Author: Christopher Howse
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472914813
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
A fascinating glimpse into 1980s Soho by leading journalist and writer Christopher Howse. In the 1980s Daniel Farson published Soho in the Fifties. This memoir is a sequel from the Eighties, a decade that saw the brilliant flowering of a daily tragi-comedy enacted in pubs like the Coach and Horses or the French and in drinking clubs like the Colony Room. These were places of constant conversation and regular rows fuelled by alcohol. The cast was more improbable than any soap opera. Some were widely known – Jeffrey Bernard, Francis Bacon, Tom Baker or John Hurt. Just as important were the character actors: the Village Postmistress, the Red Baron, Granny Smith. The bite came from the underlying tragedy: lost spouses, lost jobs, pennilessness, homelessness and death. Christopher Howse recaptures the lost Soho he once knew as home, its cellar cafés and butchers' shops, its villains and its generosity. While it lasted, time in those smoky rooms always seemed to be half past ten, not long to closing time. As the author relates, he never laughed so much as he did in Soho in the Eighties.
Soho in the Eighties
Author: Christopher Howse
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472914813
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
A fascinating glimpse into 1980s Soho by leading journalist and writer Christopher Howse. In the 1980s Daniel Farson published Soho in the Fifties. This memoir is a sequel from the Eighties, a decade that saw the brilliant flowering of a daily tragi-comedy enacted in pubs like the Coach and Horses or the French and in drinking clubs like the Colony Room. These were places of constant conversation and regular rows fuelled by alcohol. The cast was more improbable than any soap opera. Some were widely known – Jeffrey Bernard, Francis Bacon, Tom Baker or John Hurt. Just as important were the character actors: the Village Postmistress, the Red Baron, Granny Smith. The bite came from the underlying tragedy: lost spouses, lost jobs, pennilessness, homelessness and death. Christopher Howse recaptures the lost Soho he once knew as home, its cellar cafés and butchers' shops, its villains and its generosity. While it lasted, time in those smoky rooms always seemed to be half past ten, not long to closing time. As the author relates, he never laughed so much as he did in Soho in the Eighties.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472914813
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
A fascinating glimpse into 1980s Soho by leading journalist and writer Christopher Howse. In the 1980s Daniel Farson published Soho in the Fifties. This memoir is a sequel from the Eighties, a decade that saw the brilliant flowering of a daily tragi-comedy enacted in pubs like the Coach and Horses or the French and in drinking clubs like the Colony Room. These were places of constant conversation and regular rows fuelled by alcohol. The cast was more improbable than any soap opera. Some were widely known – Jeffrey Bernard, Francis Bacon, Tom Baker or John Hurt. Just as important were the character actors: the Village Postmistress, the Red Baron, Granny Smith. The bite came from the underlying tragedy: lost spouses, lost jobs, pennilessness, homelessness and death. Christopher Howse recaptures the lost Soho he once knew as home, its cellar cafés and butchers' shops, its villains and its generosity. While it lasted, time in those smoky rooms always seemed to be half past ten, not long to closing time. As the author relates, he never laughed so much as he did in Soho in the Eighties.
North Face of Soho
Author: Clive James
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 0330474375
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
From Fleet Street to the television, North Face of Soho is the fascinating and hilarious fourth volume of memoir from much-loved author, poet and broadcaster Clive James. '[James] delivers his gags with honed elegance' – Sunday Times It is 1968. Newly married, dressed in the style of the times ('a frenzy of bad judgement'), Clive James is leaving the cloistered world of Cambridge academia and setting his sights once again on the lights of literary London. Luckily for him and us, this crack at the big city would go rather better than last time. Still writing songs, directing sketch shows and trying to break into the movie business, with very mixed success, Clive eventually lands a weekly TV column at the Observer, finds his metier and rapidly becomes a household name. Credited with inventing a genre, Clive turns his attention to the previously critically disregarded medium of television to comment on the entire culture. Through the Seventies and early Eighties, from Fleet Street to Hollywood, from Russian department stores to Paris fashion shows, this is the hilarious, entertaining and honest story of a life lived to the full. North Face of Soho is the fourth book of memoir from Clive James. Continue his story with The Blaze of Obscurity.
