Mick Hartley

Last autumn I came across an alley wall in Bow, just by the Blackwall Tunnel Northern Approach, where someone had pasted up pages from a book of old photos of the area. Well, amazingly, they're still there:

Can they be the very same pages, after five wet and windy months? Or is someone replacing them? Well, there's certainly something that wasn't there before: the book's front cover:

Looking a bit worse for wear, but still legible. And here it is at Amazon: Bow and Bromley-by-Bow (Britain in Old Photographs), by Gary Haines.

Here's a page from the wall display:

So what's going on? Is Mr Haines sticking up bits of his book as some kind of eccentric promotion? As a selfless gesture for locals who can't afford a copy? Or is someone else responsible? Some kind of Iain Sinclair type on a psychogeographical quest to keep the old spirit of Bow alive in the face of modern developments? I'm curious.