KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES 1 MAY 2023 Available NOW at all good bookshops!

 

ISBN: 978-0-9556659-3-6   £14.99

128 pp

200 b/w images

ISBN: 978-0-9556659-3-6

£14.99

Publication: 1 May 2023

KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES with FREE postage to UK £14.99 GBP KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES with Airmail to Europe £17.99 GBP KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES With Airmail to World £19.99 GBP

See Kensington Gardens in beautiful images from stylish Edwardian postcards, sent and collected by visitors a hundred years ago. This was a golden age when each postcard was a little work of art and the quickest way to send a photograph with a message to loved ones. 

Follow the elegant Broad Walk between Palace Gate and Queensway, to see the statue of Queen Victoria and famous views of Kensington Palace. An original engraving shows Kensington Palace three hundred years ago when it was newly built. See the State Apartments when they opened to the public in 1899 for Queen Victoria’s 80th birthday and discover who was living at the palace a hundred years ago. Find the Elfin Oak near the Children’s Playground where ‘Time Flies’ and hear how J. M. Barrie the author of Peter Pan joined in the fun, racing balloons across the Round Pond. Near Lancaster Gate, find the statue of the twin teddy bears, and enjoy the calm beauty of the Italian Fountains, a romantic gift from Prince Albert to Queen Victoria. 

Visit Queen Caroline’s Temple, a Georgian folly, from which to see the Long Water and Hyde Park. See the Tea Gardens which became the Serpentine Gallery and look for the ‘Big Horse Statue’ of Physical Energy, sent by Bert to Auntie as a ‘get well soon’ card. See the magnificent Albert Memorial, opposite the Royal Albert Hall. And as we take the Flower Walk in summertime back to Kensington Palace, remember a Princess who lived here, who will never be forgotten. 

Hermione Cameron has been collecting these postcards and photographs for over a decade, in order to take the reader on a visual tour of this much-loved royal park, as it was in the early years of the 20th century. Deciphering handwritten messages, and researching family histories in the census returns, local archives, directories and newspapers, she brings the reader a social history commentary to celebrate the lives behind the scenes.

By the same author:

Notting Hill Behind the Scenes

Holland Park Behind the Scenes

Shepherd’s Bush Behind the Scenes

‘A stand-out book in the genre’ Picture Postcard Monthly

‘Discover the hidden stories which lie on every corner of our streets’ Kensington and Chelsea News

‘Lovingly annotated’ Robert Elms, BBC

128 pp

200 images

ISBN: 978-0-9556659-3-6

£14.99

Publication: 1 May 2023

KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES with FREE postage to UK £14.99 GBP KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES with Airmail to Europe £17.99 GBP KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES With Airmail to World £19.99 GBP

KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES 1 May 2023

ISBN: 978-0-9556659-3-6   £14.99

128 pp

200 images

ISBN: 978-0-9556659-3-6

£14.99

Publication: 1 May 2023

KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES with FREE postage to UK £14.99 GBP KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES with Airmail to Europe £17.99 GBP KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES With Airmail to World £19.99 GBP

See Kensington Gardens in beautiful images from stylish Edwardian postcards, sent and collected by visitors a hundred years ago. This was a golden age when each postcard was a little work of art and the quickest way to send a photograph with a message to loved ones. 

Follow the elegant Broad Walk between Palace Gate and Queensway, to see the statue of Queen Victoria and famous views of Kensington Palace. An original engraving shows Kensington Palace three hundred years ago when it was newly built. See the State Apartments when they opened to the public in 1899 for Queen Victoria’s 80th birthday and discover who was living at the palace a hundred years ago. Find the Elfin Oak near the Children’s Playground where ‘Time Flies’ and hear how J. M. Barrie the author of Peter Pan joined in the fun, racing balloons across the Round Pond. Near Lancaster Gate, find the statue of the twin teddy bears, and enjoy the calm beauty of the Italian Fountains, a romantic gift from Prince Albert to Queen Victoria. 

Visit Queen Caroline’s Temple, a Georgian folly, from which to see the Long Water and Hyde Park. See the Tea Gardens which became the Serpentine Gallery and look for the ‘Big Horse Statue’ of Physical Energy, sent by Bert to Auntie as a ‘get well soon’ card. See the magnificent Albert Memorial, opposite the Royal Albert Hall. And as we take the Flower Walk in summertime back to Kensington Palace, remember a Princess who lived here, who will never be forgotten. 

Hermione Cameron has been collecting these postcards and photographs for over a decade, in order to take the reader on a visual tour of this much-loved royal park, as it was in the early years of the 20th century. Deciphering handwritten messages, and researching family histories in the census returns, local archives, directories and newspapers, she brings the reader a social history commentary to celebrate the lives behind the scenes.