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 0330474375
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
From Fleet Street to the television, North Face of Soho is the fascinating and hilarious fourth volume of memoir from much-loved author, poet and broadcaster Clive James. '[James] delivers his gags with honed elegance' – Sunday Times It is 1968. Newly married, dressed in the style of the times ('a frenzy of bad judgement'), Clive James is leaving the cloistered world of Cambridge academia and setting his sights once again on the lights of literary London. Luckily for him and us, this crack at the big city would go rather better than last time. Still writing songs, directing sketch shows and trying to break into the movie business, with very mixed success, Clive eventually lands a weekly TV column at the Observer, finds his metier and rapidly becomes a household name. Credited with inventing a genre, Clive turns his attention to the previously critically disregarded medium of television to comment on the entire culture. Through the Seventies and early Eighties, from Fleet Street to Hollywood, from Russian department stores to Paris fashion shows, this is the hilarious, entertaining and honest story of a life lived to the full. North Face of Soho is the fourth book of memoir from Clive James. Continue his story with The Blaze of Obscurity.
Tuesday Nights in 1980
Author: Molly Prentiss
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501121065
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
“An intoxicating Manhattan fairy tale…As affecting as it is absorbing. A thrilling debut.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A vital, sensuous, edgy, and suspenseful tale of longing, rage, fear, compulsion, and love.” —Booklist (starred review) A transcendent debut novel that follows a critic, an artist, and a desirous, determined young woman as they find their way—and ultimately collide—amid the ever-evolving New York City art scene of the 1980s. Welcome to SoHo at the onset of the eighties: a gritty, not-yet-gentrified playground for artists and writers looking to make it in the big city. Among them: James Bennett, a synesthetic art critic for the New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways, and Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country. As the two men ascend in the downtown arts scene, dual tragedies strike, and each is faced with a loss that acutely affects his relationship to life and to art. It is not until they are inadvertently brought together by Lucy Olliason—a small town beauty and Raul’s muse—and a young orphan boy sent mysteriously from Buenos Aires, that James and Raul are able to rediscover some semblance of what they’ve lost. As inventive as Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad and as sweeping as Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, Tuesday Nights in 1980 boldly renders a complex moment when the meaning and nature of art is being all but upended, and New York City as a whole is reinventing itself. In risk-taking prose that is as powerful as it is playful, Molly Prentiss deftly explores the need for beauty, community, creation, and love in an ever-changing urban landscape.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501121065
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
“An intoxicating Manhattan fairy tale…As affecting as it is absorbing. A thrilling debut.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A vital, sensuous, edgy, and suspenseful tale of longing, rage, fear, compulsion, and love.” —Booklist (starred review) A transcendent debut novel that follows a critic, an artist, and a desirous, determined young woman as they find their way—and ultimately collide—amid the ever-evolving New York City art scene of the 1980s. Welcome to SoHo at the onset of the eighties: a gritty, not-yet-gentrified playground for artists and writers looking to make it in the big city. Among them: James Bennett, a synesthetic art critic for the New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways, and Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country. As the two men ascend in the downtown arts scene, dual tragedies strike, and each is faced with a loss that acutely affects his relationship to life and to art. It is not until they are inadvertently brought together by Lucy Olliason—a small town beauty and Raul’s muse—and a young orphan boy sent mysteriously from Buenos Aires, that James and Raul are able to rediscover some semblance of what they’ve lost. As inventive as Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad and as sweeping as Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, Tuesday Nights in 1980 boldly renders a complex moment when the meaning and nature of art is being all but upended, and New York City as a whole is reinventing itself. In risk-taking prose that is as powerful as it is playful, Molly Prentiss deftly explores the need for beauty, community, creation, and love in an ever-changing urban landscape.
