Charlotte Grant is Senior Lecturer in English at NCH London, UK. She has a background in literature and visual culture, having taught previously at QMUL, King's London, and Cambridge, where she held a lectureship in literature and visual culture. She has published on Eighteenth-Century literature and culture, edited a collection of botanical writing and co-edited Imagined Interiors and Women, Writing and the Public Sphere.
Alistair Robinson completed his PhD at UCL in 2018 and became a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of English Studies, before joining NCH London in the summer of 2019, where he is now Lecturer in English. He has published on nineteenth-century literature and culture in the Journal of Victorian Culture and the Review of English Studies, and is currently preparing his first monograph for publication.

Frontmatter
Author Biographies
Introduction, Charlotte Grant and Alistair Robinson
CENTRAL
1. St. Erkenwald and the Hidden Histories of St Paul's Cathedral, Alastair Bennett
2. Ignatius Sancho: Musician, Man of Letters, Grocer, Markman Ellis
3. The 'Black-birds' of St. Giles: Community and Place in Eighteenth-century London, Nicole N. Aljoe and Savita Maharaj
4. Styling the Other: Hazlitt's 'The Indian Jugglers', Uttara Natarajan
5. Begging Places: Poverty, Race, and Visibility on Ludgate Hill, c. 1815, David Hitchcock
6. 13 Red-Lion Square: The Mendicity Society, 1818-76, Oskar Cox Jensen
7. The Chinese Aesthetics of the Admonitions Scroll at the British Museum, Kent Su
8. 'A terrain on its own': Elizabeth Bowen and Regent's Park, Heather Ingman
INFRASTRUCTURE: WATER
9. London's Water: City Comedy, Migration and Middletons, Susan J. Wiseman
EAST
10. Shakespeare in Shoreditch, Daniel Swift
11. Hostile Environments: Disinterring a Lascar Barracks in Nineteenth-Century Shadwell, Eliza Cubitt
12. 19 Princelet Street, Spitalfields: A Case Study in the Architecture of Migration and Diversity, Dan Cruikshank
13. The Slot-Meter and the East End Avant-Garde, Alex Grafen
INFRASTRUCTURE: WASTE
14. Blockage and Recuperation: Sewer-Hunters in Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, Naomi Hinds
SOUTH
15. Culture and Horticulture in Lambeth from 'Tradescant's Ark' to Vauxhall Gardens, Charlotte Grant
16. The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, Sydenham, and St Petersburg, Catherine Brown
17. 87 Hackford Road: The London of Vincent Van Gogh, Livia Wang
18. Writing London: Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, Ruvani Ranasinha
INFRASTRUCTURE: TRANSPORT I
19. Existing Triply: Race, Space and the London Transport Network, 1950s-70s, Rob Waters
WEST
20. Scotch Hornpipes and African Elephants: The May Fair in 1700, Alistair Robinson
21. Feathered People in Enlightenment London: Queen of the Bluestockings meets Cherokee King, Elizabeth Eger
22. Prince Eugen in Kensington: Anglo-Scandinavian Artistic, Networks and the Stockholm Exhibition of 1897, Eva-Charlotta Mebius
23. 'What a relief to be back in London': The Silences of Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, Edmund de Waal
24. Tricksters of the Water: Sam Selvon's West London and the Migrant Experience, Peter Maber and Karishma Patel
25. Arabian Nights on the Edgware Road: Hanan al-Shaykh's Only in London, Susie Thomas
26. The Grand Prince of Kyiv in Holland Park: The Statue of Saint Volodymyr, Sasha Dovzhyk
27. 'Is real mas outside': Community, Resistance and Notting Hill Carnival, Leighan Renaud
28. 'Where the City Dissolves': Suburban Diasporas, Psychosis and Reparative Writing, Martin Dines
INFRASTRUCTURE: TRANSPORT II
29. A Bus for Everyone: The Role of the London Omnibus in Enabling Access to the City, Joe Kerr
NORTH
30. Moorgate, Enfield, Edmonton and Hampstead: The Cross-City Migrations of John Keats, Flora Lisica
31. The Battle for an African Space in London: WASU Hostel and Aggrey House, William Whitworth
32. Northview: A Snapshot of Multiracial London during the Second World War, Oliver Ayers
33. Exiles of NW3: The 'Free German League of Culture' in Upper Park Road, David Anderson
Select Bibliography
Index

One of the most international, culturally diverse cities in the world, London's social and cultural history is steeped in centuries of migration. This book places migrants at the centre of London's story, discussing, exploring and celebrating the contribution that they have made to the city from the medieval period to the present day.
Structured geographically around five sections, each of which addresses a different area of London (North, East, Central, South and West) this book features essays from a wide range of contributors, some of which examine how migrants have shaped particular places (socially, architecturally, politically), and some of which analyse how they have been imagined and represented within those places and the city more widely. The inclusion of image-led case studies exploring particular buildings, monuments, artists or institutions offers local examples of how migrant communities have made their marks on London in different ways. Using a mixture of in-depth analysis of texts and cultural artifacts with more synoptic, historical essays, the book builds an overview of the contribution of migrant communities to the history and cultures of London. Taken together, these essays paints a rich, complex picture of cultural London, featuring well-known figures like Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Van Gogh in addition to lesser-known figures like Ignatius Sancho, a former slave and writer, and contemporary novelist Hanan al-Shaykh. Topics addressed are rich and varied, from an examination of Chinese aesthetics of an artefact at the British museum, to an exploration of representations of black sex workers in 18th C London.
Published amidst the fraught politics of Brexit, the revival of nationalist sentiments in the global north, and the Covid-19 pandemic, this book serves as an accessible and timely reminder of the enormous cultural contributions that migrants have made to Britain's capital.