London History, Up Close

In 1961, Peter Cook opened a comedy club in a former strip club in Soho, beneath a satirical magazine’s office, and next to a photography studio where one of the decade’s most notorious photographs would shortly be taken. He chose the location for its seediness. He called the club the Establishment. The irony was entirely intentional. Why Soho, Why Now The building at what is now 18 Greek Street has had a complicated life. It began as a soap warehouse, became a Chartist...

Dean Street runs through the heart of Soho, a district still full of theatres. From at least 1740 until 1748, number 78 was home to the Irish actress Margaret Woffington, known to everyone as ‘Peg’. She was, by that point, one of the most talked-about performers in London. She was also a woman who refused to marry, kept control of her own money, and lived as she chose in full public view, at a time when that required considerable nerve. As unconventional as the neighbourhood itself,...

Mecklenburgh Square lies on the eastern edge of Bloomsbury, quieter than its more famous neighbours, its garden enclosed by late Georgian terraces. A plaque on the facade of number 21 marks the residence of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan from 1869 to 1870. Khan arrived in London in May 1869, stayed for seventeen months, and returned to India with a plan that would reshape Muslim education on the subcontinent for generations. He was also, at various points in his life, condemned as a traitor to his...

Charing Cross Road runs south from Oxford Street through the heart of the West End. Nothing at 107–109 Charing Cross Road, now occupied by Foyles, indicates what once stood here. But in 1677, in what was then a half-built district of raw brick on the northern edge of London, a group of Greek Orthodox refugees raised a church on this spot. They had fled the expanding Ottoman Empire and had petitioned the King. What they built did not last long. But its story – one of displacement,...

Buckingham Palace, which stands at the end of The Mall, is one of the most recognisable buildings in the world. From the 1660s until it became a royal palace, the site belonged to the Earls of Arlington. Arlington House was home to Isabella van Nassau, Countess of Arlington, a Groom of the Stool to Queen Catherine of Braganza. Why was this noblewoman attending to the monarch’s bowels, and why did it help her become one of the most influential women at the court of Charles II? The role...

In 1935, a basement on Wardour Street brought Harlem to London. The Metropolitan Police took detailed notes. Anonymous neighbours wrote letters to Scotland Yard. A sergeant questioned the musicians about their wages. But none of it worked. The Shim Sham Club was London’s first Black-led music venue, and it was going to do what it liked. London’s Miniature Harlem The dark green-fronted building at 37 Wardour Street sits in the heart of Chinatown, in the southern part of...

In the 1930s, the second floor of a waiters’ cooperative on Greek Street housed the London headquarters of Mussolini’s Fascist Party. Downstairs, Italian waiters clocked in and out. Upstairs, the Fascio di Londra distributed propaganda, organised the community, and plotted to take over Soho’s café industry. The espresso machines kept hissing. Nobody talked about the second floor. Little Italy’s Secret Soho was the heart of London’s Italian community: some...

Broadwick Street runs through the middle of Soho, lined with the usual modern mix of offices and restaurants. William Blake House now stands at Number 62, a sixteen-storey tower block erected in the 1960s after the original building was demolished. A plaque at the entrance to the block and a note at nearby Marshall Street are all that mark the spot. It is not much of a memorial for the man the building is named after, the prolific artist and writer of Jerusalem. He was born here on the 28th...

In 1748, a man sitting in a debtors’ prison wrote Britain’s first pornographic novel as a dare. He published it, got arrested, formally renounced it, and spent the rest of his life in poverty insisting it was a hymn to virtue. The novel outsold almost everything else published that century. John Cleland never saw the money. The novel was Fanny Hill. The setting was Covent Garden. Long before Soho claimed the title, Covent Garden was London’s original pleasure district, the...

William Gladstone was Prime Minister four times, a towering Victorian moralist, and a man who spent his evenings walking the streets of Soho and Covent Garden persuading prostitutes to come home with him. His wife Catherine would give them a meal, some advice, and a bed for the night. The bed, it should be clarified, was not to be shared. Gladstone kept meticulous records of every encounter in his diary, using a small symbol of a whip to mark the occasions when he felt he had become...