The Scandalous History of Dolphin Square
Simon Danczuk in conversation with Marc Glendening.
Wednesday 9 April 2025 at 7.00pm.
‘Compelling, authoritative and as readable as the best airport thriller. It fizzes with crime, fame, power and illicit sex.’ Jeremy Vine
Designed as a city dwelling for the modern age, Dolphin Square opened in London’s Pimlico in 1936. Boasting 1,250 hi-tech flats, a swimming pool, restaurant, gardens and shopping arcade, the complex quickly attracted a long list of the affluent and influential. But behind its veneer of respectability, the Square has become one of the country’s most notorious addresses; a place where the private lives of those from the highest of high society and the lowest depths of the underworld have collided and played out over the best part of a century.
This is the story of the Square and its people, an ever-evolving cast of larger-than- life characters who have borne witness to, and played pivotal roles in, some of the most scandalous episodes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From Oswald Mosley and the Carry On gang to allegations of systematic sexual abuse, it is a saga replete with mysterious deaths, exploitation, espionage, illicit love affairs and glamour, shining a light on the changing nature of British politics and society in the modern age.
Guest speakers:
Simon Danczuk lives in Pimlico and spends most of his time working in public affairs and as a media commentator. He has been in politics over thirty-five years and is a former Member of Parliament for Rochdale. Simon is a part-time author having first co-written Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith, with Matt Baker. His second book was written with Dan Smith and is Scandal at Dolphin Square: A Notorious History. Dan and Simon are in the advanced stages of writing their next non-fiction book about a London serial killer.
Marc Glendening is the co-founder of the Sohemian Society. His connection to Soho dates back to when, as a baby, he visited the Colony Room where his father, the painter Ronald Glendening, and his stepmother, Sohemian Society stalwart Yvonne Glendening, were regulars. Marc works as a free speech campaigner. He also writes occasional journalism, which has appeared in publications such as Spiked and The Critic.
The London Underworld: An Insider's Story
Ronnie Field in conversation with Martin Knight.
Thursday 3 April 2025 at 7.00pm.
Prolific armed robber. Close ally of Joey Pyle. Friend and fellow inmate of the Kray twins. Last man to stand trial with a Kray brother. First prisoner in the notorious Belmarsh Unit … Welcome to Ronnie Field's world.
From his abusive childhood, his inevitable journey into crime and his role in the dangerous underworld of south London’s gangland through to his eventful spells in many of Britain’s most secure jails, Ronnie Field is ready to recount his incredible story for the very first time. It’s a new take on the criminal fraternity of the 1970s and 80s from one of the last men standing.
Guest speakers:
Ronnie Field was born in the workhouse in Epsom, Surrey in 1946. His father was a safe-blower and his mother suffered with illness most of her life. He was raised by a tyrannical grandmother in Cheam. At the age of sixteen he met south London gangster Joey Pyle and became a close ally for the next fifty years. Ronnie became a prolific armed robber, pitched against the real-life Sweeney, and evaded capture for fifteen years until a wages snatch in Leeds went horribly wrong. Ronnie served time in Parkhurst with the Kray Twins, and later became the first prisoner to serve in Belmarsh Prison’s notorious Unit. His criminal career ended when he and Charlie Kray were on the wrong end of a police sting that resulted in stiff sentences. Charlie died in prison. Ronnie was eventually released and has lived on the right side of the law ever since. His autobiography Nefarious was released last year.
Martin Knight is an author who has partnered footballers George Best, Peter Osgood, Charlie Cooke, Dave Mackay and the Bay City Rollers on their autobiographies. He co-authored Nefarious with Ronnie. He’s also the author of several novels, the latest of which is Justice Killer. It’s a book that prompted Irvine Welsh to write, “This gritty novel has a true-crime feel and a big heart beating all the way through it. Highly recommended.”
Soho's Golden Age of Glamour
Jean Sporle in conversation with Yak El-Droubie.
Thursday 27 March 2025 at 7.00pm.
