London Folk Tales

About this book

London Folk Tales gathers thirty stories linked to Greater London, moving loosely from legendary beginnings to tales rooted in more recent memory. Helen East draws on oral history, local reminiscence, written sources and folklore collections, presenting London as a place where myths, comic yarns and darker traditions overlap.

The selection ranges from Boudicca, London Bridge and Rahere to Dick Whittington, the Inns of Court and the legends of Thomas à Becket. Ghost stories sit beside accounts of St Uncumber, the Lambeth Pedlar, Becky of Bedlam, tosher lore and old London pubs, giving the collection a broad sense of the capital’s storytelling traditions without treating its claims as established fact.