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- Two Roads
Pie and Mash down the Roman Road: 100 years of love and life in one East End market
Melanie McGrath
Biography: general, Food & society
This is the story of the Roman Road, an East End pie and mash shop and the lives and loves of the people who have worked and eaten there.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA NON-FICTION CROWN, THE ANDRE SIMON FOOD BOOK AWARDS AND THE FORTNUM & MASON BOOK AWARDS
'Filled with hearty goodness and packed together with care, this will go down a treat' Evening Standard | 'Rich and compelling' Spectator | 'Extraordinary and very moving' Julian Fellowes | 'Beautifully written, carefully researched, wonderfully told' Danny Wallace The fascinating history of an iconic East End institution from the bestselling author of Silvertown, Melanie McGrath.
G Kelly's Pie and Mash has been run by the same family in the Roman Road in Bow for nearly a hundred years; an East End institution and the still point of a turning world. Outside its windows the Roman Road has seen an extraordinary revolution - from women's liberation and industrialisation to wars and immigration - and yet at its heart it remains one of the last traditional market roads of London.
Pie and Mash down the Roman Road is the biography of that shop and of the people - customers, suppliers, employees, owners - who passed through it, and continue to do so. Through vivid tales of ordinary lives the book tells the extraordinary story of the community living around the oldest trading route in Britain, and the true heart of the East End.
'Draws you right into the heart of the vibrant East End community' Rosie Hendry
'Pacey and breath-taking . . . I loved every word' Carol Rivers
Praise for Pie and Mash down the Roman Road: 100 years of love and life in one East End market
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Filled with hearty goodness and packed together with care, this book will go down a treat - Evening Standard
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Her empathetic ability to inhabit vanished streets and catch authentic voices - at a point when you wonder how much longer they will be around - is rich and compelling - Spectator
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Extraordinary and very moving; yet more proof, if proof were needed, that there is no such thing as an ordinary person. - Julian Fellowes
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Brilliant, funny, fascinating. Beautifully written, carefully researched, wonderfully told. - Danny Wallace
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Beautifully written and impeccably researched, Pie and Mash down the Roman Road draws you right into the heart of the vibrant East End community - Rosie Hendry, author of the East End Angels series
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A still point in a turning world . . . a shop front onto the past - Mail on Sunday
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An emotional encounter with Bow's very tumultuous history - Roman Road LDN
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An accomplished social history ... lively and absorbing - Who Do You Think You Are? magazine
Melanie McGrath
Melanie McGrath was born in Essex, and is the author of critically acclaimed, bestselling non-fiction about the East End of London (Silvertown and Hopping). She can trace her family back 300 years in the East End and City of London. As MJ McGrath and Mel McGrath she writes fiction. Her Edie Kiglatuk Arctic mysteries have been twice longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger award. She has written two London-based psychological thrillers, Give Me the Child and (forthcoming) The Hookup. She also writes for the national press and is a regular broadcaster on radio. Her work is published in twenty languages. Melanie lives and works in London.
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