Step back onto the cobbled streets of 1950s Soho, where foreign-run restaurants, cafés and delicatessens gave Londoners an aromatic flavour of the continent, and where artists, writers, and musicians rubbed shoulders with gangsters, tarts, and spivs. From a studio on Gerrard Street – yet to morph into Chinatown – the photographer George Harrison Marks launched his groundbreaking Kamera magazine, which brought artistic flair to the world of glamour photography. As well as helping to run his office, Jean Sporle graced the pages of Kamera, alongside her close friend Pamela Green, these days best-known for her appearance in the film director Michael Powell’s final masterpiece, Peeping Tom. During this period, Jean dated Anthony Newley and landed a small role in Cliff Richard’s 1959 debut movie Serious Charge.
Soho's Golden Age of Glamour offers a unique opportunity to hear about her brushes with 1950s showbiz and her life in Soho. There will also be a rare screening of Art for Art’s Sake – the first, charmingly innocent 8mm striptease film shot by Harrison Marks, who cast both Pamela Green and Jean in the starring roles.
After the talk and screening, Jean will be signing copies of The Naked Truth About Harrison Marks by Franklyn Wood, the pioneering Fleet Street diarist and former Art Editor of The Times.
Guest speakers:
Jean Sporle was a model who worked for Pamela Green and George Harrison Marks in the early days of Kamera.
Yak El-Droubie runs Korero Press, a London-based art book publisher specialising in pop culture, design, and illustration. Their recent releases include The Lost Diaries of Nigel Molesworth and Rayguns and Rocketships: Vintage Science-Fiction Book Cover Art. In parallel to all of that, Yak has written extensively about the world of vintage pin-ups. He also looks after the Pamela Green Archive and blog.
Queens of London Bohemia
Darren Coffield in conversation with Clive Jennings.
Wednesday 12 March 2025 at 7.00pm.
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.
Guest speakers:
Darren Coffield is a British artist who has exhibited at venues ranging from the Courtauld Institute in London to the Voloshin Museum in Crimea. During the early 1990s Coffield worked with Joshua Compston on the formation of Factual Nonsense, the centre of the emerging Young British Artists scene. Coffield is the author of two previous books. The most recent of these was the widely reviewed Tales from the Colony Room: Soho’s Lost Bohemia.
After a successful career as a fashion designer, whose staged shows in Paris, New York, and Tokyo, long-term Fitzrovia-resident Clive Jennings segued into dealing and curating contemporary art. He ran three central London galleries and founded the Contemporary Print Show at the Barbican. These days he concentrates on making his own art and writing in addition to working as the arts editor of both Fitzrovia News and The Soho Clarion.
Gay Men in Post-War London
Peter Parker in conversation with Travis Elborough.
Wednesday 12 February 2025 at 7.00pm.
“Quite simply, this book [Peter Parker’s Some Men in London] is a work of genius” (Matthew Parris, The Spectator)
“Peter Parker has created a nonfiction collage of gay life in the postwar years, when gay men lived under the threat of bashing, blackmail or police entrapment. John Gielgud was in 1953 fined for “persistently importuning male persons for immoral purposes”. But Parker ensures there is plenty of light as well as dark. He quotes Noël Coward's quip on seeing a cinema poster advertising Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde in The Sea Shall Not Have Them. 'Why not? Everyone else has.' ” (The Sunday Times, “50 Best Summer Books”, 2024)
Guest speakers:
Peter Parker is the author of much-praised biographies of J. R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood. His other books include The Old Lie, The Last Veteran, Housman Country and A Little Book of Latin for Gardeners. In parallel to his own writing, he edited A Reader's Guide to the Twentieth-Century Novel and Twentieth-Century Writers, and serves as advisory editor for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Travis Elborough has been described by The Guardian as “one of the country’s finest pop culture historians.” He's the author of many books, including Wish You Were Here: England on Sea, The Long-Player Goodbye, Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles, and The Atlas of Vanishing Places, which won the Edward Stanford Travel Book Award in 2020.
Nick Drake and the Late 1960s Folk Scene
Richard Morton Jack and James Wilson in conversation with Cathi Unsworth.
Wednesday 15 January 2025 at 7.00pm.
