Talk of a new England but our houses tell a different tale
Commentators have been quick to seize on the information now online in the 1911 census to paint a picture of a vastly different England - but I'm not so sure. True, in terms of life expectancy and wealth distribution, 1911 does seem markedly different from 2009. Then, the top one per cent owned about 70 per cent of everything - now they own a mere 23 per cent. However, I suspect that if the figures were adjusted to account for the non-doms and wealth held by Brits abroad, while agricultural land was omitted, the percentages might be similar.
In 1911 the biggest employer was domestic service - now it's retail and admin. But this is a globalised world, and our domestic service is done for us by those who produce our precious white goods - not to mention all those care-home employees and NHS workers who hail from the developing world.
Then there are those who point to the lowly antecedents of today's high-flyers as evidence of great transformations: in 1911 Kate Moss's great-grandmother was a "mantle-maker" living in Brixton, while David Beckham's great-great-grandfather was a "scavenger" around the Walworth Road. Big deal. While both Moss and Beckham have all the trappings of the super-rich, there's also no doubting both are parvenus.
Naturally, I went online to check out my own antecedents, as well as discover who was living in the house I currently inhabit. What I discovered substantiated my plus ça change view. My 20-year-old grandfather - who ended up at the Woolwich Arsenal - was living with his parents, and four of their grown-up children, in Fulham. These were only five of my great-grandmother's surviving seven children - she had had 11 in all. My great-grandfather was a "night inspector" at the local bus garage. So far, so respectable London working class - although also inhabiting the house was another family of three.
Meanwhile, living in my Stockwell home was the registrar for Lambeth, one William Edwards, together with his wife and 17-year-old son. Edwards was 71, his wife only 10 years younger: so they were older middle-class parents who'd only had a single child - very Noughties. They had a live-in maid, Florence Powell, who was 26. But while this substantial house had only four inhabitants in 1911, when I looked at the census for 1901 it was subdivided into three flats, with a total of 11 people in residence. The neighbourhood had been genteel to begin with in the 1870s, gone downhill, then been gentrified.
My great-grandparents' Fulham home - which they rented - is now in a very desirable area. My contention - which the recent plunge in the property market only seems to confirm - is that Londoners continue to occupy broadly similar positions, while it's our properties that exhibit the most profound social mobility.
An East End geezer up west
Posthumous congratulations are in order for Ian Dury, that doyen of the London rock scene, who, nine years after his death, has a West End musical dedicated to his life and works. Apparently, the show is no Mamma Mia! or We Will Rock You but has an unflinching grip on a character who was spikier than most. Attention to the actualité is only fitting for the man who penned such far East End ballads as Billericay Dickie and Plaistow Patricia, and whose first pub rock band was dubbed Kilburn and the High-Roads. Today's London may be ritzier — but I hardly think it as rootsy.
Football's still no game for girls
To the Emirates Stadium for Arsenal v Bolton Wanderers. Family Self have always been Gunners fans, not least because my grandfather actually ran the Woolwich Arsenal during the First World War — around the time the team went fully professional.
I hadn't been to a Premier League match since well, ever, in fact — the last time I went it was called the First Division and the terraces still had people standing on them. Still, while the team may have become more cosmopolitan since the glory days of the 1971 Double, the football itself still bore similarities. Arsène Wenger apparently sets great store on the "art" of football but the Gunners passing back and forth across the midfield was reminiscent of the defensive play that so blighted the English game 30 years ago; they weren't prepared to strike until they came within a foot of the Wanderers' goal — coincidentally the same length as the hot dog I bought my 11-year-old.
Still, the lad had the last word on social change, when, having sat silently throughout the game, he asked me in the dying minutes, "Dad, why aren't there any girls playing?"
