Unthought of, though, somehow

A 1930 photo of Joyce in the arms of her maternal grandmother, Anorah. My Aunt Joyce's life, which began over 95 years ago in an East Lo...

It's the Spring of 1964 and I've just arrived home after a little rough and tumble down the park at the end of the road, probably in...

I started to seriously look into my family tree over the past winter, in an effort to make sense of the paper trail left by Mum. In the 1980...

Maud, my Maternal Grandmother (Nan), was born in Stratford in the East End of London on January 19th 1893, 131 years ago. She passed away tw...

My maternal grandmother remarried late in life and thus Uncle Ted became the only male grandparent figure I'd ever have. He worked at th...

Half-time in the back garden, circa 1969 As I've mentioned a number of times on these pages, my cousin and I grew up as virtual brother ...

Burgoyne Burbidges & Co chemical works in East Ham looms large in my family's history. The company began trading in the Hackney area...

  Butlins holiday camp in the mid 1940s. Mum in her teens is second from left at the back. To her right is a family friend, to her left is h...

  Skiers Street, West Ham, circa 1909. The young boy is my maternal grandfather, Sid (Sydney, 1896-1956). In the doorway stands his mother E...

  With Mum's side of the family, I'm fortunate to have a well documented photographic trail to follow back through time, as far as t...

There's a weekly feature over on Instagram that's been going on for a very long time, whereby old family photos are dug out and shar...

My aunt, who turned 94 yesterday, has lived alone in East London since my uncle died in 1978 and is the last surviving family member to have...

It strikes me that I haven't posted any old family photos in this series for a while. To compensate, here's a real favourite of mine...

For a few days before flying out to New York to visit my cousin, I stayed with her mum in London. While there I ticked off a few odd jobs ar...

The first two or three years seemed to pass slowly, perhaps because I was concentrating so much on Mum's health and wellbeing back then,...

It's April 1967, that's me on the right, sporting a pudding basin haircut and a Batman badge on my tie. In the middle is my cousin, ...

Wanstead Flats in North East London, is a detached slab of the ancient woodland Epping Forest - a 334 acre oasis of green in an otherwise he...

Over a period of many years in the pre-internet days, my Mum patiently attempted to pull together the various strands of our family tree. It...

One day in the mid-1980's, very quietly, without fuss or announcement, Dad stopped eating meat. Never once, from that moment until he pa...

On the very day that the rules of international travel to and from the USA changed last week, my cousin flew in for a brief four day visit w...