Hackney schoolgirl Bukky Bakray was nominated for BAFTA’s prestigious EE ‘Rising Star’ award last week. Bukray, who plays a British-Nigerian teenager residing in a Hackney council estate in 2019’s Rocks, is in good company for talent and fame. Here are some of our favourite icons, past and present, who have graced our East End borough.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Was a hand-sized sculpture of a naked, size 6 woman with perky tits an appropriate tribute to pioneering feminist, philosopher and writer Mary Wollstonecraft? Perhaps not, but its location in Stoke Newington is of utmost relevance. Wollstonecraft opened a boarding school for girls in Newington Green a decade after she first moved to Hackney with her family as a young woman. Significantly, it was in Newington Green where Wollstonecraft first started writing; excitingly, it was in Newington Green Wollstonecraft was able to debate with the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Priestley.
Idris Elba
Before Idris Elba was Idris Elba – award winning actor, 2018’s Sexiest Man Alive, 2013’s Sexiest Man of the Year, 2017’s Rear of the Year, and Officer of the Order of the British Empire – he was Hackney born-and-bred Idrissa Akuna Elba. And don’t accuse Hollywood’s darling of the decade of forgetting his Hackney roots; upon receiving the MOBO ‘Paving the Way’ Award in 2017, Elba said he had “always felt a need to shine a light and pay a lasting tribute that helped shape me in Hackney.” A Hackney superhero on and off the screen!
Lord Sugar
The ascent of a working class boy from the East End into one of the country’s most iconic businessmen sounds like a London version of the American Dream. Yet for Hackney-born Alan Sugar – Lord Sugar, if you’re so inclined – this is the life of a man with self-described “entrepreneurial instinct”, something he insists is “for other people to say about you, not yourself”. Not all of his investments have been wise. Straying out of East London, Sugar was once part-owner of Tottenham Hotspur, which he described as “a waste of my life”. He ended up donating the investment money to refurbishing the Hackney Empire theatre on Mare Street instead.
The Kray Twins
“I’m a London boy like the Kray, Kray Kray,” rapped Lethal Bizzle. The Kray twins, among Britain’s most notorious gangsters, were not only London boys but, being born in Haggerston, Hackney boys too. The twins ruled the capital’s underground with an iron first and their criminal empire saw them mix with the likes of Frank Sinatra and July Garland. While neighbouring Bethnal Green became their stomping ground – for both business and pleasure – it was in Hackney where they spent their childhood. And, presumably, their most law-abiding years.
Sid Vicious
Never has a name been better suited for an individual than Sid Vicious, 80s punk icon of Sex Pistols fame who stabbed his 20-year-old girlfriend to death. Admittedly, he was not always Sid Vicious; christened as the decidedly less rock’n’roll Simon John Ritchie, Vicious and his mother moved to Hackney when he was a teenager. In Hackney Vicious attended Hackney Technical College, was a David Bowie fan, and was petitioned by Chrissie Hynde to marry her so she could access a British work permit. It was also in Hackney that Vicious first met John Lydon – later, Johnny Rotten – with whom he would ultimately join in the Sex Pistols.
Edgar Allan Poe
The godfather of modern detective fiction, American writer and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe was born stateside but raised in Stoke Newington. Poe was fostered by a merchant family as a child, and his foster father, whose business dealings included dabbling in selling slaves, moved to the United Kingdom when Poe was a boy. When in London, he attended schools in Chelsea and Stoke Newington, the latter of which he described as a “dream-like and soothing place.” If the writing hadn’t worked out, Poe could have enjoyed a promising career in Hackney real estate.
Barbara Windsor
When the ‘Queen of the East End’ passed away in December, it wasn’t just Hackney – where Dame Barbara Windsor spent her wartime childhood – that mourned the national treasure, but the whole nation. Among those that paid tribute to the ultimate embodiment of East End grit, glamour and humour were Prime Minister Boris Johnson, David Cameron, and Prince Charles. From affairs with the Kray twins to British soap’s most iconic line – Peggy Mitchell’s “get outta my pub!” – Windsor is not just a legend of Hackney but the entire country.
