Funny how so many people of my age and younger have a nostalgia for the postwar years, when we were yet to be born until another 30 long years later!

This brief window of time after WW2 as the sun set over Albion was captured in beautiful fashion by the photojournalist John Gay, a German. Born Hans Gohler in 1909, he fled the country in 1933 for a new life in Britain, horrified by the treatment of his Jewish friends at the hands of the Nazi regime, and served in the Pioneer Corps during the Second World War. His favourite subjects were the English countryside, London street scenes and the architecture of the railways, the latter leading to a book collaboration with Sir John Betjeman.

"...His photographs capture people going about their everyday lives and they are special because he was looking at Britain through foreign eyes..."

John Gay - England Observed runs from January 29 - March 29 at Kenwood House, Hampstead. Admission is free

Collection of Photographs

OBITUARY: JOHN GAY