Issue 3 of The Camberwell Clarion

BRILLIANT BARBARA

RISING TO THE TOP

TAFE’S TREATS

Camberwell campaigner Barbara Pattinson

The new local bakery taking SE5 by storm

Ethiopian eatery Zeret Kitchen

A free newspaper for Camberwell

June/July 2022

None but the brave Local singer Amia Brave

003

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NEWS | 3

Welcome to issue 3 of The Camberwell Clarion South-east London has always been home to more than its fair share of musical and artistic talent, and our cover star for this edition is a prime example.

Supremely talented singersongwriter Amia Brave, who grew up in Camberwell, has been described as the “bright light the UK R&B scene has been missing” and has won plaudits for her “fresh new sound”.

Read her thoughts on making music, the trials and tribulations of the industry and why she’s determined to do things her way on page eight.

Local legend Barbara Pattinson will no doubt be a familiar face to many readers and it was a real pleasure to interview her for this issue. Barbara has lived in the area for more than 55 years and has been a longstanding champion of local life.

Her tireless work and endless passion for Camberwell and its people has resulted in many positive additions to the area over the years.

Among her many achievements, she helped establish the SE5 Forum, an influential local group that acts as the “eyes, ears and voice of the community”. Turn to page 11 to find out more.

We also caught up with new business Frog Bakery, whose fresh bread and pastries have already proved a big hit with locals since its launch back in April.

Founders Rebecca Spaven and Oliver Costello tell us how they came to open the bakery and what their vision is for the space on page 18.

Another hugely popular Camberwell food business, Tafeswork Belayneh’s Zeret Kitchen, is also featured inside.

Tucked away in an unassuming spot on Camberwell Road, the restaurant has won hundreds of rave reviews for its delicious food, and has established a reputation for some of the best Ethiopian cooking in London.

Turn to page 14 for the full story.

We’re now starting work on the next edition of The Camberwell Clarion, which will be the August/ September issue, published in mid-August.

If you run a local business or organisation and are interested in advertising with the Clarion and/ or our sister titles, The Peckham Peculiar, The Dulwich Diverter and The Lewisham Ledger, drop us a line at camberwellclarion@gmail.com to find out how we can promote what you do across Camberwell, southeast London and beyond.

And if you have a Camberwellrelated story that you think could be of interest to our readers, please get in touch via the same address. We would love to hear your ideas.

Thanks for reading!

Mark McGinlay and Kate White

THE CAMBERWELL CLARION Editors Mark McGinlay, Kate White

Illustrator Jessica Kendrew

Designer Mingo Mingo Studio

Contributors Rosario Blue, Ian Cleverly, Helen Graves, Julia Hawkins, Miranda Knox, Nikki Spencer, Luke G Williams

Photographer Lima Charlie Sub-editor Jack Aston

Marketing and social media Mark McGinlay

For editorial and advertising enquiries, email camberwellclarion@gmail.com camberwellnews.tumblr.com @camberwellnews

JUNE/JULY 2022

@camberwellnews @camberwellnews

Wheely good news A bike shop that supports refugees has opened in Camberwell.

The Bike Project refurbishes unwanted bikes and donates them to refugees and asylum seekers around the UK. Its new shop at 170-172 Camberwell Road, which opened this month, sells refurbished bikes along with cycle clothing and accessories. It also offers bike servicing and repairs. All proceeds from the shop go towards the Bike Project’s mission to get refugees and asylum seekers cycling.

Retail operations manager Marta Terruzzi is delighted with the new premises in a former residential marketing suite on the corner of Wyndham Road.

“When the opportunity to have a presence on Camberwell Road came up, we immediately jumped on it,” she said. “Hopefully it’s a convenient spot for Camberwell and southeast London residents to bring in their bikes for servicing.”

The Bike Project was started in 2013

by Jem Stein after he saw how much his brother’s old bike helped Adam, a Sudanese refugee from Darfur whom he mentored at university.

Jem began by doing up old bikes with his friends in his back garden and the charity has now grown to employ dozens of staff.

For many years it was based in Denmark Hill but its HQ is now located in a co-working space in Brixton. It also has a workshop in Deptford and another in Birmingham.

This summer the project is on target to give away its 10,000th bike to those in need and the team are keen to hear from anyone who has a set of wheels they no longer need.

“We’d really appreciate if people want to donate their unwanted bikes to a refugee or asylum seeker,” said Marta. “While waiting for their case to be processed, an asylum seeker is not allowed to work and must live off £39 a week. A bike can provide free access to vital services such as healthcare and legal aid and cycling also improves mental and physical health and tackles social isolation.”

As well as giving away bikes, the Bike Project runs community engagement programmes including Pedal Power, which offers free cycling lessons for refugee women.

Some of the participants have gone on to become instructors themselves.

The charity also puts on week-long social action workshops for 18- to 25-year-old refugees, which include BMX experiences.

It organises regular fundraising events such as Jokes and Spokes comedy nights to help finance these schemes.

While many bikes are given away to refugees and asylum seekers, a proportion are also done up and sold via the shop and website to raise more cash for the cause.

Stock ranges from refurbished children’s bikes to road bikes and folding bikes.

The charity is always keen to hear from volunteers. “Bike Buddies is a befriending programme where we match volunteer cyclists to bike recipients to go on local rides together,” said Marta.

“You could also volunteer at our workshop in Deptford if you fancy learning some mechanic skills.”

The Bike Project shop is open from Monday to Saturday. Visit thebikeproject.co.uk

4 | NEWS

The Bourne identity Camberwell born and bred writer and historian Stephen Bourne is celebrating after he was made a freeperson of the borough at a ceremony at Southwark Cathedral last month.

The award recognises exceptional service to the borough and is Southwark’s highest civic honour. Stephen’s award was made in recognition of his pioneering and wideranging work in the fields of black history and gay rights activism over a period of 30 years, as well as his 22 years of voluntary work as the longest serving independent advisor to Southwark police.

“It’s quite an honour and it was a very enjoyable day,” Stephen said. “It was particularly wonderful to be there with some members of my family and friends who I hadn’t seen since before lockdown.

“Southwark Cathedral was absolutely packed. There were six freedom of the borough awards given and there was a feeling of togetherness. I felt quite thrilled by the whole thing. The ceremony was really very emotional and wonderful.”

Among the other recipients of the freedom of the borough were legendary entertainer Tommy Steele, Olympic gold medal winner Tom Daley and England international footballer Jadon Sancho.

“I chatted to Tom Daley before the ceremony and was sat in front of Tommy Steele,” Stephen said.

aspects of black and gay history and culture.

Perhaps his best-known book, Black Poppies: Britain’s Black Community and the Great War, is being republished in a special children’s edition later this year.

Meanwhile, Stephen’s most recent book, Deep Are the Roots: Trailblazers Who Changed Black British Theatre, has been nominated for the prestigious Society for Theatre Research’s book prize.

“I’m really bowled over by all the attention,” Stephen said. “After 30 years of writing books and never ever winning a single prize at school it’s been worth the wait!”

PHOTO BY TRISTAN BEJAWN

“I turned to him and said how honoured I was to sit in front of a legend and he laughed.

