Merging the words “bohemian” and “Soho”—a district of London that’s long been associated with heavy-drinking writers, artists, and musicians—Marc Glendening and Ian Farrow founded the Sohemian Society in September 2003. Their jokey term has since passed into wider usage, notably in the great comic writer David Nobbs’s 2007 novel, Pratt à Manger. Coincidentally, Nobbs also references Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia, the biography of the Soho writer and bohemian dandy Julian Maclaren-Ross (1912-64) which inspired Messrs Glendening and Farrow to form the London-based Sohemian Society. In tribute to Maclaren-Ross, they awarded him the title of President-in-Death.
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They announced that the Society “exists to promote greater awareness of the characters and events associated with the history of Soho covering areas such as the arts, crime, sex, and politics.” They went on to suggest that “Soho is a spiritual as well as a geographical location: a vortex of louche living, artistic creativity, cultural nonconformity and free expression.”
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The Society’s opening event was a talk about Maclaren-Ross, given by his biographer, Paul Willetts, whose book recounted some of the boozy evenings that its subject spent at the Wheatsheaf pub—25 Rathbone Place, once regarded as part of Soho. Between the 1930s and 1950s, Maclaren-Ross had rubbed shoulders there with the likes of Dylan Thomas, George Orwell, and Augustus John. Prompted by this connection, Glendening and Farrow chose the Wheatsheaf as the venue for the Society's inaugural talk. It attracted an audience that featured several veterans of the 1940s Soho scene, among them the MI9 employee turned actress turned writer Ann Valery, whose main claim to fame was her role in the classic movie Kind Hearts and Coronets.
Between December 2003 and the first of the Covid-induced lockdowns, the Sohemian Society staged 182 events, consisting of talks, Q-and-As, slideshows, guided tours, film screenings, and even small-scale theatre shows, attended by many well-known people, ranging from Doris Lessing to Howard Devoto.
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Most of these Sohemian events took place in the lovely upstairs room at the Wheatsheaf, which remains out spiritual home. A few events have also been held at the Century Club, Sanctum Soho, the Everyman Cinema, the Harrison Hotel, the Soho Theatre, the Horse Hospital, the King & Queen pub on Foley Street, and Peter Parker’s Rock ’n’ Roll Club on Denmark Street.
Under the collaborative programming of Marc Glendening, Dave Fogarty, Cathi Unsworth, and Mike Meekin—who received occasional help from Jon Glover, Travis Elborough, Virginia Ironside, Clive Jennings, Paul Willetts, and Helen Lambert—the Sohemian Society gradually moved away from its exclusive focus on bohemian subjects. By the time it went into a four-year hiatus in 2020, it had hosted talks about fine art, graphic design, history, literature, cinema, pop music, fashion, and youth culture. The revived incarnation of the Sohemian Society aims to pursue these wide-ranging interests.
Past speakers include the musician and Soho character, George Melly; Jack Kerouac's friend and travelling companion, Carolyn Cassady; Allan Sillitoe, author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; the wartime diarist Joan Wyndham; the Carry On actress and Establishment Club regular Fenella Fielding; the 1960s music producer Joe Boyd; the memoirist and former Home Secretary Alan Johnson; the historian Virginia Nicolson; the writer and film-maker Jonathan Meades; John Preston, author of A Very English Scandal and The Dig; the memoirist and Beatles' associate Barry Miles; the actors Murray Melvin and Dudley Sutton; the writer Iain Sinclair; the style commentator Peter York; the novelist Jake Arnott; the couturier and Hollywood costume designer Morton Myles; and the journalist Virginia Ironside, who was among the select group for whom the Swinging Sixties really swung. She’s since been awarded the title of the Sohemian Society’s President-in-Life. Rumours that she’s been deposed during a coup d’état are unfounded…
The Sohemian Society would like to thank Fenris Oswin and Travis Elborough for the use of their photos of various events we've staged.
Photo of the Wheatsheaf: Basher Eyre