Murder in Notting Hill - Softcover

Olden, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846945364 ISBN 13: 9781846945366

Publisher: Zero Books, 2011

Synopsis

The truth about one of Britain's most infamous race murders has never been revealed. At around midnight on May 17 1959, a white gang ambushed 32-year-old Antiguan carpenter Kelso Cochrane on a Notting Hill slum street. After a brief scuffle one of them plunged a knife into his heart. The impact was as profound as the aftershock of Stephen Lawrence's murder more than thirty years later. The previous summer Notting Hill had been convulsed by race riots. The fascists Sir Oswald Mosley and Colin Jordan were agitating in the area. So the news of an innocent back man stabbed in west London reverberated from Whitehall to the Caribbean. And when the police failed to catch the killer, many black people believed it would have been different if the victim had been white. Murder in Notting Hill is a tale of crumbling tenements transformed into a millionaires' playground, of the district's fading white working class, and of a veil finally being lifted on the past. Part whodunnit, part social history, it reveals startling new evidence about the murder.

About this title

About the Author:

Mark Olden is a TV producer and journalist based in London.

Review:

"Any lingering hope of justice has now apparently gone. In the meantime, we can read this superb work of social history, in all its gritty actuality." Ian Thomson, author The Dead Yard, Review in The Spectator.

"By juxtaposing the present rom-com property porn incarnation of the area with the seedy dangerous slum of the late 50s, Mark Olden has come up with the best book about Notting Hill since the Colin MacInnes' classic [Absolute Beginners]." Tom Vague, author Rachman, Riots and Rillington Place.

"Olden recounts poignant journeys to visit old men eking out their pensions in sad decrepitude, reminiscing about the good old days of criminal gangstership, and, finally, revealing to him Notting Hill's 'worst kept secret', the identity of the murderer." Steven Poole, Review in The Guardian.

"Compelling." Harmit Athwal, Review Institute of Race Relations.

"TV producer and journalist Mark Olden undertook the arduous task of trying to do what the police failed to - discover the truth about [Kelso Cochrane's] killing. His book is an unputdownable investigation, and, like a good detective story, pursues a riveting forensic trail." John Green, Review in The Morning Star

About this edition

• Publisher: Zero Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1846945364
• ISBN 13: 9781846945366
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 205