London Fire Brigade - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• Fire Wars: In July 2003, the BBC followed the arson investigators of the LFB's fire investigation unit. The two-part series looked at how the LFB investigated "4,000 fires where the cause was unknown". The second programme, Fire Wars: Murder Most Foul, centred on one investigation.

• London's Burning: The ITV television series London's Burning was based on the fictional Blackwall fire station and centred on characters of the station's blue watch. It was originally a 1986 television film, written by Jack Rosenthal. The fire station used as the principal location in the drama was Dockhead, near London Bridge, before moving to Leyton fire station in east London late in the series. The series that followed the film ran from 1988 to 2002.

• Fire!: The LFB's Kingsland Road fire station in Hackney, east London, was the focus of a documentary series by Thames Television for ITV, broadcast in the spring of 1991. The documentary brought about an internal inquiry by the LFB after scenes were shown of firefighters having a food fight at a Christmas party in one of the programmes. Several watch members from Kingsland Road were suspended after the programme was broadcast on 27 June 1991.

• Fireman! A Personal Account: Former London firefighter Neil Wallington wrote an account of his experience in the LFB called Fireman! A Personal Account, published in 1979. He chronicled his transition from a firefighter in the Croydon Fire Brigade through to his reaching the rank of station officer in the LFB. He went on to become the Chief Fire Officer of the Devon fire brigade (now known as Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service) and has written several books about fire services over the world. Wallington's work outlined the change in working conditions in the LFB in the 1970s, a time that saw the working hours of firefighters reduced and conditions improved.

• Red Watch: The former ITN newsreader Gordon Honeycombe became friendly with Neil Wallington while he was a station officer at Paddington fire station. In 1976, Honeycombe published an account of the Worsley Hotel fire, a major fire at a hostel in Maida Vale in 1974 that claimed the lives of seven people including one firefighter. The resulting book was called Red Watch; it provided a graphic account of a single incident, and outlined some of the changes to working practises that resulted from it.