If you're hard of hearing, you'll be pleased to know that the guests at our events will use microphones, connected to a loudspeaker system.
From Tuesday 6 May onwards, the Sohemian Society’s evening events will be held in the largest of the upstairs function rooms at the historic Fitzroy Tavern, which is at 16 Charlotte Street, London W.1. As many of you will know, the Fitzroy was the pre-eminent meeting place for bohemian writers and artists between the 1920s and 1940s, which led to that part of town being dubbed “Fitzrovia”.
Photo: Ewan Munro
Edward Tudor Pole: Autobiogaphy of a Punk Rocker
Cathi Unsworth in conversation with Edward Tudor Pole
Tuesday 17 June 2025 at 7.00pm (90 mins approx.). Doors open at 6.30pm.
Upstairs at the Fitzroy Tavern, 16 Charlotte Street, London W.1. The stairs are reached via the Charlotte Street doorway.
Click here for information about how to buy tickets.
A fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the punk rock world, a career in show business and a lifetime spent on stage, written by this legendary musician, Henry VIII descendant and one-time Sex Pistol. Whether house-sharing with Philip Pullman, trading one-liners at RADA with Ralph Richardson, shooting the breeze with Clint Eastwood, partying with Jerry Hall, acting in Edwardian comedy with Rex Harrison, or dodging fights with Sid Vicious, Edward Tudor Pole has proved himself equal to many a challenge.
Guest speakers:
Edward Tudor Pole has been playing guitar since he was ten. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art he joined the Sex Pistols, contributing a song before writing hits for Tenpole Tudor and becoming a pop star in the 1980s. After the horrific implosion of the group, Tudor Pole was enticed into the acting world and appeared in many films including with Clint Eastwood and in three West End shows including opposite Rex Harrison. On TV in the 1990s, Tudor Pole presented the Crystal Maze. Finding the life of an actor ever more intolerable, Tudor Pole made a decision, and in 2004 became a full time professional singer and guitarist who has been touring ever since.
Cathi Unsworth is the author of five novels and two works of nonfiction, all of which have attracted enormous praise. She has also edited the award-winning short story collection, London Noir. In parallel to working on books, she has written journalism for the Guardian, the Financial Times, Melody Maker, Sounds, Mojo, Uncut, the Fortean Times, Bizarre, and many other publications.
Guided Walk: Ladbroke Grove's Criminal Past
Sunday 22 June. 2.30pm until approximately 4.00pm.
Click here to reserve tickets and to obtain details of the initial meeting place. The group is limited to 20 people, so early booking is advised.
Between 1959-65, eight women were murdered and their bodies left in what appeared to be a pattern, in and along the Thames west of Hammersmith. Detectives thought it was the work of a serial killer but – despite the biggest manhunt in Metropolitan Police history – they never managed to catch him. Untangling the multiple mysteries of what might have happened to the victims of the so-called Thames Towpath or Jack the Stripper murders and how they connected beyond their profession as sex workers was a complex task. But they all had one pivotal thing in common – they all lived and/or worked in Ladbroke Grove, at the time it was the biggest red light district in London.
Along the streets of W11 walked the killer, his victims and the police. Through the windows came the sounds that Joe Meek crafted, from the tower of Lansdowne Studios to his flat on Arundel Gardens. In rackety basement jazz clubs and bedsit studios, the students from the Royal College of Art who would become known as the Pop Artists traded ideas and shaped new worlds on canvas and collage. Behind curtains, by candlelight, the Spiritualists tuned into the aether. And all around, the immigrants and Teds, dodgy politicians and slum landlords, slumming ladies and rude boys lived, loved, fought, danced and dreamed.
Join us as we retrace their footsteps and recreate the world of Bad Penny Blues.
Walk guide:
Cathi Unsworth is the author of five novels and two works of nonfiction, all of which have attracted enormous praise. She has also edited the award-winning short story collection, London Noir. In parallel to working on books, she has written journalism for the Guardian, the Financial Times, Melody Maker, Sounds, Mojo, Uncut, the Fortean Times, Bizarre, and many other publications.
