06 September 2018, The Tablet

When Soho's unforgivable crime was to be a bore

by Harry Mount

When Soho's unforgivable crime was to be a bore

Journalist Jeffrey Bernard (left) and the actor Peter O'Toole outside the Coach and Horses in 1989
Photo: PA, Adam Butler

 

The Eighties saw Soho’s last gasp as a refuge for London’s artists, writers and rampaging alcoholics. The bohemian legends – Francis Bacon, Jeffrey Bernard, Tom Baker, John Hurt and Richard Ingrams – were still there. As were the flotsam and jetsam of long-forgotten photographers, pornographers, stagehands, poets and bit-part actresses, bobbing on a sea of alcohol.

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