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Books

Narcotically-induced mischief in an urban wasteland

A review of Music Night at the Apollo: A Memoir of Drifting, by Lilian Pizzichini. The Southall underworld explored

7 June 2014

9:00 AM

7 June 2014

9:00 AM

Music Night at the Apollo: A Memoir of Drifting Lilian Pizzichini

Bloomsbury, pp.214, £16.99, ISBN: 9781408815991

Fifteen minutes by rail from Paddington, Southall is a ‘Little India’ in the borough of Ealing. An ornate Hindu temple there, the Shree Ram, is set back from the beep and brake of traffic on King Street. When I visited, a pooja (prayer meeting) was underway. Incense fumes — a sweet suffocating presence — wafted round statuettes of the blue-skinned Krishna.

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