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London's East End has always exerted a fascination upon those fortunate enough not to have been born there. Henry Mayhew scuttled back to civilisation after penetrating the district's teeming courts and rookeries to conduct his investigations of London Labour and the London Poor (1851), but other outsiders have actually moved in. In 1936, Hugh Massingham described his experiences in the quaintly titled I Took off my Tie, but the most famous temporary resident was Jack London, who made a more drastic sartorial adjustment, living rough among what he called The People of the Abyss (1902). As recently as 1987, a theological student called William Taylor was sent to Spitalfields by the Bishop of Oxford in order ``to learn a little humility''; he spent seven years there, recording his residency in This Bright Field (2000). And now comes Tarquin Hall, who spent ``A Year in the New East End'' because he couldn't afford to live anywhere else.
Having lived abroad for 10 years working as a journalist, Hall returned to England to discover that even a small flat in the leafy purlieus of Richmond, where he had been brought...