Our guests, the novelist James Wilson and Nick Drake’s authorised biographer Richard Morton Jack, will be talking to the writer Cathi Unsworth about Drake, the late 1960s British folk scene, and James Wilson’s Drake-inflected novel, The Pieces.
“This is the book we've been waiting for… It is a biography to be treasured.” (Joe Boyd)
In 1968 Nick Drake had everything to live for. The product of a loving, creative family and a privileged background, he was not only a handsome and popular Cambridge undergraduate, but also a new signing to the UK's hippest record label, Island. Three years later, however—having made three well-reviewed but low-selling albums—Nick had been overwhelmed by a mysterious mental illness. He returned to live in his family home in rural Warwickshire in 1971, and died in obscurity in 1974, aged just twenty-six. In the decades since, Nick has become the subject of ever-growing fascination and speculation. Combined sales of his records now stand in the millions, his songs are frequently heard on TV and in films, and he has become one of the most widely known and admired singer-songwriters of his generation.
Photo of Nick Drake posing against a brick wall: Keith Morris, 1969
“The Pieces brilliantly evokes the music scene of the 1960s on both sides of the Atlantic.” (Charles Palliser)
James Wilson is known for his ability to inhabit different times and lives. In this, his seventh work of fiction, he brings his unique gift to bear—with the ambition and breadth of a Victorian novelist—on the late 1960s, with all their anxiety, hope, recklessness, excess, energy, and idealism. The result is a vivid, hugely entertaining, portrait of England at a pivotal moment in its recent history, when British and American artists and musicians were together forging a revolutionary popular culture that continues to shape our world today.
Guest speakers:
Richard Morton Jack's previous books include Labyrinth (2024), Galactic Ramble (2019), Psychedelia (2017) and Endless Trip (2010). He edits the occasional music history magazine Flashback and has overseen definitive reissues of many classic rock, jazz and folk albums. He also co-founded the music marketplace and archive elvinyl.com, which launched in 2020.
James Wilson is the author of six previous novels: The Dark Clue, The Bastard Boy, The Woman in the Picture, Consolation, The Summer of Broken Stories , and Coyote Fork. He has also written plays, radio and TV documentaries, and a prize-winning work of narrative non-fiction, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America. His work has been translated into nine languages.
Cathi Unsworth began her writing career on the legendary music weekly Sounds. Her journalism has subsequently appeared in The Guardian, Bizarre, The Financial Times, Melody Maker, The Fortean Times and Uncut. She has also published six crime novels and two works of nonfiction, the most recent of which is Season of the Witch: the Book of Goth.
Denmark Street: the Traditional Heart of the London Music Business
Peter Watts in conversation with Max Décharné.
Thursday 5 December 2024 at 7.00pm.
“This is the street where the NME and Melody Maker were started, where the Rolling Stones recorded their demo album and the Beatles signed their first publishing deal,” says veteran music journalist Peter Watts. “It’s where the first UK charts were compiled and were David Bowie recruited some of his first bands. As the music industry changed, Denmark Street changed with it, albeit sometimes reluctantly. As well as musicians, I write about the historic nature of music publishing on Denmark Street, explore how the street later came to be lined with instrument shops and celebrate the 12 Bar, one of London’s great small venues. Along the way, we’ll encounter many of the greats of music from Lionel Bart and Joe Meek to Sex Pistols and Jeff Buckley.”
Guest speakers:
Peter Watts's previous books include a biography of Battersea Power Station. In his former role as a Time Out features writer and in his current role as a freelance journalist, he has written about most aspects of London life—from airports to zoos. Once he even endeavored to take every London bus in numerical order from first stop to last.
Max Décharné is a musician as well as author of ten books, his most recent being Teddy Boys: Post-War Britain and the First Youth Revolution. He was the drummer of the band Gallon Drunk, and is the singer and songwriter of the band The Flaming Stars. His other books include Vulgar Tongues: An Alternative History of English Slang and King’s Road: The Rise and Fall of the Hippest Street in the World.
Life with David Bowie and the Spiders From Mars
Suzi Ronson in conversation with Travis Elborough.