“Funnily enough, the very first time I was ever taken to the theatre as a child – and we didn’t go to the theatre very much as kids – was when I was taken with some other children to the London Palladium in the Christmas of 1969 to see Tommy Steele in

Dick Whittington. So to come face-to-face with Tommy Steele all these years later was a real joy!”

Stephen’s first book Aunt Esther’s Story – which he co-authored with his adopted aunt Esther Bruce – was published in 1991. Since then he has won widespread acclaim for his groundbreaking catalogue of work examining hitherto ignored, overlooked or forgotten

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OV E R 250 5 S TA R REVIE WS

NEWS | 5

Music for the masses Organoke – a mass karaoke night with a difference – returns to St Giles’ Church on 25 and 26 June after a two-year Covid-enforced hiatus.

The brainchild of Camberwell couple Tom and Jordana Leighton and organist extraordinaire Ashley Valentine, Organoke sees several hundred people fill the pews, singing together and dancing in the aisle, accompanied by Ashley on the organ and a six-piece band.

A bar at the back of the church takes care of liquid refreshment and the night is hosted by writer, performer and experiential theatremaker Kit Green in character as Ida Barr, a faded Edwardian music-hall singer.

“By the end of the first song everyone is on their feet,” Jordana said. “If you can imagine 400 voices singing their hearts out to Bohemian Rhapsody that gives you some idea of what Organoke is like. It’s quite something!

“It’s a bit bizarre but there’s a community cohesion ethos behind it. There’s something about being in a room together and singing that makes everyone feel very bonded. And there’s something slightly anarchic about doing that while getting drunk in a church!”

There is a serious purpose behind Organoke as well, with proceeds going

towards the ongoing mission to raise £500,000 towards the restoration of St Giles’ historic organ, which was built in 1844

by Bishop & Son and designed by Samuel Sebastian Wesley.

Tom and Jordana admit they are excited about the return of Organoke. “We’re a bit nervous too. It’s been two years and a lot has

changed. We usually sell out in 24 hours so we decided to put on two nights this time, which we’ve never done before.

“To all those who have never experienced Organoke, there has never been a better time to grab some mates and find out what all the fuss is about. We can guarantee an amazing night.

“Saturday has sold out but there are returns. We still have tickets for Sunday, which is the perfect end to a weekend.”

Through the organisation Music at St Giles, Tom and Jordana are responsible for a range of music events at the church.

“Our big plan is to turn it into a Union Chapel [a church, live entertainment venue and charity drop-in centre in Islington] for south London,” Tom said. “We’ve got about 12 concerts already lined up over the next few months including Soirées Rouges, our ‘mostly French baroque festival’, which will be magical and involves some world-famous baroque musicians.

“We want to get the word out that St Giles’ is available at a cost-effective hire fee so that performers can perform to an audience without worrying if they can cover costs. We’re keen for it not to just be a classical music venue but a venue for almost anything.”

For more information and to book tickets, visit musicatstgiles.com and organoke.com

FREE DROP IN SESSIONS Health, Art, Music, Food Every Saturday at SE5 Forum stall 25 June - 30 July 10am to 1pm

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NEWS | 7

Jessica’s journey

Juicy gossip A new juice bar has opened on Camberwell New Road run by two friends who have known each other since they were teenagers.

Juice Box on the corner of Warner Road is run by Abraham Fessahaye and Absalom Gray, who both grew up just a few streets away, and their freshly made juices are already proving a big hit.

“We have had a really great start and we often sell out,” said Abraham. “We are right opposite Camberwell Bus Garage and all the drivers love our juices, and we get a lot of customers from PureGym too.”

The duo have bought two industrial juicers to make their juices and use fruit from New Spitalfields Market.

“Absalom goes every couple of days at 3 o’clock in the morning and he drives back laden with fruit,” said Abraham.

Their top seller is Sea of Green. “It’s got half a pineapple, a handful of kale, two apples and a slice of ginger,” explained Abraham. “Everyone loves it!”

Other options, which all sell for £5, include the Incredible Hulk – a blend of celery, pear, kale, cucumber and mint – and Purple Rain, which is made with beetroot, apple, lime and ginger.

Customers are offered a discount if they reuse drinks containers.

“We all need to eat healthier, not just for our bodies but for the environment too,” said Abraham. “We have recyclable bottles and compostable straws too. If people reuse the bottles, they get 15% off.”

Juice Box is part of Vegan Kitchen, a vegan restaurant and bar that Abraham and Absalom hope to open soon.

The venture, which can be found @vegankitchen_camberwellnewroad on Instagram, will serve freshly cooked food influenced by their heritage, alongside dinerstyle dishes such as vegan hotdogs.

“My background is Eritrean and Absalom’s is Jamaican so we will reflect that in what we offer,” said Abraham.

Juice Box is at 332c Camberwell New Road and is open seven days a week from 10am7pm, although Abraham says they do close earlier if they have sold out

JUNE/JULY 2022

A Camberwell writer’s book about what she has learned as the mother of a disabled child is out in paperback next month.

The Cracks that Let the Light In by Jessica Moxham is described as an “uplifting story about the power of family love, the joy of reading and what it means to be seen to be different.”

Jessica’s eldest son Ben, who is now 11, is severely disabled and needs help with all aspects of daily life.

The book developed out of Son Stories, a monthly blog that Jessica started in 2014, where she talks about Ben and his two younger siblings, now aged eight and five, and their family life.

“I decided to write the book because I felt that the way that people perceived our family isn’t the way it is,” explained Jessica.

“People often feel sorry for us or apologise to us for having Ben as our son, and while there are lots of things that are complicated about our lives and there have been periods that have been very difficult, on the whole we are mostly happy and no one needs to feel sorry for us or pity us.”

In the book Jessica shares her journey in raising Ben, whose disability means he will never be able to move or communicate without assistance. She had to learn how to feed Ben when he can’t eat and wrestle with red tape to secure his education.

As Ben began to thrive Jessica found that caring for a child with unique needs taught her about resilience, appreciating difference and doing things your own way. She explains how reading to Ben has enriched both their lives and allows them into new worlds beyond the walls of home and hospital.

Jessica’s book has been praised by writer Esther Freud who described it as a “powerfully moving and inspiring story”, while actor Rory Kinnear said it “chimed so clearly with my own experiences of growing up with a disabled older sister and my feelings as a parent. The book reveals that disabilities only make people different up to a point.

And that parenting, and the love of a parent, is the same.”

Jessica has been interviewed about her book and her life with Ben by journalist Emma Barnett on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and has been a guest on BBC Radio 5 Live and TalkRadio.

She has also given lectures to health professionals on her family’s experience.

The Cracks that Let the Light In, published

by Endeavour, will be available to buy from 7 July, priced £9.99. Local stockists will include Review on Bellenden Road in Peckham

Wartime memories The remarkable wartime memoirs of Camberwell-born Kitty Baxter are to be published in a new book titled I’ll Take That One: An Evacuee’s Childhood.

The daughter of a Camberwell roadsweeper and cleaner, Kitty was just nine when she was evacuated from south-east London to the countryside near Ipswich.

