Historic black and white photos of London are brought to life for first time in full colour

London's black and white history has been given a full-colour makeover in these amazing pictures from the archives of the Evening Standard.

Historic London street scenes and portraits have been transformed, including images of Seventies models in King’s Road, buses in a traffic jam in the Fifties, and Arsenal playing Newcastle United in the FA Cup Final at Wembley in 1952.

They were treated by photo expert Marina Amaral, who can spend up to a month painstakingly picking out the colours to bring new life to old images.

There are portraits of The Beatles and Muhammad Ali, commuters at Moorgate station in the week of the 1975 Tube crash which killed 43, and a 1930 picture of a Standard vendor selling copies bearing news of a financial scandal.

Amaral said her work was often “an artistic guess”, adding: “My intention is not to improve the original photo, but to offer a second perspective.

"Life was never developed in black and white, and that’s what I try to convey through my work.

"It is a combination of historical research and educated guess.”

Historian Dan Jones, who is working with Amaral on a book based on the pictures, said: “She’s doing some of the most eye-catching and engaging historical work of the moment."