By the same author:

Notting Hill Behind the Scenes

Holland Park Behind the Scenes

Shepherd’s Bush Behind the Scenes

‘A stand-out book in the genre’ Picture Postcard Monthly

‘Discover the hidden stories which lie on every corner of our streets’ Kensington and Chelsea News

‘Lovingly annotated’ Robert Elms, BBC

128 pp

200 images

ISBN: 978-0-9556659-3-6

£14.99

Publication: 1 May 2023

KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES with FREE postage to UK £14.99 GBP KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES with Airmail to Europe £17.99 GBP KENSINGTON GARDENS BEHIND THE SCENES With Airmail to World £19.99 GBP

NOTTING HILL BEHIND THE SCENES First Edition 2007. Reprinted 2008, 2009, New Edition 2015 Reprinted 2019, 2023.

NOTTING HILL BEHIND THE SCENES
128 pp

ISBN 978-0-9556659-0-5 
Price £14.99

BehindTheScenesPublishing.Com

Available from all good bookshops.

Discover London's Notting Hill as it was a hundred years ago, presented in a unique collection of more than 200 images from 'Real Photo' and printed postcards. Take a visual tour which leads you from the unveiling of the Tube station at Notting Hill to the bustling market stalls of Portobello Road in the Edwardian era. Find out where the only Jealous man in London was a pub landlord, the Madders sisters had a dancing school, Napoleon's nephew experimented with poisons and where to find Mrs Memory and Miss Perfect. Follow in the footsteps of Notting Hill's residents all those years ago. Chapters guide you along Notting Hill High Street, Pembridge Road, Kensington Park Road, Ladbroke Grove, Lancaster Road and Westbourne Grove to Portobello Road. As a freelance journalist, Hermione Cameron has written about some of London's most creative and eccentric characters. She brings to NOTTING HILL BEHIND THE SCENES her own brand of commentary, including quirky facts and coincidences and a sheer delight in the people who don't always make it into the history books.

REVIEWS for Notting Hill Behind The Scenes:
'A stand-out book in the genre.' PICTURE POSTCARD MONTHLY

'A fascinating book collecting together old photographs and postcards of the area around Portobello Road, Labroke Grove and Notting Hill Gate. It shows how the streets have changed since 1900 but also how recognisable everything still is. Well researched with lots of information about the buildings, the shops and the people that ran them. A real treat if you live (or have lived) in the area.' PORTOBELLO READER, AMAZON.CO.UK

'A new book of historic photographs of the area' TIME OUT

'Discover the hidden stories which lie on every corner of our streets' KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA NEWS 

'Every street is charmingly, instantly, identifiable' THE HILL MAGAZINE
'If you want to know what Notting Hill was like all those years ago, this is a very good place to start. It's 'Notting Hill Behind the Scenes,' and it's been compiled and lovingly annotated by Hermione Cameron.' BBC Radio London 'THE ROBERT ELMS SHOW'

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SHEPHERD'S BUSH BEHIND THE SCENES by Hermione Cameron

Shepherd's Bush Behind the Scenes is an affectionate compilation of 240 images from postcards and photographs of Shepherd's Bush at the beginning of the twentieth century. Edwardian and 1920s images blend to give a visual tour of London's Shepherd's Bush a hundred years ago, highlighting residents 'behind the scenes' with wonderful names. This book takes you from Shepherd's Bush Green to Askew Road and from Brook Green to Wood Lane and on to and what you might have seen during a day at the Franco-British Exhibition in 1908, at 'The Great White City'.

