last and leastly, a certain film starring Hugh Grant, ahem.
When Grenfell Tower in North Kensington caught fire in June last year, the ensuing tragedy exposed a deep division between rich and poor in this part of London. Here, residents of the community around the burnt-out building reveal how their borough came to be seen as one of the most unequal places in Britain. They also share their memories of the events that shaped their neighbourhood, from exploitation by slum landlords such as Peter Rachman to the Notting Hill race riots of 1958 and the construction of Grenfell in the 1970s. Narrated by Danny John-Jules.
Poverty has always been a blatant feature of the area: this was vividly brought home in the series of programmes The Secret History of our Streets a few years ago, one of which being on Portland Road. The beginnings of the Notting Hill Carnival are surely also bound to get a mention, as also the Christie Murders, Portobello market's place in the iconography of 1960s Swinging London, the community campaign to try and stop the construction of Westway, and last and leastly, a certain film starring Hugh Grant, ahem.
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