Tales from the Colony Room: Soho's Lost Bohemia

(Paperback)

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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. Its 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Tales from the Colony Room is an oral biography, consisting of previously unpublished and long-lost interviews with the characters who were central to the scene, giving the reader a flavour of what it was like to frequent the Club.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 youll 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 Sohos lost bohemia, youll 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 OToole, George Melly, Suggs, Lisa Stansfield, Dylan Thomas, Jay Landesman, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst and many, many more.

Reviews

• 'Entertaining, shocking, uproarious, hilarious . . . like eavesdropping on a wake, as the mourners get gradually more drunk and tell ever more outrageous stories' Sunday Times
  
• 'Riveting . . . An elegy to that vanished world . . . where people talked to each other and not just their mobile phones' Daily Mail
• The escapist read I needed Guardian
• 'Wonderfully evocative' TLS
• 'Lobs a multicoloured grenade into the frigidity of the present moment' Andrew O'Hagan, LRB
• 'One of the finest oral histories I have read. Packed with accounts of outrageous rudeness, wild behaviour and the bleak-black wit of its lowlife regulars, it has been a joy to eavesdrop on the Rabelaisian tales of this infamous drinking den. From the era of Muriel Belcher to Ian Ida Board and on to Michael Wojas, and encompassing the bitter characters that inhabited its grubby green walls, this is an essential record of the petty criminals, underworld gangsters, writers, artists, actors and aristocrats that defined Sohos 20th century cultural life. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is a future classic' Adelle Stripe

Author Bio

Darren Coffield has exhibited widely in the company of many leading artists including Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Patrick Caulfield and Gilbert and George at venues ranging from the Courtauld Institute, Somerset House, to the Voloshin Museum, Crimea. In the early nineties Coffield worked with Joshua Compston on the formation of Factual Nonsense, the centre of the emerging Young British Artists scene. A book by Coffield about this period in British art, Factual Nonsense: The Art and Death of Joshua Compston, was accompanied by an exhibition at Paul Stolper Gallery. He lives and works in London.