Books by Gilda O'Neill

The Flanagans, the Tanners and the Lovells live in the Turnbury Building. Nell Flanagan is married to Stephen, a brute of a man. Nell hides the abuse she has suffered at his hands from her children. Martin Lovell admires Nell. When he sees Stephen attacking Nell, he can stand back no longer, but his actions have repercussions for all the families.

In the 1940s, nearly a quarter of a million East Londoners decamped annually for the hopfields of Kent. In this vivid book she not only pays tribute to the creative genius of the working class of London's East End, but examines the role of memory and oral history in our understanding of the past.

And feelings about foreigners are running high. Sixteen-year-old Freddie Jarrett is secretly seeing a girl from the local Chinese community - a relationship that would be frowned on by both families, despite the fact that they all support the fight for freedom from oppression.

Lisa O'Donnell has returned to London after university. Living under a new name, she has a respectable job in the City. It is here that she meets Jason Carter and through him is drawn into the shady club world of the East End - the world of her father and his notorious cohorts.

NOW THEY INHERIT THE LEGACYThe O'Donnell family ran their manor in the East End with a fist of iron, keeping control of their gambling, prostitution and protection rackets. But gang warfare brought horror and sorrow with it, losing Catherine O'Donnell her life and finally bringing murder and violence into the heart of the family.

As they desperately try to break free from Tibs's violent pimp, and to avoid the educated and wealthy yet sinister Dr Tressing, they are also hoping to make a new life for themselves as the new century breaks.

'Every page is a delight. Every chapter made vivid by a writer who has poured heart and soul into her book'. Val Hennessy, Daily Mail The East End of London - cockneys, criminals, street markets, pub singalongs, dog racing, jellied eels ... it is a place at once appealing and unruly, comforting and incomprehensible. Gilda O'Neill, an East Ender herself shows there is more to this fascinating area than a collection of cliched images. Using oral history and more traditional sources she builds up a powerful image of this community - bringing to us, with wit and honesty, the real story of London's East End

The East End belongs to the O'Donnells. Tough, violent and proud, Gabriel O'Donnell has fought his way up from poor Irish roots to run the gambling, prostitution and protection empire that makes him rich, and that one day his boys, Brendan and Luke, will take over.

All big-hearted Katie Mehan ever wanted was health and happiness for her family and the love of her husband, Pat. Meanwhile their 16-year-old daughter Molly is getting an increasing amount of attention from boys in the area, in particular from the masterful and confident Bob Jarvis.

Our Street is the perfect companion to Gilda O'Neill's bestselling My East End. This book focuses on the lives of Londoners in the East End during the Second World War. Showing the concerns, hopes and fears of these so-called 'ordinary people' Our Street illustrates these times by looking at the every day rituals which marked the patterns of daily life during WWII. It is an important book and also an affectionate record of an often fondly remembered, more communal, way of life that has all but disappeared.