Rob Baker

@robnitm.bsky.social

Author of two London history books - 'Beautiful Idiots and Brilliant Lunatics' and 'High Buildings, Low Morals' - I'm currently doing up a 18th Century cottage in the Brecon Beacons which seems to be taking an inordinate amount of time.

Traffic warden Mrs Ives crashes an Ossie Clark/Michael Rainey photoshoot on the Fulham Road in September 1967. The models Elisa Ngai and Bill Chenail (Elisa’s Ossi dress sold for 6gns, bill's Kaftan 9gns).

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1954: The Lollard Adventure playground, just off Lambeth Walk. You can just see the Palace of Westminster in the distance, not much more than half a mile away.

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Sink in an Earls Court hotel room in 1977. There’s an electric coin meter connected to the hot water tap, a vintage car waste bin, and to cope with it all there’s a glass of Teachers whisky on the tv.

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Sue McGregor & Charles Stokes, BBC reporters for "World At One" try and fry an egg at Piccadilly Circus in 1968. The temperature reached 32 degrees on July 1st.

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A nine year old Ian Dury and his mum Peggy at the Festival of Britain in 1951. Ian had contracted Polio two years previously, most likely, he believed, from a swimming pool at Southend-on-Sea during the 1949 polio epidemic.

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