John Claridge In His Own Words

Click here to book Remembering photographer John Claridge who died on Sunday aged eighty-two. In 2016, over lunch at The French House in Dean St, John told his story to The Gentle Author (Extract from the introduction to East End). Len & Doll Claridge, 1964 “I was an only child so I asked my mum, ‘Will I have a sister or a brother?’ but she said ‘You’re enough.’ I was never quite sure if that was a compliment. My father went to sea when he was thirteen and he was invited to go on the Scott expedition. He was a bare-knuckle fighter in the East End and sold booze in the States in the thirties during Prohibition. But my mum, she stayed a machinist most of her life in the Roman Road, Bow. On school holidays I used to go in the van, delivering shirts around the East End. By the time I was growing up, my father had stopped going to sea and was working down the docks as a rigger, testing the cranes and that type of stuff. When he took me down there, it was sheer wonderment. I used to get up…