The borough of Islington has, during the last twenty-five years, become fashionable. In the 1950s and 1960s, the name Islington, when pronounced in central London or in the northwestern suburbs, conjured up a remote and faintly suspect district. It is interesting to note how poor and therefore uneasy districts, even when they are geographically near a city centre, are pushed, in the imagination of those who are prospering, further away than they really are. Harlem in New York is an obvious example. For Londoners today Islington is far closer than it used to be.
When it was still remote, forty years ago, Hubert bought a small terraced house there, with a narrow back garden that sloped down to a canal. At that time he and his wife were teaching part-time in art schools and had no money to spare. The house, however, was cheap, dirt cheap.
“They’ve moved to Islington!” a friend told me at the time. And this news was like a late autumn afternoon when the daylight hours are becoming noticeably shorter. There was something of a foreclosure about it.
If you are a subscriber, please log in »
This article is available to subscribers only
Subscribing to Prospect is the most reliable and convenient way to receive the magazine every month, and offers the best value.Subscription Types:
Online
An online subscription offers you complete and unlimited access to the entire website, including our searchable archive of every back issue of Prospect, and a PDF edition of each new issue: all this for just £20 per year. Purchase an online subscription »Renewal
Renew an existing subscription »Institutional access
If you are a library, business organisation or any other large institution that needs a multi-user licence, you can obtain institutional access.
Share
Subscribe to post comments
Print