Tales from the Colony Room
Author: Darren Coffield
Publisher: Unbound Publishing
ISBN: 1783528176
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 405
Book Description
'Entertaining, shocking, uproarious, hilarious . . . like eavesdropping on a wake, as the mourners get gradually more drunk and tell ever more outrageous stories' Sunday Times This is the definitive history of London's most notorious drinking den, the Colony Room Club in Soho. It’s a hair-raising romp through the underbelly of the post-war scene: during its sixty-year history, more romances, more deaths, more horrors and more sex scandals took place in the Colony than anywhere else. Tales from the Colony Room is an oral biography, consisting of previously unpublished and long-lost interviews with the characters who were central to the scene, giving the reader a flavour of what it was like to frequent the Club. With a glass in hand you’ll move through the decades listening to personal reminiscences, opinions and vitriol, from the authentic voices of those who were actually there. On your voyage through Soho’s lost bohemia, you’ll be served a drink by James Bond, sip champagne with Francis Bacon, queue for the loo with Christine Keeler, go racing with Jeffrey Bernard, get laid with Lucian Freud, kill time with Doctor Who, pick a fight with Frank Norman and pass out with Peter Langan. All with a stellar supporting cast including Peter O’Toole, George Melly, Suggs, Lisa Stansfield, Dylan Thomas, Jay Landesman, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst and many, many more.
Publisher: Unbound Publishing
ISBN: 1783528176
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 405
Book Description
'Entertaining, shocking, uproarious, hilarious . . . like eavesdropping on a wake, as the mourners get gradually more drunk and tell ever more outrageous stories' Sunday Times This is the definitive history of London's most notorious drinking den, the Colony Room Club in Soho. It’s a hair-raising romp through the underbelly of the post-war scene: during its sixty-year history, more romances, more deaths, more horrors and more sex scandals took place in the Colony than anywhere else. Tales from the Colony Room is an oral biography, consisting of previously unpublished and long-lost interviews with the characters who were central to the scene, giving the reader a flavour of what it was like to frequent the Club. With a glass in hand you’ll move through the decades listening to personal reminiscences, opinions and vitriol, from the authentic voices of those who were actually there. On your voyage through Soho’s lost bohemia, you’ll be served a drink by James Bond, sip champagne with Francis Bacon, queue for the loo with Christine Keeler, go racing with Jeffrey Bernard, get laid with Lucian Freud, kill time with Doctor Who, pick a fight with Frank Norman and pass out with Peter Langan. All with a stellar supporting cast including Peter O’Toole, George Melly, Suggs, Lisa Stansfield, Dylan Thomas, Jay Landesman, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst and many, many more.
Bibliolepsy
Author: Gina Apostol
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1641292520
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
Moving, sexy, and archly funny, Gina Apostol’s Philippine National Book Award-winning Bibliolepsy is a love letter to the written word and a brilliantly unorthodox look at the rebellion that brought down a dictatorship Gina Apostol’s debut novel, available for the first time in the US, tells of a young woman caught between a lifelong desire to escape into books and a real-world revolution. It is the mid-eighties, two decades into the kleptocratic, brutal rule of Ferdinand Marcos. The Philippine economy is in deep recession, and civil unrest is growing by the day. But Primi Peregrino has her own priorities: tracking down books and pursuing romantic connections with their authors. For Primi, the nascent revolution means that writers are gathering more often, and with greater urgency, so that every poetry reading she attends presents a veritable “Justice League” of authors for her to choose among. As the Marcos dictatorship stands poised to topple, Primi remains true to her fantasy: that she, “a vagabond from history, a runaway from time,” can be saved by sex, love, and books.
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1641292520
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
Moving, sexy, and archly funny, Gina Apostol’s Philippine National Book Award-winning Bibliolepsy is a love letter to the written word and a brilliantly unorthodox look at the rebellion that brought down a dictatorship Gina Apostol’s debut novel, available for the first time in the US, tells of a young woman caught between a lifelong desire to escape into books and a real-world revolution. It is the mid-eighties, two decades into the kleptocratic, brutal rule of Ferdinand Marcos. The Philippine economy is in deep recession, and civil unrest is growing by the day. But Primi Peregrino has her own priorities: tracking down books and pursuing romantic connections with their authors. For Primi, the nascent revolution means that writers are gathering more often, and with greater urgency, so that every poetry reading she attends presents a veritable “Justice League” of authors for her to choose among. As the Marcos dictatorship stands poised to topple, Primi remains true to her fantasy: that she, “a vagabond from history, a runaway from time,” can be saved by sex, love, and books.
I Know This Much: From Soho to Spandau
Author: Gary Kemp
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007323336
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 43
Book Description
I Know This Much – by Gary Kemp, Spandau Ballet's prime mover – is simply the freshest, most exciting and best-written memoir to arrive for years.