Separated from her middle sister and placed in a strict country house with her eldest sister, the two girls were treated more like servants than vulnerable children.

It was the first of three times that Kitty would be rehoused far from home during World War Two – with further spells of evacuation occurring in Hastings and Blackpool. Many of her experiences proved

gruelling and challenging, such as when she was called home after her baby brother Charlie-boy died of “shelter cough”. Others were a little more comic and bizarre – for example, when she was unknowingly housed with a group of female prostitutes.

Kitty explained to The Camberwell Clarion what inspired her to put pen to paper and share her account of her wartime experiences. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t write it originally for publication,” she said with a cheeky laugh.

“I wrote it because I got fed-up with listening to my grandchildren moaning about what they’ve got and what they haven’t got.

I thought if I got down on paper what life was like when I was their age they might stop moaning!”

The story of how the book came to be published is also a remarkable one. Kitty – who now lives in social housing in Mayfair – was on her daily walk around Grosvenor Square when she spotted a “chap who was looking miserable”.

“I said to him, ‘Oh, cheer up!’” Kitty recalls. “He said, ‘That’s not a Grosvenor Square voice, you’re a Cockney!’ Well, we got chatting and at one point I told him, ‘I’ve been writing a book, don’t know any publishers do you?’ He said, ‘As a matter of fact I do!’ He pulled out his phone, rang up this bloke he knew who’s a publisher and said, ‘I’ve got a woman here who has a very interesting story.’ Next thing you know I had

a publisher!”

With Kitty’s eye and ear for a great story and brilliant sense of humour, I’ll Take That One: An Evacuee’s Childhood will surely be one of the year’s must-read volumes.

I’ll Take That One: An Evacuee’s Childhood is published by Allison & Busby and will be available from all good bookshops, as well as online retailers, from 23 June

8 | MUSIC

Amazing Amia With her heartfelt lyrics and smooth sound, Amia Brave is an R&B star on the rise

BY ROSARIO BLUE “Even if there’s just one person cheerleading you on, there’s always someone who appreciates the work you’re putting out. That’s why I always say you have to do it for yourself. It can’t be from a place of, ‘I just want to be famous’, or pressure to be successful by a certain age. You have to truly enjoy what you’re doing, and I truly love making music.”

Amia Brave is a singer-songwriter from Camberwell, whose resonant, mellifluous voice has earned her more than 67,000 monthly Spotify listeners and over 3 million combined views on YouTube.

She was born in Peckham and moved to Camberwell when she was one.

“I grew up in Camberwell,” the 26-year-old tells me. “Camberwell is one of those places where there’s not that many houses – it’s very small.

People kind of go through Camberwell either to get to Brixton or to get to Walworth Road or Peckham. Growing up, what was good about Camberwell is that there were a lot of families, there were a lot of other kids to play with. It’s bustling now; it’s like a baby Shoreditch.”

A child of the performing arts, Amia began to immerse herself in that world from a young age, doing musical theatre at Theatre Peckham and later studying film and drama at Anglia Ruskin University. She made her TV debut in an episode of Dr Who on BBC One, in which she was the main guest character.

“I’ve always enjoyed performing, writing and everything creative,” she says. “Around my uni days, I would go to any open mic and just perform.

I always wanted to be a singer; I just didn’t know how to get there. I started meeting other artists, meeting other producers and kind of took it from there.”

Amia released some early tracks on SoundCloud, where she also collaborated with other artists like fellow south Londoner Fred Fredas.

But, she says, “I didn’t really have the confidence to put my music out there.

I was performing a lot, my unreleased stuff.”

In 2019, though, she finally brought out her debut single Young and Misguided, which she wrote while at uni, on Spotify – followed by Sweet Love and Deja Vu. Urban music outlet GRM Daily said of the latter: “Amia flows effortlessly alongside the steady R&B beat while creating a passionate and fresh new sound.”

Then, in the midst of releasing her own music, in late 2020 she also featured on up-and-coming southeast London rapper Enny’s breakout

hit Peng Black Girls. The track is a celebration of black women, and a song of empowerment and selflove, making it the UK’s equivalent of Beyoncé’s Brown Skin Girl.

“The song came about quickly. I wasn’t even thinking like, ‘Oh it’s gonna be this big song,’ not at all,” Amia says.

“It was like, ‘Yeah, let me just do this hook.’

“It’s just so crazy, because it’s the thing that you kind of least expect.

What was cool about it was that a lot of people felt like they could see themselves: ‘Oh, there’s girls who look like me, and they’re singing about things that relate to us.’”

Songs like Peng Black Girls that affirm black women are important, because they suffer erasure in the entertainment industry due to racism and colourism. Controversy became attached to the single, however, when a remix of the track was performed on Colors, an influential YouTube channel that showcases performances by artists from all over the world.

Everybody expected to see Amia, but neither she nor her lines were present; instead Jorja Smith, a mixed-race black woman, delivered a new verse, much to the ire and disappointment of many fans. Though Smith’s established popularity brought more eyes to Enny’s single – the track has amassed more than 18 million views to date – it felt, for many, like a contradiction of the song’s message.

It was claimed that the decision could have been the label’s. Some argued that the performance could have still included Amia’s hook, alongside Smith’s new verse and ad-libs.

“Music gets really complicated.

Sometimes how it appears is not actually how it comes across to the audience. It’s just one of those unfortunate things,” says Amia.

“Also, at that time, there was a lot of race issues going on, and lockdown.

People were at home, there was more time to have conversations.

This was really high in the air. It was no fault of the artists [Enny and Smith] themselves at all. There are teams, and sometimes people are not thinking about how things can come across.”

Amia is an independent artist, which comes with some benefits. Having full control over your creative and career decisions is one of them. “When I was younger, I [cared too much] about what people thought about the type of songs I sang,” she says. “As you get older and more comfortable with yourself, you care less about what people want. You actually just make music and you tell stories that are true to you.”

However, there are downsides too.

“You have to do everything yourself.

You’re basically wearing every single hat that would be a label’s – you’re the marketing team, you’re your own A&R,” she says. “And if you’re trying to focus on writing and recording, it’s hard to put things out consistently, because, of course, you don’t have the financial backing; everything costs money.”

Amia is currently working on her new EP, and will be releasing a new single. With her continued success, the pressure to constantly deliver new music is ever looming. Expectant eyes are firmly glued to the sonorous songstress’s next steps, which can be stressful.

“I take breaks all the time,” she says. “If I can’t write something, or I’m feeling like I’m stuck on something, I just move on. I don’t put on too much pressure. Even with my EP, it’s taking longer than I would have anticipated, but I’m not stressing myself out about it. I’m just enjoying the process. I think that’s the best way to do it.”

Amia is no stranger to the challenges that come with being

You’re not gonna meet Jay-Z in the lobby; it’s not like that anymore. I’m part of the DIY era – you have to make it yourself

Above: Camberwell singersongwriter Amia Brave PHOTO BY JULIA HAWKINS

creative. That’s why she advises aspiring musicians to never lose sight of why they started making music in the first place.

