New Books Network Jacqueline Riding, "Hard Streets: Working-Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin’s London" (Profile Books, 2025)
Feb 5, 2026
Jacqueline Riding, historian and curator who researches social and cultural history, explores working-class London around Chaplin’s rise. She traces neighborhood change, street culture as informal arts training, music-hall economics and pathways to mobility. The conversation highlights local institutions, politics, household survival and vivid personal stories from Lambeth and Woolwich.
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Bus Ride That Started The Book
- Jacqueline Riding noticed plaques for Charlie Chaplin while riding the 59 bus and that sparked the book idea.
- She 'went down the wormhole' and deep-dived into Chaplin's neighbourhood history to write Hard Streets.
Two Lives Map Seventy Years
- Using George Tinworth and Charlie Chaplin lets Riding span Victorian to Edwardian London through two lives.
- Their autobiographies provide a template to explore Lambeth's social changes across 70 years.
From Market Gardens To Dense Urban Slums
- Walworth (Woolworth) shifted from horticulture in 1800 to intense urban density by 1900.
- Population rose from ~15,000 to ~120,000, driving slums and industrial growth in South London.
