An entertaining and engaging social and cultural history of the London
community of Peckham that offers lessons in urban living.
"Is there life in Peckham?" asks a pop song of the 1980s. Peckham has
been treated as a joke and a place to be avoided. It has been celebrated
in television comedies, and denigrated for its levels of crime. It is a
center for the arts and the creative industries, yet it also suffers
from social deprivation and racial tension. Passport to Peckham is a
guide to an unofficial part of London--social and cultural history
written from the ground up.
In this entertaining and engaging account, Hewison invites readers to
explore Peckham's streets and presents the portrait of a community
experiencing the stresses of modern living. Old and new residents rub
against each other as they try to adjust to the challenges created by
urban regeneration and the more subtle process of gentrification.
Artists have lived and worked in Peckham for more than a century, and
now Caribbean and West African communities are adding their own flavors
in terms of music, drama, poetry, and film. Focused on a few square
miles, Passport to Peckham raises issues of urban policy, planning,
culture, and creativity that have a far wider application. As London and
other major cities recover from the COVID crisis, are there lessons in
urban living to be learned from the pleasures and pains of Peckham? The
answer from one of Britain's most distinguished cultural critics is an
emphatic yes.