“If I could tell my younger self something, I would say to just keep creating and put it out, rather than trying to send it around here, there and the third. Just make it and put it out yourself, and just build it up that way. I spent a lot of time hoarding my music, because I was kind of waiting for someone.”

She cites the MTV show Diary, a documentary series about big names in the music industry including Destiny’s Child, Shakira and Alicia Keys going about their everyday lives.

“I’m a 90s baby, so I grew up watching MTV’s Diary,” she says.

“Once, getting a record deal was [a case of] ‘I was outside of the label and I sang, and then they took me into an office and signed me.’ But of course, because I grew up in the 90s, I’m part of that digital era, where actually it’s the DIY era. You have to make it happen yourself. You’re not gonna meet Jay-Z in the lobby; it’s not like that anymore.”

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COMMUNITY | 11

A community champion Longstanding local resident and force of nature Barbara Pattinson tells us how she came to Camberwell and what she loves about the area

BY MIRANDA KNOX Barbara Pattinson was born and raised in San Diego, went to school in Colorado and then moved to San Francisco – but Camberwell is the place that she affectionately calls “home”.

Having lived in the same three-bed townhouse on Champion Hill since she moved to the area more than 55 years ago in 1966, Barbara has been passionately involved in a wide range of local projects ever since, and as a result has become well-known in the neighbourhood.

Recognitions she has received include the Keib Thomas Active Citizen of the Year and Southwark Civic awards.

She is also a patron of the Southwark Day Centre for Asylum Seekers, and a King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust governor.

Additionally, in 2006 she helped establish influential group the SE5 Forum – a grassroots, non-political voluntary group that works to improve Camberwell for the benefit of all community members.

Until recently former nursery schoolteacher Barbara was the chair of the organisation, which was set up to “be the eyes, ears and voice of the community, to see and understand what is happening within the area, to listen to concerns and raise them with the relevant organisations.”

Barbara says: “If anybody asks me what the SE5 Forum is for, I say we’re a group of volunteers who work hard solely to promote the improvement of Camberwell.

“I think we have really contributed to people feeling a good community spirit in Camberwell. That’s one of the things I’m most proud of.

“That’s the basis for everything isn’t it? If people really love somewhere, they’ll look after it and do the best for it.”

Since its inception, the group has collectively and tirelessly worked to improve the area. Its influence is widereaching, and even if you don’t know the forum, it’s likely if you live in the

JUNE/JULY 2022

I think the SE5 Forum has really contributed to people feeling a good community spirit in Camberwell

Above: Barbara Pattinson PHOTO BY JULIA HAWKINS

area that you will have benefited from one of its many campaigns.

Over the years its work has included setting up the Camberwell Leisure Centre Working Party, which led to the refurbishment of the leisure centre.

It supported the establishment of the popular Camberwell Green Farmers’ Market, the creation of Camberwell Community Choir and also launched the Friends of Camberwell Green, which works to conserve and enhance the historic local park.

In 2016 the forum was nominated for Community Group of the Year in the Southwark Stars Awards by Community Southwark, and most recently, it supported the local community during the Covid crisis, as well as crowdfunding for many of the murals, maps and banners dotted across the area.

It also works with a number of partners in Camberwell to gather views about issues that matter to the community and to help deliver improvements.

To operate, it relies on the support of local residents, businesses and organisations.

Barbara says: “We get core funding from Lambeth through the Lambeth Forum Network.

“Without this funding, it is doubtful that we would have survived as we have. We owe a lot to their support.”

After meeting her English husband Trevor in San Francisco, the couple married in 1964 when Barbara was 25 and two years later they went on to move to Camberwell.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Explaining her journey to settling down in Camberwell with Trevor – who sadly died last year – and their two sons, Barbara says: “We were married for 57 years.

“Trevor went to the Royal College of Art and got into interior and furniture design, and I’d studied English literature and language.

“When I arrived in ‘swinging London’ it was the place to be at the time, although there was still a lot of war damage.

“Before we were married we lived in Fulham in one of my husband’s old student flats, which was pretty grisly if I’m honest! We lived in a basement flat, until I fell pregnant.

“Then when it was time to settle down, we started looking for our own home.

“In those days you could have bought a five-bedroom Edwardian semi for £5,000 – but you’d have had to do everything to it yourself.

“In the 1960s house repairs were a real issue. We could have got an old place and done it up, as Trevor was an amazing designer, but we decided to get a new house instead.

“We were looking at places all over London. So many were poorly designed and finished.

“Trevor then saw an advert in the Sunday paper that read, ’11 minutes from Westminster’, which was for The Hamlet.

“We got down here and it was a Civic Trust award-winning architectdesigned collection of 32 houses. It had a green, and initially just the first eight houses were built and for sale.

It was a marvellous solution for our family home.

“We were the third family to move in, and the house cost £8,950, which was a fortune [at the time].

“We got to know our neighbours really well and could welcome the new families too.”

At the time, the area was of course very different to how it is today, partly due to the SE5 Forum’s tireless work – but Barbara has purposefully ensured her home has remained much the same.

She says: “The area was very ordinary [back then].

“Much of Camberwell is quite smart now as so many places have been gentrified.

“I like the neighbourhood. I feel at home and it has a nice feeling of community.

“Camberwell Church Street is a great place to have a drink or meal and there are so many great parks too.

“I’m still here in the same house. I love it and I always have. We bought it because we loved it so I haven’t done much to it.

“The kitchen is almost a galley – my cousin saw it and said, ‘Ah, designed by a man!’

“Christmas, Thanksgiving, family holidays, birthdays – all of it came out of this kitchen.”

To find out more, visit the SE5 Forum stall at the farmers’ market on Camberwell Green every Saturday from 10am-2pm. For more information or to join the forum, visit se5forum.org. uk or contact admin@se5forum.org.uk

12 | CAMBERWELL IN PICTURES

Capturing Camberwell

BY MIRANDA KNOX Whether it’s eating a pizza in Theo’s or sipping a coffee in Lumberjack, everyone has their own special places in Camberwell that hold particularly fond memories.

Now there’s a way to appreciate the intricate, often unnoticed details of these hotspots – through illustrator Natasha Godfrey’s incredibly detailed observational illustrations of some of the area’s favourite businesses and buildings.

Natasha has worked at Lumberjack for the last five years as a cafe manager, and is also an illustrator who focuses on architecture and buildings – especially those around Camberwell.

Natasha – who lives in East Dulwich – says: “The area has real personality, and really nice architecture. Camberwell has such a community.

“People love supporting local businesses, so all my illustrations of local places in Camberwell are really popular, because people genuinely love the places as they have a lot of memories attached.”

Despite her obvious talent and extensive portfolio of work, Natasha only started pursuing illustrating as more of a career rather than just a hobby during lockdown.

She says: “I studied photography but I’ve always drawn. When travelling I wanted to capture memories of where I’d been, and it’s just something I’ve always done on the side.

“I started drawing more when I started at Lumberjack as I had a good work-life balance.

“Then I got furloughed at the beginning of lockdown and made a decision early on not to waste having the time off, so I decided to give illustration a go and make it from a hobby into more of a business.

