After the end of the Second World War, bohemian Soho went east, with artists, musicians and actors heading down to London’s docklands, where the “spirit of the Blitz” lived on in waterside pubs and music halls. Most famous of these outposts were the Theatre Royal, Stratford (where Joan Littlewood, Barbara Windsor, Murray Melvin and many other working-class actors established a spiritual home), the Iron Bridge Tavern in East India Dock Road (fiefdom of jazz pianist, singer and pub landlady, Queenie Watts), and The Waterman’s Arms on the Isle of Dogs, taken over by gay photographer, chat-show host and raconteur Dan Farson.

Led by social historian Ken Worpole, this walk will take you through the old and new streets of dockside Poplar, where politicians and planners promised a new world – the world we see today. Among the things we’ll see en route are Balfron Tower, a 26 storey Grade II* listed building designed by Ernö Goldfinger (whom the Bond villain is named after); the Festival of Britain-style Lansbury Estate, and the giant mural of artist Francis Bacon and Poplar-born actor, jazz pianist singer and pub land-lady, Queenie Watts – a mural celebrating the bohemian culture of Poplar in the 1950s and 1960s. The walk concludes aboard the S.S. Robin, a magnificent Victorian steamship.


Ken Worpole is a writer and social historian whose family came from Poplar, where his great-uncle George Worpole is commemorated on the First World War Memorial at St Michael’s & All Angels Church. Ken’s most recent book, “Brightening from the East: Essays on Landscape & Memory”, was chosen by Geoff Dyer as one of his 2025 “Books of the Year”.