Is this Fitzrovia?

To follow up on my earlier account of the exploits of John Shelton and Arthur Berry in Fitzrovia, here are John Shelton‘s recollections of Fitzrovia – both the place and the scene.

Fitzrovia diary page

Fitzrovia
Here a group of writers, poets, painters, musicians, actors (with hangers on, mistresses, entrepreneurs, patrons, journalists and wandering students and armed forces rejects) all of varying talents and achievements collectively experienced a special set of emotional and economic war time conditions. There is only the vaguest awareness that they constituted a group or that they had any ideas in common, yet they unconsciously reflect a joint experience in art to which they are all committed. The limitations and difficulties shaped and stimulated ideas. That is the Bohemia, the state of mind. But the group must be fairly small, its members must meet each other regularly, and in a limited area. That is Bohemia the place, and the place was called Fitzrovia.

Bounded on the east by Tottenham Court Road – over to Oxford Street in Soho, on the west petering out before Cleveland Street and Newman Street. Ending in the north by about Howland Street. Charlotte Street is its spine – the Fitzroy Tavern (nicknamed Klienfeld’s) first popular was superceded by the Wheatsheaf (where Mrs Stewart downed her Guinness). Rathbone Street. The Bricklayers Arms (Burglars Rest). York Minster (The French). The Duke of York, The Beerhouse. The Black Horse (lesbian). The Marquis of Granby. The Highlander (open ’til eleven). Cafe Madrid. Coffee An¹. Horseshoe Club. The Colony Club in Soho.

 
FOOTNOTE

¹ Thanks to Richard Warren for pointing out ‘Coffee An’, a “scruffy late-night cafe on New Oxford Street” as per p.131 of Bristow’s The Last Bohemians. His article, ‘A world you didn’t grow old in‘ is worth reading for more on the subject.