Bestselling First Book

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ISBN 9780955665905

Price £12.99

DISTRIBUTOR:  WWW.GARDNERS.COM

Now available at Waterstones, Daunt Books, The Portobello Hotel, The Abbey Court Hotel, Foyles, Blackwells, Amazon.co.uk, The Travel Bookshop, and more!

Discover London's Notting Hill as it was a hundred years ago, presented in a unique collection of more than 200 images from 'real photo' and printed postcards. Take a visual tour which leads you from the unveiling of the Tube station at Notting Hill to the bustling market stalls of Portobello Road in the Edwardian era.

 

See where the only Jealous man in London was a pub landlord, the Madders sisters had a dancing school, where Napoleon's nephew experimented with poisons and how to find Mrs Memory and Miss Perfect.

 

Follow in the footsteps of Notting Hill's residents all those years ago. Chapters guide you along Notting Hill High Street, Pembridge Road, Kensington Park Road, Ladbroke Grove, Lancaster Road and Westbourne Grove to Portobello Road.

 

With a commentary including quirky facts and coincidences, a small dose of architecture and a sheer delight in the people who don't always make it into the history books, let Hermione Cameron, author and resident, show you Notting Hill Behind The Scenes.

PRESS COVERAGE

LONDON LITE 'Must ... Tonight' 26.Feb.2008

 

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Robert Elms BBC RADIO LONDON 94.9

Robert Elms presents London's best magazine show with eclectic music and great guests - weekdays 1200 to 1500

Listen online:  bbc.co.uk/london

 

BBC Radio London, 'The Robert Elms Show' 25 February 2008
"If you want to know what Notting Hill was like all those years ago, this is a very good place to start. It's 'Notting Hill Behind the Scenes,' and it's been compiled and lovingly annotated by Hermione Cameron." 

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visitlondon.com Competition Results

Congratulations to Barbara from Catford, Nicola from Bolton, Emily from Portsmouth, Simone from Romford and Claire from Hertford, who all won copies of NOTTING HILL BEHIND THE SCENES in the competition on the Visit London website over Christmas and New Year! They were picked at random by Visit London from over 1,500 entries.

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Author Event 26th February: Evening Talk at the LOUISE T BLOUIN INSTITUTE

I am delighted to be giving a talk on NOTTING HILL BEHIND THE SCENES at the Louise T Blouin Instituteon 26th February at 6.30pm. I will also be offering a preview of the next book, HOLLAND PARK BEHIND THE SCENES, due out in the Summer. LTBfoundation.orgbooking Line: 0207 985 9600

The Louise T Blouin Instituteis housed in what must be one of the most fabulously light and tranquil buildings in London W11. There's a glossy grand piano in the triple-height lobby; flashes of colour from collages of drawings, watercolours, sketches, found objects and souvenirs; sculptures and architectural drawings; all part of Richard Meier's exhibition 'Art and Architecture' on show there until the end of March 2008.

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REVIEW TIME OUT LONDON 2 January 2008
"Meet Walter Carter, west London fishmonger, here photographed with his wife, four of his six children and several hundred bloaters, kippers and oysters - a collection that must have made this a particularly pongy part of Portobello Road market. The market sprang up in the 1870s from a horse-trading fair, and was a regular fruit-and-veg market until antiques stalls started appearing after World War II.

Carter is just one of Notting Hill's former residents and shopkeepers to appear in a new book of historic photographs of the area. We also liked the picture of a cramped corner shop that went by the name of Marks & Spencer. Whatever happened to them?"

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KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA NEWS: INTERVIEW by Ellie Dyer

'Discover the hidden stories which lie on every corner of our streets'

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PRESS COVERAGE

The Hill, December 2007

"Every Road is Charmingly, Instantly, Identifiable"

 

"Hermione Cameron's book is a compendium of early 20th century postcards collected from hours spent trawling the market stalls, internet and archives. Laid out geographically, the photographs lead the reader from the original Notting Hill Gate tube station down to Lancaster Road via all the famous routes. Not heaving with historical facts on the area, it is more focused on the individual characters who lived and worked here a hundred years ago.

 

We discover that the occupiers of 41 Pembridge Road offered the `best prices for old artificial teeth' and that a Mr Simon Green lived in the current Travel Bookshop. If you're lucky you might even discover who used to call your house their own.

 

Apart from the lack of cars and much smaller trees every road is charmingly, instantly identifiable."

 

The Hill DECEMBER 2007, p.54

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 Featured In TIME OUT 2/01/08!

NHBTS makes its debut in Time Out in the New Year!

