Soho
The Two Roberts drank, danced, fought – but how good was their art?
The Two Roberts, Robert MacBryde (1913-66) and Robert Colquhoun (1914-62), are figures of a lost British bohemia. Both born in…
An otherworldly London: The Great When, by Alan Moore, reviewed
Is occult knowledge even possible in the age of the internet? If a recondite author obsessed you back in the…
How far could he go?
I have never had much time for Aleister Crowley. Magic(k) is nonsense; the mystical societies he founded were simply pretexts…
Mothers and daughters
A new novel by Esther Freud — her ninth — raises the perennial but always fascinating question about the use…
Noble art
Noble Rot sits in Greek Street, Soho, on the site of the old Gay Hussar, which squatted here from 1953…
Filthy lucre
If you’re after an exciting, twisty programme about police corruption that doesn’t also feel a bit like sitting an exam…
On the game
For a novel set partly in a Soho brothel, Hot Stew is an oddly bloodless affair. Tawdry characters drift in…
Missing the big picture
In 1953, Francis Bacon’s friends Lucian Freud and Caroline Blackwood were concerned about the painter’s health. His liver was in…
The pleasures and perils of talking about art on the radio
‘I like not knowing why I like it,’ declared Fiona Shaw, the actress, about Georgia O’Keeffe’s extraordinary blast of colour,…
Soho hasn’t deteriorated – you have: Kiln reviewed
Each suburban soul yearns for the Soho of their youth. It isn’t that Soho was better in the 1990s when…
Remembering Soho: A conversation on debauchery, drunks and Francis Bacon
Christopher Howse has just written a book about Soho. He drank there regularly with Michael Heath, The Spectator’s cartoon editor,…
The London painters that conquered the world
This is an important, authoritative work of art criticism that recognises schools of painters, yet displays the superior distinctions of…
How Soho became so-so: Kettner’s Townhouse reviewed
Sometimes I fret that Soho House & Co is doing to this column what it does to London. It places…
A Soho steak house that used to be a pornographic cinema: Sophie’s reviewed
Sophie’s lives in an old pornographic cinema at the south end of Great Windmill Street, Soho. It is opposite McDonald’s…
In silent misremembrance
Foxlow is near Golden Square in west Soho, where drunken hacks used to take long drunken lunches before having stupid…
The bitterness of Bacon
When Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon in 1963 to interview him for a student magazine, the artist was already well-established,…
Summer listening
Just back from a few nights in Sweden to find the perfect programme on Radio 3. It was one of…
The London ear
It’s easy to tag the city’s terrain by writer. But what, wonders Philip Clark, might a map of its music look like?
Goulash and whiplash
Ed is a plank. He was always a plank — and now he is in Ibiza being a plank. Plankety–plankety-plank:…
Low life
Rubbing shoulders with political suits on the pavement outside the Westminster Arms, I drank two pints of Spitfire. Pump primed,…
Rebooting the Snail
L’Escargot, or the Snail, is a famous restaurant on Greek Street, Soho, opposite the old Establishment club; the oldest French…
Songs of praise
I Can’t Sing! is a parody of The X Factor, which already parodies itself at every turn. Quite a tough…
Male order
Here’s a great idea for a play. Turn the polygamy principle upside-down and you get a female egoist presiding over…
Freak factory
Interesting times at Soho Theatre. One of its outstanding shows of last year, Fleabag, was an offbeat Gothic love story…
The rivals
A feast of pleasures, and some annoyances, at the Trike. Handbagged, by Moira Buffini, is a fictional account of the…
