Katharine Quarmby and Kate Murray Browne: Hackney Stories

It’s not often that one, let alone two wonderful novels arrive with Hackney as their starting point. Katherine Quarmby’s The Low Road (award winner at the Historical Fiction Awards), is an evocative story that sweeps from Norfolk to Hackney to Botany Bay, telling the stories of working class women whose lives - and relationships - were shaped by poverty, discrimination and circumstance. Kate Murray Browne’s One Girl Began is set in East London, following three women over 111 years in one building that starts as a box factory, is eventually squatted and finally gentrified. They discuss the history and the stories built into Hackney’s streets, about societal, political, geographical and personal change and how they resonate with all of our lives.