Guided Walk: The Colourful History of the King's Road
Sunday 29 June. 2.30pm until approximately 4.00pm.
Click here to reserve tickets and to obtain details of the initial meeting place. The group is limited to 20 people, so early booking is advised.
The King's Road in Chelsea was at the epicentre of not one, but two worldwide cultural shifts. In the mid-sixties, it became a focal point and shop window for the new “swinging” London, encompassing music, theatre, the visual arts, fashion and much more. It remained at the forefront of developing trends throughout the following decade until it became the breeding-ground for punk rock, whose sound, look and attitudes continue to shape global notions of youthful rebellion almost fifty years later, covered in depth in Max Décharné’s acclaimed book, King’s Road: The Rise and Fall of the Hippest Street in the World.
Highlights of the walk led by Max will include the locations where Look Back in Anger and the Rocky Horror Show were first performed, Mary Quant opened her first boutique, the Beatles posed for the cover of Sgt Pepper, Billie Holiday sang live on television and Duke Ellington made records, where Germaine Greer lived while writing the Female Eunuch, occultist Aleister Crowley wrote Diary of a Drug Fiend, where the Sex Pistols formed and the shop from which Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood sold their iconic punk clothing.
Walk guide:
Writer and musician Max Décharné is the 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 has been the singer and songwriter of the band The Flaming Stars since 1994. His other books include Vulgar Tongues: An Alternative History of English Slang, A Rocket in My Pocket, Hardboiled Hollywood and King’s Road : The Rise and Fall of the Hippest Street in the World.
Guided Walk: Modernist Soho & Mayfair - Walking in the Footsteps of Ian Nairn
Sunday 6 July, 2.30pm until approximately 4.00pm.
Click here to reserve tickets and to obtain details of the initial meeting place. The group is limited to 20 people, so early booking is advised.
The fearless architectural critic and broadcaster, Ian Nairn, briefly a familiar face on British television in the 1970s, succumbed to drink and despondency just ten days shy of his fifty-third birthday, dying on 14 August 1983.
But back in 1964 and at the height of his powers he authored, Modern Buildings in London, a brilliantly opinionated primer to the best of contemporary architecture in the capital that was issued by London Transport - and even sold from automatic vending machines in key London stations.
Join Travis Elborough, the award-winning author of the introduction to the latest edition of Modern Buildings in London, for this tour of some of the West End buildings that caught Nairn’s eye.
Walk guide:
Described by the Guardian as “one of the country’s finest pop culture historians”, Travis Elborough is 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, winner of Edward Stanford Travel Book Award in 2020.
Guided Walk: Secret Bloomsbury
Sunday 20 July, 2.30pm until approximately 4.00pm.
Click here to reserve tickets and to obtain details of the initial meeting place. The group is limited to 20 people, so early booking is advised.
This historical walking tour is your chance to uncover the Bloomsbury that nobody knows, where you'll encounter spiritualists, spies, sorcerers and scientists in the heart of literary London.
From nuclear bunkers to tales of teleportation, hidden scientific experiments to impregnable Victorian vaults, join your guide as he exposes the secrets of this extraordinary area.
Walk guide:
Ross MacFarlane is an archivist who has over twenty years’ experience working on the history of science and medicine. He has researched, lectured, and written on a range of topics, such as aspects of the occult, the history of early recorded sound, and the collection of amulets and charms in Edwardian London. He is a regular book reviewer for Fortean Times and has also published in magazines and journals such as New Scientist, The Lancet, Folklore, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, and has contributed to books such as The Morbid Anatomy Anthology (2014) and A Practical Course in Magnetism: The Victorian Guide to Health, Happiness, Power and Success (2017). As well as being an Honorary Research Fellow at Queen Mary University London, he currently serves on the managing council’s of the Folklore Society and the British Society for the History and Science.