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007323336
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 43
Book Description
I Know This Much – by Gary Kemp, Spandau Ballet's prime mover – is simply the freshest, most exciting and best-written memoir to arrive for years.
Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell
Author: Keith Waterhouse
Publisher: Samuel French Limited
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 54
Book Description
Gambler, journalist, fervent alcoholic and four-times married Jeffrey Bernard writes the "Low Life" column for the Spectator magazine chronicling Soho life as well as offering a very personal philosophy on vodka, women and race-courses. From this, Keith Waterhouse has brilliantly constructed a play (the title being the euphemism used by the Spectator when Bernard is incapable of writing his column) which is set in the saloon bar of Bernard's favourite Soho pub, the Coach and Horses. Having passed out in the lavatory, Bernard awakes in the early hours of the morning to find himself alone and in the dark. Unable to contact the landlord, he is resigned to spending the rest of the night with a bottle of vodka and an endless chain of cigarettes, narrating a story of hilarious anecdotes and witty reminiscences which are enacted by two actors and two actresses who bring to life the various characters who populate Jeff 's world. Starring Peter O'Toole, later succeeded by Tom Conti then James Bolam, the play enjoyed a hugely successful run at the Apollo Theatre, London.
Publisher: Samuel French Limited
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 54
Book Description
Gambler, journalist, fervent alcoholic and four-times married Jeffrey Bernard writes the "Low Life" column for the Spectator magazine chronicling Soho life as well as offering a very personal philosophy on vodka, women and race-courses. From this, Keith Waterhouse has brilliantly constructed a play (the title being the euphemism used by the Spectator when Bernard is incapable of writing his column) which is set in the saloon bar of Bernard's favourite Soho pub, the Coach and Horses. Having passed out in the lavatory, Bernard awakes in the early hours of the morning to find himself alone and in the dark. Unable to contact the landlord, he is resigned to spending the rest of the night with a bottle of vodka and an endless chain of cigarettes, narrating a story of hilarious anecdotes and witty reminiscences which are enacted by two actors and two actresses who bring to life the various characters who populate Jeff 's world. Starring Peter O'Toole, later succeeded by Tom Conti then James Bolam, the play enjoyed a hugely successful run at the Apollo Theatre, London.
I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going
Author: Peter McGough
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 152474705X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
Brilliantly funny, frank, and shattering, this is the bittersweet memoir by Peter McGough of his life with artist David McDermott. Set in New York’s Lower East Side of the 1980s and mid-1990s, it is also a devastatingly candid look at the extreme naiveté and dysfunction that would destroy both their lives. Escaping the trauma of growing up gay in Syracuse and being bullied at school, McGough attended art school in New York, dropped out, and took out jobs in clubs, where he met McDermott. Dazzled by McDermott, whom he found fascinating and worldly, McGough agreed to collaborate with him not only on their art but also in McDermott’s very entertaining Victorian lifestyle. McGough evokes the rank and seedy East Village of that time, where he encountered Keith Haring, Rene Ricard, Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and Jacqueline and Julian Schnabel, among many others. Nights were spent at the Ninth Circle, Danceteria, and Studio 54; going to openings at the FUN Gallery; or visiting friends in the Chelsea Hotel. By the mid-1980s, McDermott & McGough were hugely successful, showing at three Whitney Biennials, represented by the best galleries here and abroad, and known for their painting, photography and “time experiment” interiors. Then, overnight, it was all gone. And one day in the mid-1990s, McGough would find that he, like so many of his friends, had been diagnosed with AIDS. I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going is a compelling memoir for our time, told with humor and compassion, about how lives can become completely entwined even in failure and what it costs to reemerge, phoenix-like, and carry on.
