Granger - Up West: Voices from the Streets of Post-War London

Voices from the Streets of Post-War London

PIP GRANGER

CORGI BOOKS

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781407083896

www.randomhouse.co.uk

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
6163 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
A Random House Group Company
www.rbooks.co.uk

UP WEST
A CORGI BOOK: 9780552153751

First publication in Great Britain
Corgi edition published 2009

Copyright Pip Granger 2009
Map copyright Encompass Graphics Ltd 2009

Pip Granger has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author and of others. In some limited cases names of people, places, dates, sequences or the detail of events have been changed solely to protect the privacy of others. The author has stated to the publishers that, except in such minor respects, the contents of this book are true.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009

The Random House Group Limited supports The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the leading international forest certification organisation. All our titles that are printed on Greenpeace approved FSC certified paper carry the FSC logo. Our paper procurement policy can be found at www.rbooks.co.uk/environment

Typeset in 11/15pt Times New Roman by Kestrel Data, Exeter, Devon. Printed in the UK by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, RG1 8EX.

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of those who sadly did not live to see Up West completed. I was too late to interview Ray Constantine and Andrew Panayiotes and therefore their testimony is from their initial emails. Alberto Camisa gave a long and fascinating interview and I hope that the fact that his memories run all through the book proves to be of some comfort to his family and friends. Roy Walker, Barbara Joness husband, also died before I could interview him in depth, for which I am very sorry. Bryan Burrough of the Soho Society was already unwell when we met, but I think of him often when I feed my greedy blackbirds, a little ritual that we shared along with our love of Soho. I am only sorry that I was unable to glean more of Bryans great knowledge of our favourite bit of London before he left us. I hope that the families and friends of all these people will accept my sympathy for their loss and my gratitude for the help that their loved ones gave to this book.

Part of Pip Grangers early childhood was spent in the back seat of a light aircraft as her father smuggled brandy, tobacco and books across the English Channel to be sold in fifties Soho, where she lived above the 2Is coffee bar in Old Compton Street.

She worked as a Special Needs teacher in Hackney in the eighties, before quitting teaching to pursue her long cherished ambition to write. She now lives in Somerset with her husband.

www.rbooks.co.uk

Also by Pip Granger

Novels

NOT ALL TARTS ARE APPLE
THE WIDOW GINGER
TROUBLE IN PARADISE
NO PEACE FOR THE WICKED

Non-fiction
ALONE

and published by Corgi Books

Id like to express my heartfelt thanks to all the contributors without whose generous testimony there would be no book. It has been an honour to share your memories and thank you for trusting me with them.

There arent adequate words in the language to thank my husband, Ray, for his support, all the legwork and unstinting encouragement he is my hero and a star.

Many thanks to Mike Janulewicz for the loan of some very useful books and thanks are also due to the Archivist of the Peabody Trust, Christine Wagg.

Last, but by no means least heres to those who do all the unsung schlep work that gets books on to our shelves in this case my editor, Selina Walker; cover designer, Diane Meacham; editorial production, Judith Welsh; pictures, Sheila Lee; copy-editor, Beth Humphries; map, Tom Coulson and Phil Lord.

Ill own up to two things straight away. First of all, this book is not a proper history, with dates and hard facts and footnotes, although there is a bit of that sort of thing. Up West is more to do with peoples memories of how things looked, sounded, smelt and felt, about what it was like to work and live in the West End of London in the twenty years after the Second World War. Rather than telling a story in chronological order, Ive therefore chosen to present a series of pictures, of impressions, from my life and those of others interviewed for this book, to make what might be called an emotional history.

Secondly, although this book is called Up West, its pretty obvious that my heart belongs to Soho. Covent Garden gets a fair crack, too, but poor old Mayfair, for instance, hardly gets a look in. Although people did live in Mayfair and its West End neighbours, St Jamess and Knightsbridge, those areas do not seem to have had that mysterious something that made people love them in quite the same way as Sohoites and Covent Gardeners love their manors. They simply dont appear to inspire the same sense of place as the other two.

Theres a reason for that, which emerged when I was researching this book. Literally everyone who was interviewed who had lived in Soho and Covent Garden in the post-war years remembered the life and bustle of the streets, the sense of being all in it together, and the fact that most of the people who lived there, worked there, too. Working men and women, artisans and traders, breathe life and soul into a place, and Soho and Covent Garden have always had them in abundance. Some had only to go downstairs to go to work, while others had just a few minutes walk to get to their jobs in workshops, restaurants, markets or the many small businesses tucked away in backstreets. Of course, the people who lived and worked there brought up their kids there, too, and there were plenty of them. Between them, Soho and Covent Garden could boast more than half a dozen primary schools, their class sizes swelled by the post-war baby boom.