“It went from me drawing because I loved it and capturing various places, into doing more commissions too.”

Natasha predominantly creates A4 designs, selling originals as well as producing other items such as cards and notebooks.

Prints generally cost around £20 and each illustration can take anywhere between two and 12 hours to complete, depending on the complexity of the design.

Natasha says: “My style is freehand pen illustration. I don’t use any rulers, it’s all drawn how I see it. A lot of people do digital, whereas I draw pen on paper as I prefer it.

“When I first started, I drew a couple from life, but now I do it mainly from photos because I want to get the intricacy of the buildings right and it’s a lot easier at home with a desk rather than on the street.

“I do think there is something about interestinglooking buildings, or those that have quirks or interesting architecture, and especially focusing on the brickwork.

“There are also businesses that I really like, so one of my early ones was Falafel & Shawarma.

People really love it for good reason. Silk Road is also really popular – people have a lot of memories in those places.”

JUNE/JULY 2022

CAMBERWELL IN PICTURES | 13

JUNE/JULY 2022

14 | FOOD AND DRINK

Ethiopian eats After starting out serving English fry-ups, cafe owner Tafe Belayneh decided to offer customers traditional cuisine from her native Ethiopia instead. Today her Camberwell restaurant Zeret Kitchen is one of the best places for Ethiopian food in London and has won hundreds of rave reviews online

BY HELEN GRAVES It’s easy to miss Camberwell Road restaurant Zeret Kitchen thanks to its position tucked away behind the Camberwell Islamic Centre, under the shadow of Castlemead.

It’s actually been open since 2002 and is owned by Tafeswork Belayneh – or “Tafe” as she’s known locally – and is named after her hometown in Ethiopia, a rural village in the highlands of the north.

In the early days however the popular restaurant was quite different to how it is today. It began life as a cafe, serving greasy spoon-style breakfasts.

“I used to cook bacon, sausage, all the English breakfasts,” Tafe says. “I would start at 6am and finish at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. But I am also Orthodox Christian so to eat pork is forbidden, and during lunchtime I had to prepare my own vegan dish for myself and my husband. We would eat and people would say, ‘Oh, what is that?’”

Orthodox Christians make up almost 44% of Ethiopia’s population, and the religion governs the way people eat, with strict fasting periods during which the consumption of meat or dairy products is forbidden. As a result, people became innovative, creating richly spiced stews called “wots” from lentils and other dried pulses.

“I told the customers this is vegan food for us and when they tasted it, they really liked it,” Tafe says. “The people who came for English fry-ups encouraged me, they said, ‘Why can’t you start cooking this food instead?’

So in 2004 I started this new business with my husband.”

At first the duo found it hard to make the new direction work. “It was really a struggle to make money, we suffered a loss,” Tafe says. “We couldn’t afford to pay staff, it was a really, really bad time, but now, business is good. People are more aware of the health benefits of eating vegan food. We do serve meat, but most of our customers are vegetarian or vegan.”

People now come from all over the country to try Tafe’s food. “People travel one hour, two hours, and they call us from abroad when they come for holidays.”

Ethiopian food is made for sharing, and a typical meal involves a variety of dishes – mainly slow-cooked preparations with vegetables. These are all served on top of injera, a bubbly bread that looks like a giant pancake, used to scoop up the stews and acting as both plate and cutlery.

“Injera is made from a fermented dough,” explains Tafe. “Because of [the] fermentation it is sour and acidic.

“To make injera you have to make the dough first and leave it for between three and five days to be fermented naturally. You don’t use any yeast or anything, no salt, nothing.

Once it is fermented we have a special baking pan to cook it. A big wide pan.

“It is made of a grain called teff, a small grass grain that grows in Ethiopia, but here it is very difficult to make it with 100% teff, so we have to mix it with wheat and rice. If people have a wheat allergy we can also provide 100% teff.”

Tafe has to import the 100% teff injera from Ethiopia – it arrives while we are chatting and is a darker colour than Tafe’s injera, closer to brown than

the pale bread colour of the partwheat injera.

“Teff has lots of health benefits and nowadays people call it a super grain.

It is quite expensive but we manage to import it,” Tafe says.

“You can count up to 100 vegan stews in Ethiopian cuisine – more than that actually – but the ones we serve are vegetarian, vegan and we have beef stew, lamb [and] chicken too.

“We cook everything from scratch.

We have to buy raw lentils – everything is raw from the market.

The spices I get from Ethiopia, like the berbere.”

Berbere is a chilli spice mix, which is an essential component of Ethiopian cuisine and is the flavour foundation of a large number of dishes. According to Tafe it should contain a lot of things but never cloves, cinnamon

You can count more than 100 vegan stews in Ethiopian cuisine

Above: Zeret Kitchen owner Tafe Belayneh PHOTO BY ARTHUR J COMELY

or ground coriander, which makes it taste bitter. Many of the spices are not available to buy here in the UK, she says.

“You need lots of the right spices and you need a special grinder – I don’t know the name in English but it’s a big grinder.”

The most popular meal at Zeret is the vegan combination, which is a selection of different wots, including spicy lentils, chickpeas, yellow split beans, green beans and carrots and potatoes.

There is a depth of flavour and a richness to the stews that many assume comes from butter or oil, but is in fact due to a method of slowly cooking the onions, which are used as a base.

After chopping the onions very finely, Tafe cooks them incredibly slowly until they form a dark yellow paste, which she then uses to begin cooking each dish.

“Onion is the main ingredient for Ethiopian cooking,” she says, “along with garlic and spices.”

The dishes themselves also benefit from long, slow cooking, which inevitably means long hours and early starts.

“At four o’clock in the morning we go to the vegetable market,” Tafe says. “It all takes between six and nine hours every day to make the food.”

Due to customer demand she produced a vegan cookery book in partnership with a local customer called Vicky Lawson.

“My customers want to know how to make the vegan food and they ask if I’ll open a cookery class, but my kitchen is very small so we came up with this idea.”

Called Zeret at Home, it is available to buy from the restaurant for £7 and includes many of Tafe’s most popular recipes, along with a guide to making injera and the method for those magic onions.

It’s now 5pm and the first customers are already arriving – a family with a small child in tow – and Tafe begins to busy herself, taking a fresh injera from a stack she has made earlier in the day (injera must be stored at room temperature, otherwise it becomes crumbly), carefully arranging her different dishes on top. Extra rolls of injera are presented around the perimeter.

The restaurant is now a well-oiled machine and customers keep coming back because the food, service and atmosphere are so consistently good.

If you want to experience what is arguably some of the best Ethiopian food in London on your doorstep, Zeret Kitchen is the place to come.

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BUSINESS | 17

A company that’s going places Ben Knowles’ business Pedal Me began in 2017 and now employs nearly 100 people. He explains how his fleet of electric cargo bikes keeps London moving cleanly and greenly

BY IAN CLEVERLY What do Joanna Lumley, Jeremy Corbyn and New Orleans-style jazz, pop and funk ensemble Heavy Beat Brass Band have in common? Not much, on first inspection.

But they have all been transported around London by Pedal Me, an electric cargo bike passenger and cargo company founded by Camberwell’s Ben Knowles.

