The definitive history of London's most notorious drinking den in Soho
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.
'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 Soho’s 20th century cultural life. I
cannot recommend it highly enough. It is a future classic' Adelle
Stripe
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