Anna Aslanyan

‘Even blindfolded,’ Emanuel Litvinoff wrote of the interwar East End in Journey Through a Small Planet (1972), ‘I’d have known where we were by the smell of the different streets – reek of rotten fruit: Spitalfields; scent of tobacco warehouses: Commercial Street … Hanbury Street and the pungency of beer from Charrington’s brewery. Then Brick Lane, with half the women from our street jostling among the market stalls.’

A stencil portrait by Stewy, first painted on the wall of Newington Green Meeting House in 2013, was removed a few years ago during renovations. This week the artist returned to put it back.

Spreading ‘false’ information about Russia’s military, according to a law passed by the Kremlin last week, can put you in prison for fifteen years. For taking part in an unauthorised protest, you are likely to get fifteen days the first time; repeat offenders face up to five years behind bars. Many of the Russians taking to the streets in protest against the invasion of Ukraine have risked their freedom before. A decade ago, thousands were arrested at large-scale anti-government demonstrations. Some got two weeks; others, two years.

The 1909 Cinematograph Act used the term ‘inflammable films’ in a literal sense – cellulose nitrate catches fire easily – but some local authorities interpreted it to mean ‘morally dangerous’, and it led to censorship. Still, the act wasn’t as confusing as the latest flurry of communication from the British government. One of its requirements was that exhibitors provide fire exits, which led to the emergence of purpose-built picture houses. Many of the buildings are still standing, though few of them are still cinemas.

One of the routine questions asked of detainees at police stations is: ‘Are you fit and well?’ It has acquired new force in recent weeks. A homeless man I interpreted for a few days ago said he was, though he looked exhausted. He had recently been placed in a hotel in central London as part of an initiative reminiscent of O. Henry’s ‘Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen’, a story about the perils of ‘the yearly hunger which, as the philanthropists seem to think, afflicts the poor at such extended intervals’.