Soho

Aleister Crowley was even more beastly than we’d imagined

20 August 2022 9:00 am

I have never had much time for Aleister Crowley. Magic(k) is nonsense; the mystical societies he founded were simply pretexts…

Mothers and daughters: I Couldn’t Love You More, by Esther Freud, reviewed

12 June 2021 9:00 am

A new novel by Esther Freud — her ninth — raises the perennial but always fascinating question about the use…

A careful parody: Noble Rot Soho reviewed

12 June 2021 9:00 am

Noble Rot sits in Greek Street, Soho, on the site of the old Gay Hussar, which squatted here from 1953…

A very watchable doc cashing in on Line of Duty: BBC2's Bent Coppers reviewed

24 April 2021 9:00 am

If you’re after an exciting, twisty programme about police corruption that doesn’t also feel a bit like sitting an exam…

Women of the streets: Hot Stew, by Fiona Mozley, reviewed

13 March 2021 9:00 am

For a novel set partly in a Soho brothel, Hot Stew is an oddly bloodless affair. Tawdry characters drift in…

Francis Bacon: king of the self-made myth

13 February 2021 9:00 am

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

30 November 2019 9:00 am

‘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

4 May 2019 9:00 am

Each suburban soul yearns for the Soho of their youth. It isn’t that Soho was better in the 1990s when…

The drinkers of the Coach and Horses in Michael Heath’s ‘The Regulars’ cartoon strip. Christopher Howse sits at the right end of the bar

Remembering Soho: A conversation on debauchery, drunks and Francis Bacon

1 September 2018 9:00 am

Christopher Howse has just written a book about Soho. He drank there regularly with Michael Heath, The Spectator’s cartoon editor,…

John Hoyland, 7.11.66, 1966

The London painters that conquered the world

5 May 2018 9:00 am

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

7 April 2018 9:00 am

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

24 February 2018 9:00 am

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

14 September 2017 1:00 pm

Foxlow is near Golden Square in west Soho, where drunken hacks used to take long drunken lunches before having stupid…

Francis Bacon in Paris in 1984

Bacon on the side: the great painter’s drinking partner tells all

5 September 2015 9:00 am

When Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon in 1963 to interview him for a student magazine, the artist was already well-established,…

If we all got drunk like Jeffrey Bernard, we could save the NHS a lot of money

22 August 2015 9:00 am

Just back from a few nights in Sweden to find the perfect programme on Radio 3. It was one of…

London shouting: The Clash at the ICA, 1976

Why plotting a sound map of London is impossible

18 July 2015 9:00 am

It’s easy to tag the city’s terrain by writer. But what, wonders Philip Clark, might a map of its music look like?

There’s only one place to mourn another Labour loss

16 May 2015 9:00 am

Ed is a plank. He was always a plank — and now he is in Ibiza being a plank. Plankety–plankety-plank:…

Bidding a fond, and drunken, farewell to the awe-inspiring Mark Amory

8 November 2014 9:00 am

Rubbing shoulders with political suits on the pavement outside the Westminster Arms, I drank two pints of Spitfire. Pump primed,…

L’Escargot is Soho as Soho sees itself

9 August 2014 9:00 am

L’Escargot, or the Snail, is a famous restaurant on Greek Street, Soho, opposite the old Establishment club; the oldest French…

An upmarket panto with top-quality jokes and strong tunes: Jordy, Simon and Louis

Simon Cowell’s latest attempt at global domination

5 April 2014 9:00 am

I Can’t Sing! is a parody of The X Factor, which already parodies itself at every turn. Quite a tough…

A gaggle of husbands and a pair of piglets

22 March 2014 9:00 am

Here’s a great idea for a play. Turn the polygamy principle upside-down and you get a female egoist presiding over…

Rape, porn and Cheesy Wotsits

8 March 2014 9:00 am

Interesting times at Soho Theatre. One of its outstanding shows of last year, Fleabag, was an offbeat Gothic love story…

An audience with the Queen and Mrs Thatcher

12 October 2013 9:00 am

A feast of pleasures, and some annoyances, at the Trike. Handbagged, by Moira Buffini, is a fictional account of the…