When the writer Frank Norman was tasked with writing a guidebook to Soho in 1962, things didn’t exactly go as planned. For a start, he hired his best friend Jeffrey Bernard to take the pictures – not only was Bernard a notoriously unreliable drunk, he had never operated a camera before.
The day the pair received their £100 advance, Bernard blew the lot on 10 spins of the roulette wheel. “It was something of a farce … we were drunk for a year,” Bernard later reflected on the making of the book, recalling the time a sozzled Norman rolled up his shirt sleeves in one member’s club and plunged his hand into a tank of piranha fish before mounting the stage to sing Falling in Love With Love.
Soho Night & Day didn’t make it out in 1962, nor – you will be surprised to learn – did it emerge in 1963, 1964 or 1965. But it did finally get published in 1966: a love letter to the drinking dens, illegal gambling houses and strip joints that made the London area so iconic. The book has now been republished with a foreword by writer Barry Miles in which he calls it “a snapshot of a wonderful place at a certain time, now separated from us for ever by the vault of time”.
But is the true spirit of Soho – forged from that bustling mix of immigrants, artists and down’n’outs – really gone for ever? Or could it still be found? I set out with Joe Daniel, Norman’s grandson and the force behind the book’s reissue, to retrace his grandfather’s steps – and find the “real” Soho.
It probably all started to go wrong with the breakfast negronis. Up until that point – 11.15am – we’d been perfectly sensible, ordering coffee and a pastry from the charming 19th-century patisserie Maison Bertaux (28 Greek Street) as we watched the morning workers saunter by.
But when the manager at Scarlett Green (4 Noel Street) insists we should try a cocktail with brunch, well … it would be rude not to. Stephane tells us how he’s lived and worked in the area since the late 80s, when he would frequent the gay clubs alongside the likes of Boy George and Marc Almond. His chatty and attentive form of hospitality was forged here.
Now we’ve started drinking, it seems a terribly bad idea to stop. In the book, Norman dismisses pretty much every pub besides The French House (49 Dean Street), so that is our next port of call. Previously called the York Minster but known colloquially as “the French” due to its original proprietor Monsieur Victor Berlemont (whose moustache was said to be a full foot long), this is a watering hole of legend. General de Gaulle enjoyed aperitifs here during the second world war, Dylan Thomas mislaid his only copy of Under Milk Wood here after one too many (thankfully the landlord saved it), and – according to Norman at least – even the local vicar used to pop in for a swift half while hymns were being sung.
“One of its greatest assets is that it’s almost impossible to get barred,” wrote Norman, and even if you did end up being turfed out for being unruly, “the following lunch time you were allowed back in again without a word being said about the activities of the night before”.
We fail to test that theory but do enjoy a midday pastis (a mix of Ricard and water known as “the milk of Marseille”) surrounded by the old photographs and artworks that line the walls. After a swift Guinness at another fine (and old) pub, The Blue Posts (22 Berwick Street), we amble around. Soho is where Mozart once lived (20 Frith Street), the Magic Circle first formed (17 Wardour Street) and John Logie Baird first demonstrated television (22 Frith Street).
It is also the home of Foyles (107 Charing Cross Road), the giant bookstore that, after opening in 1929, became a hangout for the 1930s literary set. Edith Sitwell, Noël Coward and even Walt Disney browsed the miles of shelves here (or at least at its former location next door). Norman notes in his book how back in his day the store was a renowned “passing” place: “Pound notes are occasionally found between the pages of books, and one was discovered to have a revolver-shaped hole cut in it.”
One of the most legendary institutions of old Soho was the restaurant Wheeler’s, where artists such as Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach (with of course Norman himself) would gather to cure their hangovers with oysters. Taking advantage of the fact that the shellfish were not rationed during the war, Wheeler’s grew from a first-floor sorting house to a thriving multi-storey restaurant shucking 2,000 mouthwatering molluscs each day.
The Soho branch is sadly no more, so we visit The Seafood Bar (77 Dean Street), where a 3-5pm happy hour lets you devour them for £1.50 a piece. We wash 12 down with chablis, and are then offered another platter from the next table who’ve over-ordered. It’s not a bad way to while away an afternoon. “I guess this is how my granddad lived,” says Joe. “He’d do this sort of thing every day.”
Le Beaujolais (25 Litchfield St) may be outside what we consider Soho boundaries, but Barry Miles – who knows more than a thing or two about London’s counterculture – has recommended it and assures Joe that old school Soho hands would consider it perfectly legit. A couple more glasses of pinot noir are ordered, at which point things start to get a little bit blurry.
You can see how Soho might lead you astray. Norman was a fresh-faced 16-year-old when he arrived in the area. Before leaving school, his headmaster had warned him that drink, gambling and loose women could ruin a man. “But what he did not tell me,” writes Norman, “is that the best place in the world to find these things is Soho. That I found out for myself.”
