In the hospital where I am a frequent visitor, there is a long curved corridor between the dispensary and the refectory with an exhibition of photographs relating to hospital food.

There is a print from the 1940s of three nurses and a doctor looking thrilled at the arrival of the first heated serving trolley. Gleams, it does. In the background, a patient in striped pyjamas is tucking into a hot meal in bed. There is another print of the interior of a store cupboard crammed floor to ceiling with boxes of biscuits.

My favourite picture is of a patient’s meal from 1934, prepared by Middlesex Hospital student nurses in their cookery class. A tray lined with a crisp cloth, partially embroidered with flowers, holds a tiny jar of lily of the valley, a glass-lidded savoury dish, a boat-shaped vegetable dish, some triangles of toast, a pudding in a stemmed glass and a flower-patterned napkin. It would not have looked out of place in a Hollywood film.

Returning home, I was delighted to find that I had been sent a wonderful book of photographs from this same era called Vintage Glamour in London’s East End. The book features many portraits of beautifully dressed Jewish bridal couples with their attendants and their magnificent flowers, taken in the photographic studios of Boris Bennett (born Sochaczewska, in Poland) on Whitechapel Road. I flicked through the book stopping each time a bride caught my eye.

I gazed at Fanny Borona, a shop assistant photographed in a ballerina-length dress, the double train formed by her embroidered veil resembling a stately lace waterfall. She was standing in front of a (studio-made) waist-high stucco wall, looking out towards a scene of mysterious Tchaikovsky-esque forest. She married a tailor’s cutter on May 1, 1932 at the Great Synagogue, Dukes Place. Her face is strong and intelligent in profile, thoughtful, yearning...

Admiration

I examined a photograph of the 1935 wedding of Hettie Goldstein to Leslie Jacobs (both parties being of Russian descent). I was full of admiration for the six layers of silk frills on the skirts of her bridesmaids’ dresses. Lily and Phyllis Minsky are you with us still? The bride’s de luxe silk satin gown had a short train of lustrous half-open pleats and the veil that pooled out in front of her was so frothy in appearance that it looked like sea foam. All the women held long bouquets in the crooks of their arms as one might hold a baby.

And I was intrigued by Ada Katz’s picture, for despite five layers of frills she looked intrepid, like a spy or a genius codebreaker, a pretty hard impression to give off in a wedding gown, you’ll agree.

The studio’s heroic-looking commissionaire, Sidney Long, is photographed in his wine-coloured uniform with gold buttons and gold braid epaulettes. His expression is sincere and open, his hatband embroidered with “Boris Studio”, his white kid gloves immaculate with their three embroidered lines down the backs.

When couples walked through the doors at 114 Whitechapel Road with its red neon sign saying “Boris Studio”, it was to appear before the wedding photographer of the East End. “You just weren’t married if you hadn’t been photographed by Boris,” it was said.

Some of the women in these pictures look plain in a grand way like the older members of the British royal family in their youth. Many look like film stars. Some of the grooms, in white tie and tails, conjure brooding and complex personalities. I thought of actors playing troubled concert pianists, of John Garfield in Humoresque (1946) with Joan Crawford, and of Louis Jourdan in Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948) with Joan Fontaine.

Behind the faultless glamour, you could not help thinking of what it masked or sought to cancel out, the extreme poverty of the East End of London at this time and the hardships of being a refugee.

I took this book to my mother in the hospital and we made spry asides about the fashion details such as, “That dress of Gertrude ‘Gertie’ Lipman reminds me of Barbara Stanwyck’s gowns in The Lady Eve [1941].”

And then she said, “My father used to work for a while at a photographer’s studio in London. He stood around in uniform and welcomed people.”

“In the West End?”

“I think so. They used to call him the Major.”

“You kept that under your hat.”

“Well,” she said, “well . . .

— Financial Times