Author Archives: admin

Investigated or Ignored?

 A new report by Harmit Athwal and Dr Jon Burnett of the Institute of Race Relations, analyses the criminal justice system’s response to the deaths of the 93 people who’ve lost their lives in racially motivated attacks in the UK … Continue reading

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Kelso Cochrane in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Kelso Cochrane has been added to the updated ODNB, which details the lives of men and women who shaped British history from the 13th to the 21st centuries:  www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/100396

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White Riot: The week Notting Hill exploded

With Carnival looming, here’s an old article on how its 1959 forerunner was founded from the embers of racial violence by the Trinidadian activist Claudia Jones. August 29, 2008, The Independent As darkness fell and the Notting Hill Carnival drew … Continue reading

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Wild West

It’s said that to understand one feud in Notting Dale, you have to know about the ten feuds before it. This is born out by the trail of violence that ended in the death of 21-year-old Billy Smith: shot in his … Continue reading

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A triumph for Investigative Journalism

The Sunday Times and its intrepid reporter Michael Gillard recently won an epic libel battle against the major East End criminal David Hunt. The paper’s July 7 leader put the victory in context: LIFTING THE LID ON THE PROFESSION OF … Continue reading

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Notting Hill Horrible History – Sir Oswald Mosley: The North Kensington Leader

May 7, 2013, 5.30 – 7.30pm, North Kensington Library. Cathi Unsworth, author of Bad Penny Blues, Tom Vague of the Community History Project, and I will be discussing Oswald Mosley’s last-ditch effort to revive his political career in Notting Hill … Continue reading

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RIP Professor John Makumbe

Photo: Monty Strikes, Harare, 2007 It’s a far cry from Notting Hill, but the death of a remarkable man in Zimbabwe this week couldn’t pass without comment. I was privileged to have met John Makumbe, aka the White Man from … Continue reading

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Remembering Johnny Edge

Johnny’s message to his friends on his 76th birthday Johnny Edgecombe obituary Keeler’s ex-lover, he fired the shots that set off the Profumo affair On a clear December morning in 1962, Johnny Edgecombe, who has died aged 77, fired six … Continue reading

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Ghosts of Notting Hill

Day by day and inch by inch, the old North Kensington disappears. On the Wornington Green estate, a couple of hundred yards from where Kelso Cochrane was murdered, the bulldozers and workmen have moved in. According to Catalyst Housing, the … Continue reading

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Peter Rachman 50 years on

Shirley Green’s definitive 1979 biography After he died, the rumours grew ever more outlandish. They said that he had a penchant for watching naked lady wrestlers; that he wore hand-stitched crocodile shoes and white sharkskin suits; that he was obsessed … Continue reading

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