Walter Carter, "The Kipper King" of 150, Portobello Road, with his family and two assistants a hundred years ago. Walter Carter really did have two assistants; the one on the left might be a little camera shy! They feature on page 88 of NOTTING HILL BEHIND THE SCENES. Look out for the mention in Peter Watts' column in Time Out: Big Smoke / London Through the Lens.

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At the world famous Hatchards Bookshop

HC writes: Many thanks to Michael Wood at the world famous Hatchards, Piccadilly for supporting Notting Hill Behind The Scenes during the Christmas Customer Evening 29th Nov.

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To The Travel Bookshop, Notting Hill, with Nanny Musgrove and Father Christmas..

Hermione Cameron and Ilona Rodgers signing copies of their books at The Travel Bookshop, Notting Hill, during the Portobello Christmas late-opening event, 28th November.

Ilona Rodgers, author of the very popular Nanny Musgrove books, with Christian Rutherford of The Travel Bookshop,

Notting Hill

HC writes: It was such a pleasure to meet Ilona Rodgers, artist and illustrator and creator of the hugely enjoyable Nanny Musgrove  children's stories, at the Travel Bookshop this week. We had a great time meeting and greeting, and then signing copies of our books. Of course, I just had to indulge in the dangerously delicious mulled wine and mince pies! It proved to be a very Christmassy occasion. Many thanks to Christian and Sarah of the Travel Bookshop, for organising the book signing during Portobello's late opening for Christmas shopping. Father Christmas was last seen heading into Kensington Park Road, really quite late into in the evening...

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REVIEW    'A STAND-OUT BOOK IN THE GENRE'

Picture Postcard Monthly

"Notting Hill Behind The Scenes (Hermione Cameron) follows the familiar format of showing us what a particular place was like a century ago. The format is a well-established and simple one: the postcard illustrations have the starring role, and the introduction and captions serve as footnotes, a touch of extra detail for the observer.

Yet Hermione Cameron's production has a couple of features which make this a stand-out book in the genre. She's gone in search of the people who populated the streets all those years ago, and she makes us look at them, too, by the trick of giving us some of thepictures twice, the second time with part of the detail magnified. It's a double-take that has you flitting from the general to the particular and back again, and above all makes the characters come alive. We all love those 'animated' street scenes. The author's in your face treatment of Notting Hill's Edwardian residents is a thought-provoking master stroke.

The introduction instantly focuses on the inhabitants rather than the buildings and their history. She gives us Miss Perfect, William Jealous and the Madders sisters, people we meet later, along with many other residents. 'Seeing a familiar street all those years ago made me wonder about the past overlapping with the present: how we may walk in someone else's footsteps, turn the the same street corner, pass the same shop and cross the same road, and do all this a century apart.'

So, half a century before Marc Bolan lived at 57 Blenheim Crescent, Emily Needham was a dressmaker there. Henry Armfield, a dyer and cleaner, is brought to life outside his shop by the magnification technique and assumes a stature that he can never do in the original picture.

The captions, too, investigate the human side of Notting Hill, probing the people who ran the shops, lived in houses and worked in businesses. Even if you begin by not knowing Notting Hill, you're soon inside it, an inquisitive voyeur. Beats Albert Square any day."

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Jacob Winner, mentioned on P.90 of NHBTS, has a connection with Michael Winner, film maker and author. I wrote (very nervously!) to let him know, enclosing a copy of the book and an advertisement that I had found for Jacob Winner's Portobello shop. I was so delighted to receive a reply by return!

"Thank you so much. Greatly appreciated."

Michael Winner 9th Nov 07

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Now available at Waterstones, Daunt Books, The Portobello Hotel, Foyles, Blackwells, Amazon.co.uk, The Travel Bookshop, and more!

 Discover London's Notting Hill as it was a hundred years ago, presented in a unique collection of more than 200 images from 'real photo' and printed postcards.

Take a visual tour which leads you from the unveiling of the Tube station at Notting Hill to the bustling market stalls of Portobello Road in the Edwardian era. See where the only Jealous man in London was a pub landlord, the Madders sisters had a dancing school, where Napoleon's nephew experimented with poisons and how to find Mrs Memory and Miss Perfect. Follow in the footsteps of Notting Hill's residents all those years ago. Chapters guide you along Notting Hill High Street, Pembridge Road, Kensington Park Road, Ladbroke Grove, Lancaster Road and Westbourne Grove to Portobello Road.

With a commentary including quirky facts and coincidences, a small dose of architecture and a sheer delight in the people who don't always make it into the history books, let Hermione Cameron, author and resident, show you Notting Hill Behind The Scenes.

 THANKS FOR VISITING!

ORDER  COPIES email: hermionecameron at hotmail.com