“On the corner of Willoughby Road where it meets Haverstock Hill, Maggie the redoubtable had her flower-stall – she was there for 60 years and, since she died in 1974, must have started at the beginning of, or just before, the First World War. There’s a plaque in her memory on the wall.
With a face like a rock-carving, heavily shawled and mittened, she was out in all weathers. I have a feeling she was related to Bob the newspapers and, like him, she just vanished one day.”

Extract from ‘Hampstead Shops, Caffs & Characters’ by Piers Plowright, published in the January 2018 Newsletter