Tuesday 23 April 2013

Announcing a change of cover (now that is a boring subject heading)

At Lowdham Book Festival, one of the venues we use regularly is the Primitive Methodist Chapel, a lovely old Victorian building, little changed. On the main table is a carved block of wood. For years I wondered about it until I sat at the right angle and suddenly saw the letters JESUS in relief. Some people never see it, others immediately. Perhaps you see what you expect to see, or want to see, and it took a while before JESUS came into my life, as it were. I only mention this because of our new cover for London E1. I never really liked the old cover, not least as it did not express the joi de vivre of the novel (though, rest assured, not all the novel was full of joi de anything) and of the East End. Not that it put people off - the first printing sold out - but that gave us a chance to change the front. And here it is... When I first printed it out I could not see the "E1" thinking it looked more like an ill-fitting jigsaw and anyway the full title is "London E... oh, there it is". Now I can't see the jigsaw, and E1 is perfectly clear. I hope it is for readers.
The photos we used this time came from Robert Poole's nephew, John Charlton, who showed us a series of pictures of East End street life, including one of a charabanc trip. They all appeared on the Spitalfields Life website. Thanks, for these John.

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