Search results for ""author darren coffield""

'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' TLSThis is the definitive history of London's most notorious drinking den, the Colony Room Club in Soho. It’s 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took place in the Colony than anywhere else.Tales from the Colony Room is an oral biography, consisting of previously unpublished and long-lost interviews with the characters who were central to the scene, giving the reader a flavour of what it was like to frequent the Club.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 you’ll 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 Soho’s lost bohemia, you’ll 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 O’Toole, George Melly, Suggs, Lisa Stansfield, Dylan Thomas, Jay Landesman, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst and many, many more.

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Our story begins in 1920s London, at a time when women's rights were surging after the long battle for suffrage and nightclubs emerged as spaces where single women could socialise unchaperoned. This was the age of the dance craze and the gender-bending Flapper', who inspired the creation of the Gargoyle club, a nocturnal hunting ground for Femmes Fatales.Meanwhile, London's Bohemia was ruled by the Queen of Clubs', Kate Meyrick; the taboo-breaking Tiger Woman', Betty May; the original Chelsea Girl', Viva King; the artist, Nina Hamnett; the Euston Road Venus', Sonia Orwell; and Isabel Rawsthorne, artist, spy, pornographer, model and muse to name but a few.Using previously unpublished memoirs and interviews, Queens of Bohemia creates a soundscape of voices that gives the reader a taste of their world, so exotic and yet often wracked with despair. It offers a unique insight into a generation of women for whom ideals of duty and self-sacrifice ha

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