"Shoreditch doesn't show off, or give up its secrets easily. It is one of the things that I love about the area and it seems to get better the more you wander, especially in daylight."

I have lived ‘out East’ since the 1990s and each year London’s centre of gravity has edged a little closer to me. It wasn’t long ago that Shoreditch and Spitalfields would be called the ‘East End.’ Now it is firmly part of the city centre.

It’s also the epicentre of London’s rediscovered taste for coffee. Coffee is an old London love, which was first drunk here in the 1650s. It was given new lease of life by start-up roasters like Square Mile and the arrival of baristas from Australia and New Zealand, who brought the flat white with them—I’d like to personally thank them for that. Nude Espresso, on Hanbury Street, is a long-time haunt of mine. That being said, these days, if you check that there is a proper machine behind the counter and stay away from the big chains, it’s increasingly hard to go wrong and get a bad cup of coffee anywhere around Shoreditch and Spitalfields.

Shoreditch doesn’t show off, or give up its secrets easily. It is one of the things that I love about the area and it seems to get better the more you wander, especially in daylight. I like the indie design shops along Calvert Avenue and the Huguenot houses of Fournier Street.

Make sure you look up around here as those boxy attics on the top of the buildings doubled as weavers’ workshops in the 18th century. I can imagine a 25-year-old me bowled over by the clothes boutiques of Redchurch Street and I still lose track of time flicking through the vinyl in Rough Trade East, one of London’s best record shops - they have a La Marzocco coffee machine in there, too.

You’ll hear a lot of people talking about how much Shoreditch has changed recently. In truth, it has never stopped changing. During the Middle Ages it lay just outside the old City Walls and so attracted all manner of reprobates - including Shakespeare, whose first playhouse was just behind what’s now Curtain Road. French Huguenots arrived en masse after King Louis revoked Protestant freedom of worship in 1685; Jews fled Russian pogroms in the 1880s and, since World War II, Bengalis have made homes around here. You can see the effect of this migration in Brick Lane, which has London’s most famous strip of curry houses and gave its name to a prize-winning novel by Monica Ali that’s set in the area.

There is plenty of hidden history here and even as a local I sometimes take a guided walk to get a grip on a new angle. Among the best - and probably not suited to young children – are the ones with Unseen Tours Shoreditch, an uncompromising walk led by a homeless resident. The tales you’ll hear are surprising, alas unrepeatable… but definitely not dull. In 1888, Jack the Ripper murdered his way into history in the narrow lanes east of Spitalfields and the London Walks evening tour tells the story without lurid sensationalism.

A festive trip to Columbia Road Flower Market has become a tradition in our house and an annual family outing on the last Sunday before Christmas. We buy pussy willow, Scottish thistles, holly and broken fir branches to make festive bunches when the air is full of the smell of pine sap, hot chocolate and mulled wine. The market runs every Sunday, all year and is always jovial and jam-packed whenever I visit.

My favourite Shoreditch museum, The Geffrye, is dedicated to domestic interiors…and is much more interesting than it sounds. Starting with the building, which is made up of Georgian almshouses, you walk through a succession of parlours and drawing rooms, each dressed authentically with furniture and accessories from a period between 1630 and the 1990s. There’s a quiz trail to keep little ones amused and the cafe does a killer chocolate brownie.