Publisher's Synopsis
Silvertown is a family memoir teeming with stories of life in the docks, pubs and dog tracks of the old East End where Malanie McGrath's grandparents, Jenny and Len Page, scraped a living. McGrath takes us along the bustling alleys and lanes of Poplar in 1914, where eleven-year-old Jenny watches the men go off to fight. In 1944, Len bought the Cosy Cafe in Silvertown. From here, the family served the passing trade from the thriving docks. Fifty years on, Silvertown stares at the Millenium Dome, the Docklands having been bombed, rebuilt, renovated, slum-cleared and now razed pending "renovation". Through the story of her family, McGrath has recaptured the buzz of this slip of land and with it the traditional heartlands of East London.