The bright idea to make a business out of his bike hit him on a date night in a Camberwell pub. Ben and his cargo bike were virtually inseparable. If the course of true love, as Shakespeare would have it, never did run smooth, then there was one hurdle to overcome that evening – how to get back to her place without the star-crossed lovers parting…

“I didn’t want to leave the cargo bike on the street while getting public transport, and didn’t want to break the moment, so I gave her a lift in the bike,” says Ben. “And that was the first realisation that you could carry adults on the front of a cargo bike. That’s where the idea stemmed from to start a taxi service.”

Ben was an early adopter of the cargo bike revolution that has swept the capital in recent years. Back in 2016, he and fellow Pedal Me founder Chris Dixon were working on a local community cycling project, teaching young people to ride bikes. But they reached a stumbling block, both practically and ethically.

“We needed a way to move the bikes around, so tried using Zipvans, and that was really expensive and inefficient,” Ben says. “Sometimes it would take 10 minutes to get there, sometimes it would take an hour.

“I wanted people to see cycling as a practical activity and felt that us turning up in a motor vehicle was not setting the right tone. So we bought some cargo bikes and had big trailers built up that could be towed behind the bikes, moving 30 at a time – a lot more than you can fit in a transit van.

And much quicker to load and offload.

“I spent quite a lot of time trying to convince logistics companies that cargo bikes were a good solution for them, and I did get some traction, but it was all taking too long for me.”

JUNE/JULY 2022

You’ll get the impression of a man in a hurry. Indeed, getting Ben to sit still for an uninterrupted half hour for the purposes of this interview proved hard enough. Persistent pings and alerts from his mobile and laptop ring out, a pink logoed cargo bike is ready nearby should it be needed for urgent deliveries, and an earpiece monitors the hectic flow of work controlled from the Pedal Me base near Waterloo.

This is one very hands-on entrepreneur. No comfy office and reclining executive chair for this boss.

Wherever he can find some wifi and parking space for a bike, Ben will fire up the laptop and work on the next step in building his rapidly expanding business that now employs almost 100 staff.

It’s come a long way since Pedal Me’s foundation back in 2017. A phone call to e-cargo bike specialists Urban Arrow in the Netherlands got Ben up and running with his project: he needed a unique machine that could carry two passengers, or cargo, or a mix of the two. A master’s design student took on the challenge, the first prototype was hand-delivered to Ben at St Pancras, and he couldn’t wait to get started.

“This couple were walking down the street. The guy had a guitar, and I gave them a lift down the road, so I’ve got photos of the first ever Pedal Me ride. You can see the joy on the woman’s face!”

The company got underway with a budget of £14,000 and a grand total of two bikes. “We were working really long hours. We took two jobs in a week at the start, and £452 in the first month, which today is around 15 minutes of revenue – that gives you some idea of how quickly it has grown.

There were months when a new market would find us and it would go wild, doubling in a matter of weeks. It was exponential from the beginning, completely crazy.

“The whole thing has been ridiculous at every stage: incredible, all-consuming, exhilarating – the works.”

As with almost every other business in London, the pandemic hit hard: “Overnight, 95% of our work went away. A complete nightmare. It cost

a huge amount of money. We had to completely reconfigure what we were doing. The government support packages covered some of it, but nowhere near all of it.”

A change of focus away from passenger transport towards cargo deliveries proved to be the company’s saviour – 10,000 care packages delivered for Lambeth Council in early lockdown showed the viability and capability of the cargo bike fleet replacing traditional van deliveries in the city, with each highly trained rider capable of carrying up to 150kg without adding to the poor air quality of our streets. Now, the client base ranges from coffee roasteries in Hackney to beer barrel collections in Soho to entire flat-moves – the carrying capabilities of one bike fitted with a trailer are quite staggering.

One contentious issue worth raising is batteries. Electric cars and vans are being promoted as a viable alternative to their polluting petrol and diesel predecessors, yet the battery production process itself is

The whole thing has been ridiculous at every stage: incredible, allconsuming, exhilarating – the works

Above: Ben Knowles PHOTO BY JULIA HAWKINS

massively carbon intensive. How does Ben square that circle? “One Tesla has enough batteries for 75 of our bikes; an electric Humvee, 250,” he replies.

“And we can pretty much replace van trips, like for like, using the vehicles and the training we have today. Even with trailers, there are around 25% of van deliveries we cannot cover, but we are very capable.”

It’s been a long haul, but now the business is expanding at pace.

“There’s a couple of things that have kept me going through some pretty hard times,” Ben reflects. “One is the sheer joy that it elicits in people. Plus when they dig into what we are doing and find that it’s actually good all the way down. It is fun and provides a useful service that is cost effective; we treat our staff properly, employing people from different circumstances, and help tackle climate change and air pollution.”

On that note, Ben finishes his coffee and shoots off towards Borough for a pick-up. Our half hour is up. And he is going places.

18 | FOOD AND DRINK

Hop to it We meet the founders of Frog Bakery

BY HELEN GRAVES Rebecca Spaven and Oliver Costello opened the doors to Frog Bakery on 1 April, after a successful crowdfunding campaign and a whirlwind few months of preparation. Sandwiched between Culture Lebanese Grill and Kalon salon on Peckham Road, the bakery already feels bedded in, like it’s been producing trays of featherlight, butter-laden croissants and springy baguettes for years. Many local residents already call themselves regulars and it’s particularly busy on weekends when queues for warm pastries curl away from the door and up past Camberwell College of Arts.

Frog was funded via the Kickstarter platform, reaching its target in just 48 hours. “We did it for two reasons,” says Rebecca. “The first is that obviously we needed some money and it’s really expensive to fit out a bakery.

The second is that we wanted to really get to know the community, and so many of our neighbours found out about us because of the Kickstarter campaign. The people who funded us have felt invested emotionally in the bakery and it’s been so fantastic to get to know people.”

“So many people have been coming in and saying, ‘I’ve been wanting a bakery here for 10 years!’” adds Oliver.

“People have been waiting for this to happen.”

While crowdfunding might sound like a simple way to raise cash, it’s a lot of work, a big risk and there’s no guarantee it will cover costs. “We had to scrape a few more bits of money from family and stuff,” says Oliver.

“Looking back, we were super naive about how much this place would cost. The price of steel and aluminium went up, the price of all the raw materials and parts went up, and lead times were escalating massively.

“My dad actually did a lot of the building works, including the plumbing, electrics, the mains – he project-managed it basically. It would have taken twice as long without him.”

Opening the bakery in the middle of a rising costs crisis was a factor in their decision to source ingredients as locally as possible. “We were very keen that we only wanted to buy UK [produced] flour, and that’s not been too difficult because we get most of our flour from Wessex Mill in Oxfordshire. They mill wheat that’s grown in quite a small radius from the mill, which is great. We also get flour from the Fresh Flour Company in Devon. He [the owner] works with heritage grain and he’s a stone miller, so it’s a beautiful colour too.”

While Rebecca is a breadmaker, Oliver’s focus is pastries, which means Frog offers a range of both.

