Christopher Howse
Soho in the Eighties
Not really about Soho but about 2 pubs and a bar that the author hung out in. Interesting as they are pubs that I frequented when meeting friends, The Coach & Horses and the French House, usually before going to a club. The Coach is the famous Jeffery Bernard pub of Private Eye's The Regulars comic strip. Although some interesting anecdotes about artists, journalists and hangers on you get the feeling that they are mostly alcoholics and either too pissed or too interested in getting pissed to notice anything else going on around them in Soho. They come over as a self centred and argumentative lot which addicts often are and people you wouldn't really want to hang around with. By descriptions of the Coach you'd think that the regulars described lauded it over the place but I never really noticed the goings on when I drank there. Another irritation is Howse constantly going on about how poor they all were and therefore how bohemian - despite most of them going to public schools and Oxbridge and coming from rich families. And they all seemed to write for (mainly) right wing papers such as the Times, Telegraph and Spectator. The overall impression is that most of the people mentioned are slumming it in Soho and either died through alcoholism and it's physical or mental health affects or got out when they reached a certain age to settle down in to normal society. I would imagine that if I had noticed them in the Coach or the French House I'd have thought what a bunch of sad wankers.
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