Soho in the Fifties and Sixties

By Jonathan Fryer

Ronnie Scott’s, the French Pub, the Coach and Horses; just a few of the names that are synonymous with Soho, London’s bohemian quarter.

With its pubs and clubs, coffee houses and strip joints, Soho has been attracting the rich, the poor, the famous and infamous, the gifted and the deluded for decades.

Yet it is perhaps the nineteen-fifties and sixties that bore witness to its heyday, when the likes of Francis Bacon, Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan and Colin MacInnes staggered from pub to club, fuelled by the hedonistic atmosphere that continues to characterise Soho today. 

Highly readable, Jonathan Fryer’s lively account of the lives of the men and women who made Soho their home from home is a fascinating insight into a world of excess, where casualties were high and only the most determined fulfilled their promise.