Eel Pie Island

Available for over a year

Most people who know anything about Eel Pie Island know it was home to traditonal jazz, British blues and some pretty wild weekends for teenagers and art students in the 1950s and 60s. The bohemian days are long gone but the memories live on for at least one islander, the septugenarian inventor of the clockwork radio Trevor Baylis. Helen Mark meets him as she tours the tiny island in the Thames and discovers it is possible to have it all - the peace, the wildlife and the community spirit of country life combined with the convenience of being 20 minutes from the centre of London.