Jacqueline Riding: Hard Streets: Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London

This event has finished and has been made available as a digital recording. Available to purchase above or as part of the Digital Pass. 

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Charlie Chaplin rose from the hard streets of Victorian London to become one of the most beloved comedians of all time. 

With his threadbare jacket, baggy trousers and puzzled expression, Chaplin's 'Little Tramp' alter ego was shaped by the city of his childhood - a place of ribald variety shows and hard drinking, radical politics and desperate poverty.

In Hard Streets, Jacqueline Riding conjures the lost world of working-class London in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Weaving through Chaplin's iconic rags-to-riches story are the lives of music hall stars, political reformers and George Tinworth, a neighbour of Chaplin's mother and grandparents, who progressed from poor wheelwright to nationally renowned sculptor. 

Riding paints a striking portrait of a time and place where hardship was the norm, but where talent, determination and luck could bring opportunity and success.

'HARD STREETS is a rich and emotive study of a world now lost that will leave readers stunned' Hallie Rubenhold, author of THE FIVE