His prospects after leaving school were not good. Norman had grown up in various Dr Barnardo’s homes after being given up for adoption at the age of three (he wrote about this in his 1969 memoir Banana Boy). Despite a brutal early life and a lack of academic success, his experiences living as a bum in Soho, and the friendships he struck up with authors and artists, provided him with a wealth of raw material for what became a series of celebrated memoirs.
Bang to Rights, his 1958 account of life behind bars (he served three years for petty crimes), was championed by Raymond Chandler, and was swiftly followed by the hit musical Fings Ain’t Wot They Used t’Be. Norman’s affectionate eye for the seedier side of life is present in Soho Night & Day, not least when he mentions gambling.
Betting shops weren’t even legal when he was a teen but what went on in the schpielers was notorious – he includes tales of reckless Greek immigrants who would gamble away their homes. Could we be about to turn similarly reckless by stepping into Coral (1-3 Newport Place)? The regulars glance up at these strange besuited men trying to get their heads around a betting slip. I stick a tenner on Love Billy Boy at Ascot while Joe plumps for Smart Vision. Four minutes later, we are back on the streets and £20 down.
Your money is better spent in one of Soho’s many eateries, of which a couple mentioned in Norman’s book – Quo Vadis and L’Escargot – remain. We are reliably informed that, for the intimate vibe of old Soho, Andrew Edmunds (46 Lexington St) is the place to be, with its handwritten menus, cramped tables and simple-yet-spectacular food. Eating there feels like time-travelling to another more romantic and more artistic era. A rump of lamb, dressed crab and some Château Montus later and we are back outside, where the heavens have opened. My umbrella has been lost, so we wander the streets in search of it.
There is no doubt Soho has cleaned up its act. We are not “heckled by a prostitute from a top floor window”, as was common in Norman’s day when multiple sex clubs lurked on every street and it was “as easy to have a woman as it was to buy a loaf of fresh French bread”. But we do meet the proprietor of an X-rated outlet who bemoans the fact that, after the pandemic, you can no longer attend a live show in the area. We descend the stairs to see what he offers instead: a bleak and empty room full of coin-operated booths in which you can sit and watch videos. “Fancy a go?” he asks. “It’s hardcore stuff.” We politely decline.
So much of old Soho has gone, from Madame Floris’s bakery to the Italian deli King Bomba; from strip clubs like Casino de Paris to restaurants like Moulin D’Or and Trattoria Terrazza. With that, of course, goes some of the atmosphere. But mourning Soho is also a very Soho thing to do. Norman, in his book, frequently complains that the Soho of his misspent youth is no more. Sometimes the changes are positive; often they make you wince. The fresh produce available at the once buzzing Berwick Street market has now been replaced by food trucks. The Highlander pub now serves Pieminster pies. Earlier this year, the deli I Camisa & Son was shuttered. (Of the old school delis, only the delightful Lina Stores on Brewer Street remains.)
Search around, however, and you can still find traces of the old world. The original 1966 book launch for Soho Night & Day was at the famous members’ club the Colony Room, whose success was down to the club’s inimitable host Muriel Belcher. She had the visionary idea to let Francis Bacon drink there for free in return for him bringing in interesting clientele. Fond of calling people “cunty” as a term of endearment, Muriel presided over a room of “every social stratum one could possibly imagine: stockbrokers, layabouts, advertising men”, while proudly proclaiming her motto: “Rush up, spend up, drink up, fuck off.”
Belcher died in 1979 and the club – which had entertained the likes of William Burroughs, Princess Margaret, Henri Cartier-Bresson and the YBAs – closed in 2008. Yet earlier this year it reopened as The Colony Room Green (4 Heddon Street) which, in a neat case of history repeating, is where the launch for the republished Soho Night & Day is happening. The room is absolutely packed with characters when we arrive. I spot artist Jeremy Deller holding court, a Klaxon loitering near the back and a woman behind me at the bar yelling: “I’m the granddaughter of Jeffrey Bernard! What does it take to get a drink in here? I said I’m the granddaughter of Jeffrey Bernard!”
“Soho is a roundabout, which sometimes spins around so fast that it is impossible to jump off,” writes Norman towards the end of his book. “Some people can keep their balance no matter how fast it goes around, whilst others become giddy, lose their balance and hit rock bottom, together with their wives, children and self-respect.”
Neither myself nor Joe have quite gone that far – nor have we plunged our hands into piranha tanks or gambled away the family home. But we have done something we weren’t sure was possible – spent a full 12 hours in the boozy embrace of old Soho.
• Soho Night & Day is out via ACC Art Books with an exhibition at Colony Room Green, London until 18 October
