From 43AD, and the building of the (no doubt very straight) Roman Great West Road to Silchester, to 2009, another bout of Carnival Riots and David Cameron getting his bike nicked outside Tescos on the Grove, (retrieved with the help of a friendly / non-class conscious Rasta) long time Portobello Road resident and local historian/psychogeographer Tom Vague takes us on a breathless romp through Roman Coffins on Ladbroke Grove and the Saxon Origins of 'Notting Hill', Civil War skirmishes in Holland Park, the opening of the Paddington branch of the Grand Junction (now Union) canal alongside Harrow Road in the 1850's and Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Western Railway (marking the beginning of the end of rural Notting Hill), "the first esoteric/occult Notting Hill writer Arthur Machen, arriving on Clarendon Road in the 1880's alongside Russian occultist Madame Blavatsky at 77 Elgin Crescent, Tory anarchist GK Chesterton opening the 20th century with local literary classic The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Thomas Hardy compering poetry nights at 84 Holland Park Avenue with Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry and Rebecca West.

Ford and Violet's Hunts South Lodge on Campden Hill Road becoming the HQ of the Vorticist art revolution pre World War I, WW2 bombs falling along Ladbroke Grove, Lansdowne Road and Walk, Stanley Gardens, Elgin Crescent and Cornwall Crescent, Halliday Christie and his wife Ethel moving to 10 Rillington Place, the Electric Cinema on Portobello Road being attacked by patriotic mobs convinced the German manager would signal to Zeppelins from the roof, teenage teddy boys rampaging at the Prince of Wales Cinema on Harrow Road, Max Mosely painting fascist Union Movement graffiti around Notting Hill in 1956, Peter Rachman renting properties to the 'blacks and Irish' scorned by white landlords before ruthlessly exploiting them all and ratcheting up local tensions, the infamous race riots of 1959, future Home Secretary Alan Johnsons original mod band the Area playing the Pavilion pub on North Pole Road in 1965, Pink Floyd at the free School, All Saints Church, 1966, Performance , Powis Square 1969, Mick Farren proto-punk Deviants at 56 Chesterton Road in 1970, Strummer, Jones and Simenon's Clash on the Westway, in the Elgin, at the carnival riots...