Wednesday 20 November 2024 at 7.00pm
From the stylist behind David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust look, an electrifying peek behind the curtains during a legendary chapter of pop culture history.
Suzi Ronson was working in a Beckenham hair salon in the early seventies when Mrs Jones came in for her weekly shampoo and set. After being introduced to her son David and his wife Angie, Suzi finds herself at the Bowies’ bohemian apartment and is soon embroiled in their raucous world.
Having crafted his iconic Ziggy Stardust hairstyle, Suzi becomes the only working woman in David’s touring party and joins the Spiders from Mars as they perform around the globe. Amid the costume blunders, parties and groupies she meets her husband-to-be, Mick Ronson, and together they traverse the absurdities of life in show business, falling in with the likes of Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed along the way.
Dazzling and intimate, Me and Mr Jones provides not only a unique perspective on one of the most beguiling stars of our time but also a world on the cusp of cultural transformation, charting the highs and lows of life as one of the only women in the room as it happened.
The Sohemian Society would like to thank Pamina Brassey and Tom Wilcox, without whose help this event would not have been possible.
Guest speakers:
Suzi Ronson is an author, songwriter, and former hairdresser and stylist. Her memoir, Me and Mr Jones, prompted the novelist Hanif Kureishi to declare that “few can offer such insight, and tell this fascinating story with such verve.”
Travis Elborough has been described by The Guardian as “one of the country’s finest pop culture historians.” He's the author of many books, including Wish You Were Here: England on Sea, The Long-Player Goodbye, Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles, and The Atlas of Vanishing Places, which won the Edward Stanford Travel Book Award in 2020.
Pariah Genius
Iain Sinclair talks about the Soho photographer John Deakin.
Wednesday 16 October 2024 at 7.00pm
The latest title by literary giant Iain Sinclair follows in the footsteps of photographer John Deakin, whose chronicles of Soho life—and the world of Francis Bacon and his friends—have so influenced our perception of that generation’s work.
In this bold fictionalisation, Sinclair enters the underworld of Deakin’s life and imagination. The result is an engrossing, utterly unique portrait of a man who some felt was a fallen angel, and others, the devil himself.
Guest speaker:
Iain Sinclair is a prolific writer of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. In an experimental body of work, including titles such as Downriver, Lights Out For The Territory and London Orbital, Sinclair's writing has consistently pushed at the boundaries of genre and form.
Teddy Boys: Post-War Britain and the First Youth Revolution
Max Décharné in conversation with Marc Glendening.
Wednesday 18 September 2024 at 7.00pm
“Enormously enjoyable” (Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times)
With their draped suits, suede creepers and immaculately greased hair, the Teddy Boys defined a new era for a generation of teenagers raised on a diet of drab clothes, Blitz playgrounds and tinned dinners. From the Edwardian origins of their fashion to the tabloid fears of delinquency, drunkenness and disorder, the story of the Teds throws a fascinating light on a British society that was still reeling from the Second World War. In the 1950s, working-class teenagers found a way of asserting themselves in how they dressed, spoke and socialised on the street. When people saw Teds, they stepped aside. Max Décharné traces the rise of the Teds and the shockwave they sent through post-war Britain, from the rise of rock ’n’ roll to the Notting Hill race riots. Full of fascinating insight, deftly sketching the milieu of Elvis Presley and Derek Bentley, Billy Fury and Oswald Mosley, Teddy Boys is the story of Britain's first youth counterculture.
Guest speakers:
Max Décharné is a musician as well as author of ten books, his most recent being Teddy Boys: Post-War Britain and the First Youth Revolution. He was the drummer of the band Gallon Drunk, and is the singer and songwriter of the band The Flaming Stars. His other books include Vulgar Tongues: An Alternative History of English Slang and King’s Road: The Rise and Fall of the Hippest Street in the World.
Marc Glendening is the co-founder of the Sohemian Society. His connection to Soho dates back to when, as a baby, he visited the Colony Room where his father, the painter Ronald Glendening, and his stepmother, Sohemian Society stalwart Yvonne Glendening, were regulars. Marc works as a free speech campaigner. He also writes occasional journalism, which has appeared in publications such as Spiked and The Critic.