Up West
Authors: Pip Granger
Voices from the Streets of Post-War London
PIP GRANGER
CORGI BOOKS
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UP WEST
A CORGI BOOK: 9780552153751
First publication in Great Britain
Corgi edition published 2009
Copyright © Pip Granger 2009
Map copyright © Encompass Graphics Ltd 2009
Pip Granger has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author and of others. In some limited cases names of people, places, dates, sequences or the detail of events have been changed solely to protect the privacy of others. The author has stated to the publishers that, except in such minor respects, the contents of this book are true.
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2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
9 âNo Squeezing 'til it's Yours, Missus!'
I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of those who sadly did not live to see
Up West
completed. I was too late to interview Ray Constantine and Andrew Panayiotes and therefore their testimony is from their initial emails. Alberto Camisa gave a long and fascinating interview and I hope that the fact that his memories run all through the book proves to be of some comfort to his family and friends. Roy Walker, Barbara Jones's husband, also died before I could interview him in depth, for which I am very sorry. Bryan Burrough of the Soho Society was already unwell when we met, but I think of him often when I feed my greedy blackbirds, a little ritual that we shared along with our love of Soho. I am only sorry that I was unable to glean more of Bryan's great knowledge of our favourite bit of London before he left us. I hope that the families and friends of all these people will accept my sympathy for their loss and my gratitude for the help that their loved ones gave to this book.
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Part of Pip Granger's early childhood was spent in the back seat of a light aircraft as her father smuggled brandy, tobacco and books across the English Channel to be sold in fifties Soho, where she lived above the 2I's coffee bar in Old Compton Street.
She worked as a Special Needs teacher in Hackney in the eighties, before quitting teaching to pursue her long cherished ambition to write. She now lives in Somerset with her husband.
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Also by Pip Granger
Novels
NOT ALL TARTS ARE APPLE
THE WIDOW GINGER
TROUBLE IN PARADISE
NO PEACE FOR THE WICKED
Non-fiction
ALONE
and published by Corgi Books
I'd like to express my heartfelt thanks to all the contributors without whose generous testimony there would be no book. It has been an honour to share your memories and thank you for trusting me with them.
There aren't adequate words in the language to thank my husband, Ray, for his support, all the legwork and unstinting encouragement â he is my hero and a star.
Many thanks to Mike Janulewicz for the loan of some very useful books and thanks are also due to the Archivist of the Peabody Trust, Christine Wagg.
Last, but by no means least â here's to those who do all the unsung schlep â work that gets books on to our shelves â in this case my editor, Selina Walker; cover designer, Diane Meacham; editorial production, Judith Welsh; pictures, Sheila Lee; copy-editor, Beth Humphries; map, Tom Coulson and Phil Lord.
I'll own up to two things straight away. First of all, this book is not a âproper' history, with dates and hard facts and footnotes, although there is a bit of that sort of thing.
Up West
is more to do with people's memories of how things looked, sounded, smelt and felt, about what it was like to work and live in the West End of London in the twenty years after the Second World War. Rather than telling a story in chronological order, I've therefore chosen to present a series of pictures, of impressions, from my life and those of others interviewed for this book, to make what might be called an emotional history.
Secondly, although this book is called
Up West
, it's pretty obvious that my heart belongs to Soho. Covent Garden gets a fair crack, too, but poor old Mayfair, for instance, hardly gets a look in. Although people did live in Mayfair and its West End neighbours, St James's and Knightsbridge, those
areas do not seem to have had that mysterious something that made people love them in quite the same way as Sohoites and Covent Gardeners love their âmanors'. They simply don't appear to inspire the same sense of place as the other two.
There's a reason for that, which emerged when I was researching this book. Literally everyone who was interviewed who had lived in Soho and Covent Garden in the post-war years remembered the life and bustle of the streets, the sense of being âall in it together', and the fact that most of the people who lived there, worked there, too. Working men and women, artisans and traders, breathe life and soul into a place, and Soho and Covent Garden have always had them in abundance. Some had only to go downstairs to go to work, while others had just a few minutes' walk to get to their jobs in workshops, restaurants, markets or the many small businesses tucked away in backstreets. Of course, the people who lived and worked there brought up their kids there, too, and there were plenty of them. Between them, Soho and Covent Garden could boast more than half a dozen primary schools, their class sizes swelled by the post-war baby boom.
It was this living together, working together, going to school together, eating together in local cafés, even going to the public baths together, that brought people together, and gave them a wonderful sense of belonging that persists long after they have moved away. A really thriving community needs a population that stays put for most of the year, and one that includes the young, the elderly and the middle-aged from all walks of life.
People in the posher parts of the West End never experienced this. According to Judith Summers in her book
Soho
, when the architect John Nash (1752â1835) laid out his plans for the building of Regent Street, his express intention was to separate the streets occupied by the âNobility and Gentry' from âthe narrower streets and meaner houses occupied by mechanics and the trading part of the community'. It was the habit of the Georgian upper crust to reside in London only during the season, then to remove themselves
en
masse
to Bath or the seaside at Brighton, or hightail it back to their country seats. As a result, the town houses in fashionable Mayfair were shrouded in dust sheets and closed up tight as the place went into hibernation for much of the year. It must have felt rather like a seaside town on a winter Sunday, only without the bracing, salt-laden gales and crashing seas.
As for Fitzrovia, Marylebone and Bloomsbury, the areas north of Oxford Street, Londoners tend not see these as part of the West End, because they lack the concentration of cinemas, clubs, theatres and shops that make a trip âUp West' a treat for East Enders. Besides, I tend to feel that Fitzrovia is simply the wrong side of Oxford Street. Some Soho natives even refer to it darkly as âthe other side'. There are those who have tried to claim that Fitzrovia is, in fact, North Soho, which would suggest that it has had a bit of an identity crisis for some time now.