“There aren’t that many places that

offer both [bread and pastries] really well,” says Oliver. “I think you get places that focus on either one, and we felt like we had an opportunity to bring some expertise in both areas.

Good bread is hard to come by, good croissants are hard to come by. We have beautiful cakes, too. It’s all in the same place.”

But while the duo have different specialisms, they share the same vision. “We only met a year and a half ago, which is kind of mad really, considering what’s happened,” says Rebecca. “We were introduced by a mutual friend who we’ve both worked with at various different places, and for two years she was whanging on about how we should meet and I was like, ‘Yeah yeah, how great can he be?’

“So we met up in deep lockdown and went for a walk, and found that we both had the same dream of opening a bakery in that abandoned building in Ruskin Park.”

Quickly realising this was financially unfeasible, they began to formulate a plan to launch in a different location.

“We shared a dream of what the ideal bakery might look like. We wanted to make something quite creative but also community-focused and welcoming,” says Rebecca.

“No brunch!” Oliver laughs. “Not that there’s anything wrong with brunch, but we wanted this to be an old-school retail bakery – a hole in the wall. You walk in and you see us bake and there’s not much distance between the bakery and the customer, which is what I’ve always felt in professional kitchens – there’s such a huge gap. It’s nice to be there right in front of people. They see the bread coming out of the oven – and us looking knackered and sweating!”

“I’ve always worked in open bakeries,” says Rebecca. “The first bakery I worked at – Bread by Bike – was a similar sort of deal where the oven was right there by the counter.

I always really loved pulling bread out of the oven – it’s one of the most satisfying things you can do, providing it’s worked!

“If not, it’s awful. But sharing that experience with the customer brought me a lot of joy. Bread is just uncomplicated joy isn’t it – the sight and smell of it. And so I definitely wanted to put the oven right in the middle. Brick House [bakery in East Dulwich, sadly now closed] was similar in a way, the kitchen was tucked away a bit but customers could peer in.”

“I’ve always been tucked away!” says Oliver. “In the basement, behind a closed door. I’ve been at Ottolenghi for four years, and before that, I was at Hawksmoor.”

Their combined experience amounts to one incredible selection of baked goods. “On the bread side of things, we do a ‘sort of’ house sourdough, which is the malted wheat – it’s got some rye and some wholemeal and malted wheat flakes, which give it a Swedish flavour,” says Rebecca.

“I was keen not to do a plain white sourdough and surprisingly few people have been put off by us not having it, which is great. My personal fave is the miche, which is a 2kg loaf that we sell

Pulling bread out of the oven is one of the most satisfying things you can do

Above: Rebecca Spaven and Oliver Costello Below: the Frog team PHOTOS BY LIMA CHARLIE

by the half and quarter – or whole – and that is a half wholemeal, a quarter rye and a quarter white flour, and it’s designed to feed a family for a week.

It will stay fresh and it’s full of flavour.

“We also do a classic baguette and a 100% rye. Sometimes the baguettes are baked twice a day so you can get a warm baguette in the afternoon. We will expand but that’s our range for now.”

The pastries are equally brilliant, as Oliver explains. “We do a classic croissant, of course, along with some chocolate pastries including the chocolate twist, which is a bit of a joke because they do them in Sainsbury’s across the road. Then we do savoury pastries like the ham suisse, which is a pun on a pain suisse but with ham inside – it’s really caught on. We cook the ham in the residual heat of the oven overnight.

“We are trying to stick to a meat Danish, a croissant, a savoury Danish and a sweet Danish. We did a caramel Bramley apple with wholemeal frangipane, which was great.”

Recent additions include a spectacular (and pungent) Boursin pastry – a flaky swirl flavoured with Frog’s version of the famous garlic and herb cream cheese.

Pastries aside, the question on everyone’s lips has been, “Why ‘Frog?’”

The answer is unexpected. “It’s based on a haiku about a frog that we saw at a friend’s exhibition in Manchester,” explains Oliver. “I keep thinking maybe we should just say, ‘Because we really like frogs, OK?!’” he laughs.

“But we also didn’t want to name it something folksy to do with wheat or grain,” says Rebecca. “We are in London – the nearest field is miles away! We can’t call ourselves, like, Wind in the Willows bakery or whatever. When I was tweeting about wanting it to be a fun place, a friend of ours – Florian Siepert – replied, ‘I think it would be great if you ended up with a really chaotic and energetic design. No one needs another bread church.’ That really stuck in our minds!”

JUNE/JULY 2022

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HISTORY | 21

A poet and pioneer The remarkable life of Una Marson, who has had a new local library named in her honour

BY LUKE G WILLIAMS Southwark Council’s decision to name its latest library – located in a new public square between the Old Kent and Walworth roads – in honour of Una Marson has shone a welcome light on the life of a truly remarkable but often overlooked woman.

A poet, journalist, feminist pioneer and much more besides, Una was born in Santa Cruz, Jamaica on 6 February 1905. The youngest of six children born to baptist minister Solomon Isaac Marson and his wife Ada, she had an initially idyllic middle-class upbringing and at the age of 10 was enrolled at a prominent girls’ boarding school, Hampton High.

However, shortly afterwards her father died and the family were forced to relocate to Kingston. Una finished her education at Hampton, earning an Oxford and Cambridge Board lower certificate, but higher education options were limited in the colonial West Indies. Instead of continuing her studies she trained as a social worker in Kingston and then moved into journalism.

Aged just 21, she was appointed assistant editor of the Jamaica Critic and two years later she founded the Cosmopolitan Monthly magazine, which she published and edited for three years, establishing her reputation for fearless truth-telling while tackling cultural and economic issues, especially those facing women.

The Cosmopolitan Monthly frequently showcased the work of local Jamaican poets and Una selffinanced and published her own first collection of poetry, Tropic Reveries, in 1930, with a further collection, Heights and Depths, following in 1931.

During this burst of creativity she also wrote her first play, At What a Price, a satire that examined the “comedy and pathos of Jamaican life”. The play was performed first in Kingston’s Ward Theatre in 1932 and then in the YMCA’s Central Club on Great Russell Street, London in 1933, followed by another showing at the Scala Theatre on Charlotte Street in 1934.

By the time the production hit London, Una had been living in England for nearly two years, lodging with the influential black activist Dr Harold Moody and his family in Peckham.

The Daily Herald drew attention to the revolutionary presence in At What a Price of “all manner of dialects and accents”, while reviewer Spike Hughes observed that some actors “spoke the heavy, rich language of the African coast, others the staccato sing-song tones of Jamaica, and a few, natives of London, with a genuine Cockney accent”.

JUNE/JULY 2022

Hughes also hinted at the turbulence of Una’s first couple of years in Europe, noting that since her arrival she had “worked in Brussels, lost all her money and had her precious typewriter stolen”.

In the UK, Una threw herself into black activism. She joined the League of Coloured Peoples, the civil rights organisation founded by Dr Moody, and was soon editing its influential journal The Keys. In one of her most raw poetic works – titled with the “N” word then so commonplace within society – Una directly challenged the racist attitudes she had encountered in England.

