Britain in the 1930s collects more than 600 archive pictures, including scenes at Waterloo Station, the Old Bailey and Romford Market.
Previously unseen photographs of 1930s London, from sunbathers on Tower Beach to iced-over fountains in Trafalgar Square, appear in a new book due out from Atlantic on 5 November.
Britain in the 1930s runs to 616 pages and contains more than 600 black and white images selected by the historian Steven Brindle. They come from the Associated Newspapers archive, which the company’s own journalists and photographers built up over the years, and each picture comes with commentary.
Scenes from the capital include August crowds on Tower Beach in 1935. At Waterloo Station, two young boys are pictured with a self-service ice cream machine. Another image shows crowds filling the roads by the Old Bailey once the Lord Mayor’s parade had gone by, while elsewhere a smartly dressed couple walk along Oxford Street.
The book follows the city through the decade before Nazi bombs reshaped it. London spread outwards into new suburbs while the population of its centre fell. Car traffic grew, and Londoners came to depend more on the expanding Underground. Victorian streets stood next to new Art Deco buildings. Cinemas, West End theatres and jazz clubs gave people a way to forget about money worries and the growing threat of war.
On the edges of the capital, life had changed far less. Pictures show cattle at Romford Market and boys in boater hats at the Harrow School tuck shop in 1933.
Beyond London, the book reaches every county and city in Britain, taking in places as far apart as Orkney and Cornwall, or Derry and Cardiff. It also gives space to the seaside, with crowds at resorts such as Margate and Brighton.
The book is due out from Atlantic on 5 November.
The historian Steven Brindle selected the more than 600 black and white images.
Scenes include Tower Beach, Trafalgar Square, Waterloo Station, the Old Bailey and Oxford Street, with Romford Market and the Harrow School tuck shop on the edges of the capital.
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