Soho legends
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By Time Out editors
Posted: Wed Jan 18 2006 -
For over 300 years, the area between Oxford Street and Leicester Square has attracted those who don‘t fit elsewhere in London.
Ten essential Soho experiences
Ten great Soho blue plaques
Soho legends
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Jeffrey Bernard
Louche, gambler, writer and drinker of ill repute, usually found in The Coach & Horses. Shortly before his death in 1997, he said: ‘I feel nostalgic for Soho, for what it was. Not many people can say that they spent the day with the likes of Francis Bacon or that boring drunk Dylan Thomas.’
Chevalier D’Eon
Eighteenth-century French officer, diplomat and secret agent principally remembered for dressing as a woman. D’Eon lived on Brewer Street where he dressed in elegant gowns with a diamond headdress. So successful was this façade that when he died in 1810, people were shocked to discover that he was, in fact, a man.
Muriel Belcher
Founder of Dean Street drinking den The Colony Room, Belcher would greet visitors such as Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon with a cheery, ‘Hello, cunty’.
Julian Maclaren-Ross
Postwar writer and drinker, who was famously warned by the poet Tambimuttu of the dangers of ‘Soho-itis’, which saw sufferers spend all day and all night in Soho’s pubs and clubs, never getting any work done.
Teresa Cornelys
Founder of one of Soho’s first members’ clubs, Carlisle House (now St Patrick’s RC Church). One visitor was Joseph Merlin, who, having invented the roller-skate in 1770, zipped through the ballroom at high speed while playing a violin before crashing into a £500 mirror. Another was Casanova, a former lover, who moved to Greek Street from Pall Mall where he had lived in a harem with five sisters.
Dylan Thomas
Yet another boho boozer, who spent so much time drinking in the area that nobody is exactly sure in which pub he lost the original manuscript of ‘Under Milk Wood’.
Karl Marx
Lived on Dean Street above Quo Vadis. A visitor described it as ‘one of the worst, and hence the cheapest quarters of London… Everything is dirty, everything covered with dust; it is dangerous to sit down.’
Bill Green and John Stephens
Green opened London’s first men’s boutique, Vince’s, in Newburgh Street in the 1950s. Pablo Picasso bought a pair of suede trousers there. George Melly described it as the only shop where ‘they measured your inside leg each time you bought a tie’. Stephens worked at Vince’s until he opened His Clothes on Carnaby Street in 1960, one of the key venues of the Swinging Sixties.
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3 comments
I went 2 c John Polidori's house again and someone has taken my bracelet, so I left him a little message instead! My love is eternal, Polly, bless you. xxxx
I visited Dr Polidori's house and if you pass, you may see a heart bracelet which I left for him. I love him by the way!
William Blake, visionnary poet -->born Poland Street