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 152474705X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
Brilliantly funny, frank, and shattering, this is the bittersweet memoir by Peter McGough of his life with artist David McDermott. Set in New York’s Lower East Side of the 1980s and mid-1990s, it is also a devastatingly candid look at the extreme naiveté and dysfunction that would destroy both their lives. Escaping the trauma of growing up gay in Syracuse and being bullied at school, McGough attended art school in New York, dropped out, and took out jobs in clubs, where he met McDermott. Dazzled by McDermott, whom he found fascinating and worldly, McGough agreed to collaborate with him not only on their art but also in McDermott’s very entertaining Victorian lifestyle. McGough evokes the rank and seedy East Village of that time, where he encountered Keith Haring, Rene Ricard, Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and Jacqueline and Julian Schnabel, among many others. Nights were spent at the Ninth Circle, Danceteria, and Studio 54; going to openings at the FUN Gallery; or visiting friends in the Chelsea Hotel. By the mid-1980s, McDermott & McGough were hugely successful, showing at three Whitney Biennials, represented by the best galleries here and abroad, and known for their painting, photography and “time experiment” interiors. Then, overnight, it was all gone. And one day in the mid-1990s, McGough would find that he, like so many of his friends, had been diagnosed with AIDS. I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going is a compelling memoir for our time, told with humor and compassion, about how lives can become completely entwined even in failure and what it costs to reemerge, phoenix-like, and carry on.
An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good
Author: Helene Tursten
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1641290110
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 185
Book Description
Maud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and... no qualms about a little murder. This funny, irreverent story collection by Helene Tursten, author of the Irene Huss investigations, features two-never-before translated stories that will keep you laughing all the way to the retirement home. Ever since her darling father's untimely death when she was only eighteen, Maud has lived in the family's spacious apartment in downtown Gothenburg rent-free, thanks to a minor clause in a hastily negotiated contract. That was how Maud learned that good things can come from tragedy. Now in her late eighties, Maud contents herself with traveling the world and surfing the net from the comfort of her father's ancient armchair. It's a solitary existence, and she likes it that way. Over the course of her adventures—or misadventures—this little bold lady will handle a crisis with a local celebrity who has her eyes on Maud's apartment, foil the engagement of her long-ago lover, and dispose of some pesky neighbors. But when the local authorities are called to investigate a dead body found in Maud's apartment, will Maud finally become a suspect?
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1641290110
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 185
Book Description
Maud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with no family, no friends, and... no qualms about a little murder. This funny, irreverent story collection by Helene Tursten, author of the Irene Huss investigations, features two-never-before translated stories that will keep you laughing all the way to the retirement home. Ever since her darling father's untimely death when she was only eighteen, Maud has lived in the family's spacious apartment in downtown Gothenburg rent-free, thanks to a minor clause in a hastily negotiated contract. That was how Maud learned that good things can come from tragedy. Now in her late eighties, Maud contents herself with traveling the world and surfing the net from the comfort of her father's ancient armchair. It's a solitary existence, and she likes it that way. Over the course of her adventures—or misadventures—this little bold lady will handle a crisis with a local celebrity who has her eyes on Maud's apartment, foil the engagement of her long-ago lover, and dispose of some pesky neighbors. But when the local authorities are called to investigate a dead body found in Maud's apartment, will Maud finally become a suspect?
Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980–1983
Author: Tim Lawrence
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822373920
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 425
Book Description
As the 1970s gave way to the 80s, New York's party scene entered a ferociously inventive period characterized by its creativity, intensity, and hybridity. Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor chronicles this tumultuous time, charting the sonic and social eruptions that took place in the city’s subterranean party venues as well as the way they cultivated breakthrough movements in art, performance, video, and film. Interviewing DJs, party hosts, producers, musicians, artists, and dancers, Tim Lawrence illustrates how the relatively discrete post-disco, post-punk, and hip hop scenes became marked by their level of plurality, interaction, and convergence. He also explains how the shifting urban landscape of New York supported the cultural renaissance before gentrification, Reaganomics, corporate intrusion, and the spread of AIDS brought this gritty and protean time and place in American culture to a troubled denouement.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822373920
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 425
Book Description
As the 1970s gave way to the 80s, New York's party scene entered a ferociously inventive period characterized by its creativity, intensity, and hybridity. Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor chronicles this tumultuous time, charting the sonic and social eruptions that took place in the city’s subterranean party venues as well as the way they cultivated breakthrough movements in art, performance, video, and film. Interviewing DJs, party hosts, producers, musicians, artists, and dancers, Tim Lawrence illustrates how the relatively discrete post-disco, post-punk, and hip hop scenes became marked by their level of plurality, interaction, and convergence. He also explains how the shifting urban landscape of New York supported the cultural renaissance before gentrification, Reaganomics, corporate intrusion, and the spread of AIDS brought this gritty and protean time and place in American culture to a troubled denouement.