Publication date 28 April 2016.
128 pages
240 images
ISBN 9780955665967

£14.99

Available from all good bookshops

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SHEPHERD"S BUSH BEHIND THE SCENES
If you had been wandering around London’s Shepherd’s Bush a hundred years ago, you might well have bumped into Miss Tiffin and Mrs Manners, Joseph Songest and Edward Doebedoe, Jane Evening and Helena Slipper, Mr Sherlock, Miss Watson and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. You might have come here to see Charlie Chaplin or Marie Lloyd perform at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, heard tales of highwaymen at The Wellington Arms, or cheered Queen’s Park Rangers at Loftus Road. You might have run around in the new Wormholt Park, ridden a tram along Askew Road, or travelled to Wood Lane on the Twopenny Tube.
If you had been here in 1908, you might also have been one of 8 million visitors to ‘The Great White City’, the name the public gave to the white palaces, pavilions and pagodas of the Franco-British Exhibition held that year in Shepherd’s Bush. You might have been here for the 1908 London Olympic Games as well and seen Dorando’s sensational Marathon Race.
If you had been here then, you would have bought postcards. This was the golden age of the postcard, when they were sent and delivered as frequently as you or I might send an email today. Postcard printers took photographs of your street so that you would send them around the country to family and friends to say “Look! This is where I live, where I work or where I visited today.” Postcards were often ‘Real Photo’ cards, a photograph on one side with the backing of a postcard which meant they were perfect for collecting in an album. Luckily for us, cards have survived and it has been a pleasure to go looking for them at auctions and online to collect them again.
This collection contains more than two hundred and forty images of Shepherd’s Bush, from the Edwardian era to the 1920s, and I have added a commentary to highlight the people who lived and worked in Shepherd’s Bush at the beginning of the twentieth century. Seeing familiar streets in postcards from all those years ago makes me wonder about the past overlapping with the present: how we may walk in someone else’s footsteps, turn the same street corner, pass the same shop and cross the same road, and do all this a century apart. It is a ghostly sense of history that holds a fascination for me and I hope for you too.
As a contributor to The Hill magazine, I wrote about some on Notting Hill’s most creative and eccentric inhabitants for the local history column. In the last ten years, the Edwardian residents of West London have featured in my books, the famous and more often the not-so-famous residents, the people dear to my heart, living behind the scenes.
Shepherd’s Bush became a centre for entertainment a century ago, with music hall, cinema, theatre, film studios and then television. The Shepherd’s Bush Empire is a proud reminder of that time. Events at the Franco-British Exhibition and the 1908 Olympics at ‘The Great White City’ today give us street names to remember them by: Dorando Close, White City Close, Exhibition Close and many more.
The challenge of this book has been the visual tour around Shepherd’s Bush, ordering scenes as they appear on the map. It has been great to find images which show more streets off the main roads so that today’s residents can feel involved. Looking through records at Hammersmith & Fulham Local Studies and Archives, the census records at the National Archives at Kew, old newspaper stories at the British Library and searching through beautiful postcard collections has been made happy by the discovery of each and every person and every image. Instead of an index, I have put names in bold type. I hope that the current and former residents of Shepherd’s Bush will see their grandparents or great grandparents in these photographs or find out who was living in their street a century ago.
SHEPHERD’S BUSH BEHIND THE SCENES was written for you. All that is left for me to say is that I really hope you enjoy this book and that if you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to contact Behindthescenespublishing.com
All good wishes!
Hermione Cameron

NOW ON SALE! PHOTOGRAPHS AND THE ODD WORDS by ED BROWSE

PHOTOGRAPHS AND THE ODD WORDS by Ed Browse 

£25 

First Edition

Hardback 

144pp 

87 Images 

Full Colour

230 x 230 mm 

810g

ISBN 978-0-9556659-2-9

Available from all good bookshops

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COMING SOON! 15 SEPTEMBER 2015

PHOTOGRAPHS AND THE ODD WORDS 

Ed Browse

PHOTOGRAPHS AND THE ODD WORDS 

Ed Browse

£25 

First Edition
Hardback 
144pp 
87 Images 
Full Colour
230 x 230 mm 
810g
ISBN 978-0-9556659-2-9

Available through all good bookshops.  

HOLLAND PARK BEHIND THE SCENES 21 OCT 2014

NEW TITLE 21 OCTOBER  2014

First Edition Published 21 October 2014    

Illustrated Paperback 
246 x 189 mm
144 pp
480g
ISBN 978-0-9556659-1-2 

Price £19.99

BehindTheScenesPublishing.Com

Available from all good bookshops

HOLLAND PARK BEHIND THE SCENES takes the reader back to the elegant days of the Edwardian era with a collection of more than two hundred photographs and postcard images of this much-loved area of London. Residents once again play an enjoyable role in the commentary: discover where Ezra Stilton, the Misses Stribling, John Fielder Hiss, William Smiles, Fred Foottet, Edgar Kettle, Mrs Missing, Annie Going and Henry Gonne, Mrs Whish, and Miss Cheere all lived or worked in Holland Park, a century ago. For today's residents, family historians, new visitors, and those nostalgic for days gone by.

Review: PICTURE POSTCARD MONTHLY, DECEMBER 2014

“Holland Park Behind the Scenes (Hermione Cameron) not only provides the reader with a pictorial cornucopia of Edwardian views of this genteel part of London, it introduces them to the residents of the time! Ms Cameron, who was inspired to write the book by the late politician Tony Benn, has spent long hours researching the occupants of houses and premises featured on the 200+ postcards, acquired from fairs and online, that appear in her book. For anyone who has lived in the area, this is a massive bonus in a postcard nostalgia book. For the rest of us, it’s a fascinating glimpse of the sort of people who inhabited the area a century ago. The cast includes artists, sculptors, barristers, stablemen and chauffeurs along with the celebrity body builder Eugene Sandow. The author reveals that postcard cartoonist Phil May and his wife lived on Holland Park Road and Phil was a regular (and a generous buyer) at the Holland Arms. Prominent Suffragettes lived at Campden Hill Square. By the time I’d learnt all this I felt I was on nodding terms with the area’s inhabitants! Grand houses, a skating rink and a host of shops all play their part in an impressive panoply of Edwardian life. Featured postcards include those by the top London publisher Charles Martin. The book’s last chapter focuses on Holland House, largely destroyed by German fire bombing in the 1940 blitz.”

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HOLLAND PARK BEHIND THE SCENES with FREE postage to UK £19.99 GBP HOLLAND PARK BEHIND THE SCENES with Airmail to Europe £24.99 GBP HOLLAND PARK BEHIND THE SCENES with Airmail to World £26.99 GBP