This remarkable book provides an irresistibly idiosyncratic portrait of London in miniature. From its marvellously illustrated pages leaps a collection of tender, comic, shocking, sometimes alarming vignettes, a rogues' gallery of characters past and present – the famous, infamous and unfamous – who have, over the last 400 years, made this bohemian corner of the city what it is.Between Oxford Street and Euston Road, bordered by Portland Place, Gower Street and Tottenham Court Road, lies a mysteriously evocative area, close to London's heart, known as Fitzrovia. It has a strange and varied history, one that also holds up a mirror to the rest of the capital. For the avant-garde, from painters to actors and artisans, Fitzrovia has been a creative hub, full of studios, craftshops and trysting places. Revolutionaries and radicals gathered in Fitzrovia, which has seen more than its share of murder and mayhem. Spivs and spies, princes and prostitutes jostled in its streets. Alongside grandeur and elegance, exiles and emigrés occupied shabby tenements and introduced new styles of café and restaurant. Medical professionals mingled, in institutions set up by freethinkers, with intellectuals and inventors. Radio and television programmes broadcast from Fitzrovia shaped the culture of a nation and an empire. Independent publishing clusters near the legendary pubs of Fitzrovia where writers and poets met and drank in the 1940s and '50s.From bawdy houses to boxing rings, from the haunts for homosexuals to the voices of the music hall, Fitzrovia has celebrated the outrageous and the unconventional, as well as cherishing its community. Its music venues embrace everything from the first classical proms to night clubs, jazz cellars, and the birth of British pop. To know Fitzrovia is to discover what made London, and how.