As well as addressing issues of racial prejudice, she was also a committed feminist. In 1935 she was the only black woman to attend the Women’s International Conference in Turkey, where according to the Manchester Guardian she “astonished the conference [with] her intellectual vigour”. A member of the Ethiopian Legation in London, she also attended the League of Nations alongside Emperor Haile Selassie to protest against Italy’s invasion of the country.

However, the enormous amount of work and activities that Una had taken on – coupled with the strain of the everyday and institutional racism she faced in the UK – sadly took its toll on her mental health and she suffered a breakdown in 1936 and returned to Jamaica to recover.

During her two years back in the Caribbean, she continued to work as an activist and writer and the scope of her work became increasingly and more fervently political.

In 1937 she published another poetry collection, The Moth and The Star. It included Quashie Comes to London, a humorous poem with a serious message that offers a view of England from a Caribbean immigrant’s perspective, depicting the difficulties and feelings of homesickness he faces.

Initially impressed by England, Quashie becomes disillusioned, in part due to the lack of good food. “Some ripe breadfruit, some fresh ackee and saltfish too, an’ dumplins hot will suit”, he says when placing his order in a Lyons tea shop. When the waitress informs him they don’t serve those foods, he laments: “It’s den I miss me home sweet home, me good ole rice an’ peas.”

In 1938, Una’s play Pocomania was greeted with widespread acclaim in her homeland. “[A] brilliant success,” reported the International Woman Suffrage News, which also expressed the hope that it represented the start of a “real indigenous school of drama” in Jamaica.

Una returned to England later in 1938, on a mission to raise awareness and money for the Save the Jamaican

In the UK, Una threw herself into black activism and was also a committed feminist

Above: former Camberwell resident Una Marson

Children Fund, which she served as secretary. “The slums of Kingston are something to be seen to be believed,” she said. “Shacks fit only for cattle to live in, made of old bits of tin and palm leaves, are the homes of thousands of Negro families.”

In a powerful speech at the British Commonwealth League conference in London that year, Una made it clear who she held responsible for these poverty-stricken conditions. “If the British empire is to have colonies of which it could be proud, it will have to take more interest in these colonies, and do something to ensure better nutrition of the people,” she said.

“At present it seems as though we in the colonies are not regarded as members of the great body of the empire, and it is only when an earthquake, a hurricane, or a riot occurs that the Colonial Office sits up and takes notice of us.”

In 1939 Una began working at the BBC, moving into a full-time role as a programmes assistant in the Empire Programmes department. She went on to become the first ever black female producer at the corporation.

In 1942 George Orwell asked her to contribute to his six-part poetry series Voice, which was broadcast on the BBC’s Eastern Service. Una read her poem Banjo Boy in the fourth episode and appeared again in the December edition, alongside MJ Tambimuttu, TS Eliot, Mulk Raj Anand, Narayana Menon and William Empson.

This led her to create her own programme, Caribbean Voices, which was developed within the BBC’s

Calling the West Indies series and was particularly innovative and influential.

Sadly, Una faced institutional bias and jealousy within the ranks at the BBC, factors which arguably led to a further deterioration in her mental health. She left the BBC – and England – in the mid-1940s.

Thereafter, during spells living in the USA and Jamaica, she continued to pursue her passion for social justice and equality, although her work was now on a more local level and she maintained a lower profile.

When she died in 1965 of a heart attack, the wide scope and nature of her achievements and activism had largely been forgotten. In recent years, however, her huge contributions to the social and cultural fabric of this country and the Caribbean have been rediscovered and reevaluated.

Not only is there now a library in Southwark named in her honour, but a blue plaque also bears her name at 16 Brunswick Park, Camberwell, where she lived for a time in the 1930s.

Following the naming of the library earlier this year, councillor Alice Macdonald – in an apt statement that praised Una’s pioneering and indefatigable spirit – declared: “Una Marson is a wonderful example to the people of Southwark and beyond. She overcame the challenges of arriving in a new country, and those presented by both her race and gender, in a time that was even more challenging than today. We hope that our Una Marson Library will inspire people to learn, grow, seek help and embark on new adventures as well.”

22 | CAMBERWELL CURIOSITIES

The Camberwell crossword

7 Across was a chef who was born in Camberwell.

ACROSS 7 DREARYHOGS (anagram) (4, 6) 9 Heron’s relative (5) 10 German leader (10) 12 Transgression (3) 13 Incompetent (5) 14 Far (7) 16 Betrayal of one’s country (7) 17 Tasteful, graceful (7) 19 Not certain (2, 5) 20 Force forward (5) 21 Rubbish receptacle (3) 22 Inexperience, childishness (10) 24 Coach, educate (5) 25 Make up, comprise (10)

DOWN 1 Fine wool (8) 2 Mesmerised (10) 3 Item of footwear (4) 4 Teenager (10) 5 Consumer (4) 6 Large wood (6) 8 Complete halt (10) 11 Hand out (10) 14 Climax, culmination (10) 15 Improve (10) 18 Desire for food (8) 19 Whole, undamaged (6) 22 Twelfth of a foot (4) 23 Ballerina’s skirt (4)

This striking painting, titled Camberwell Nocturne, depicts a night-time view of Habington House, a high-rise 1960s tower block on the Elmington Estate that has since been demolished. Painted in 1984, it is part of a series by Camberwell School of Art alumnus David Hepher, who has spent 40 years focusing on the urban landscapes of south London. His work explores the “scale and austere grandeur” of social housing estates built in the 1960s and 70s, the “formal beauty of their grid-like structures” and the “physical and emotional traces of their many inhabitants”. © MUSEUM OF LONDON

ILLUSTRATION BY JESSICA KENDREW

ACROSS: 7 Gary Rhodes, 9 Egret, 10 Chancellor, 12 Sin, 13 Inept, 14 Distant, 16 Treason, 17 Elegant, 19 In doubt, 20 Impel, 21 Bin, 22 Immaturity, 24 Train, 25 Constitute. DOWN: 1 Cashmere, 2 Hypnotised, 3 Shoe, 4 Adolescent, 5 User, 6 Forest, 8 Standstill, 11 Distribute, 14 Denouement, 15 Ameliorate, 18 Appetite, 19 Intact, 22 Inch, 23 Tutu.

SOLUTION

Camberwell connections Film director, screenwriter and playwright Martin McDonagh was born in Camberwell in 1970 to Irish parents.

He began his career in 2003 at the Royal National Theatre with black comedy The Pillowman, and went on to write a number of plays produced on the West End and Broadway, including darkly funny dramas The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Lieutenant of Inishmore and Hangmen.

On the film side, he wrote and directed 2008 dark comedy In Bruges, starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two Irish hitmen hiding out

in the Flemish city after a job gone wrong. Ralph Fiennes plays their irate boss.

His other credits include 2012 film Seven Psychopaths and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which won a string of Baftas and Golden Globes following its release in 2017.

He’s now working on a new film called The Banshees of Inisherin, which will reunite him with Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell for the first time since In Bruges. It follows two “lifelong pals on a remote Irish isle” who find themselves at an awkward juncture when one of them abruptly calls time on their friendship.

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