Description
Book SynopsisLondon's Soho district underwent a spectacular transformation between the late Victorian era and the end of the Second World War. This title shows how the area's foreignness, liminality, and porousness were key to the explosion of culture and development of modernity in the first half of the twentieth century.
Trade Review“Walkowitz chronicles convincingly, disinterring obscure newspaper stories, skilfully using police reports, and amassing excellent material…Nights Out is the result of skilful, persevering research and conscientious thought: it marshals much recondite material to make a rewarding book. Walkowitz writes well…[a] lively, affable, thought- provoking book.”—Richard Davenport-Hines,
Times Literary Supplement“Exemplary. . . . A new and invigorating history of this ‘potent incubator of metropolitan change’ and its multiple meanings for the metropolis in the first half of the twentieth century. . . . A tour de force of meticulous and industrious research that provides us with what will surely be the last word on many aspects of Soho life in the first half of the twentieth century. . . . Splendid.”—Jerry White,
History Workshop Journal“[Walkowitz] draws from a prodigious amount of research and employs various methodologies that permit her to address Soho’s uniqueness. This study is thick description at its best, a careful unpacking of the minutiae of quotidian life.”—Chris Waters,
Journal of Interdisciplinary History“An ambitious and highly readable account, which bridges and expands numerous historiographies, from the burgeoning scholarship on commercial leisure, to histories of British multiculturalism, to ongoing debates about the British experience of the Second World War. . . . A fascinating glimpse into a specific urban space, advancing our understanding of how cosmopolitanism was understood and practiced, while also helping to articulate a range of exciting new questions for historians.”—Allison Abra,
Canadian Journal of History“…a highly entertaining insight into one of the most popular areas of the metropolis.”—Julie Peakman,
Who Do You think You Are magazine?"A scrupulous and intelligent survey of a mythologised area where those qualities are rarely found. A real contribution to the history of place."—Iain Sinclair
