Picture the scene, its 1972 in England’s ‘second city’.   The social system is bursting with unwanted children, new developments in the medical field means babies for adoption are a rarity, nay a delicacy to be gobbled up by those who make the best offer.  Cracks are appearing in the structures holding back those poor unfortunates deemed too old to be cute. Sweat pours from the seams of overburdened institutions, but the plaster will hold for another decade or two.  Eventually, however, the rubble will land at the feet of humans so rancid that you will smell the stench for a lifetime.  This has no apparent bearing on my tale but pray, hold that thought.

"To honest men politics is a corrupter - To crooked men it is an opportunity."

Human nature is predictable and reliable. The East Enders I know were all in agreement that violence and muggings, robberies and unemployment could be placed at the door of the ethnic minorities. This simplistic viewpoint brought a wry smile to my lips, but this was their biography.

I hope this tale will have the heart beat of a novel, with love and loss, friendships and memories, humour and pathos, good and not-so-good times, death and survival. Yet there is no fiction. Just the history of a small group of people and their experiences, some of which are etched in my mind with unusual clarity even thought they are events that occurred a lifetime ago. Some are as vivid today as if they were yesterday’s events.

Everyone I met came from an area that was the habitat of the under-privileged, where there was no work, and opportunities were limited. For the vast majority of East Enders of sixty years ago the daily diet consisted of bread and soup, sometimes fish and, once a week, a small helping of meat. Many children were under-nourished, pale and hollow-cheeked. This created a bond of togetherness and the dreams that some were lucky enough to achieve.

So come with me on a journey from the old East End to the new, from Canning Town to Basildon and back to the East End, via war-blasted London and post-war Berlin. Come with me through landscapes of memory and be prepared for the shock of the unimaginable of Auschwitz. Expect the re-drawing of boundaries.