map all dog-eared pages: west end chronicles

I'm a big fan of books like this; books where history, geography, anecdotes and odd facts bump together into a mash of stuff you wish you remembered when you were walking about. Because then you could pass an address and say something knowledgeable, historical and amusing about it. I can only ever remember one such address: 54 Berners Street. (And if you don't know about the Berners Street Hoax - have a look, it's genius.) So, I thought that maybe building a map of these things might help:

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page 10 : William Douglas, fourth Duke Of Queensbury, better known as 'Old Q' who lived at the turn of the eightenth century in a large property that stood between Old Burlington Street and Saville Row...had other, more disconcerting eccentricities, like consuming a supper of roast poulet and lime punch every midnight, and then being woken at three in the morning to take a meal of veal cutlet.

page 13 : At 1 Seamore Place, later razed to extend Curzon Street west, lived the colourful Alfred de Rothschild, who liked nothing more than to stage circuses at home with himself as ringmaster, cracking a long whip. He had his servants well-trained. When a guest once asked for milk in his tea a powdered flunky responded in a flash: 'Jersey, Hereford or Shorthorn, sir?'

page 26 : The Dorchester was the first setting for Foyle's literary luncheons. In their early days these featured the novelist DH Lawrence, the actor Charlie Chaplin and the Ethiopian ruler, Haile Selassie. When Sir John Gilbey of the gin distillers spoke for one and a half hours, causing a guest to fall asleep, William Foyle, the bookstore's owner, approached the sleeping gentleman and hit him on the head with his gavel, only to be told by the awakened guest: 'hit me harder, I can still hear him'.

page 29 : In 1935 (the Grosvenor House Hotel) was the setting for a most unusual event, an aromatic dinner held by a strange new organisation - the Smell Society - founded by the eccentric lawyer Ambrose Appelbe, who later represented Mandy Rice-Davies. Applebe hoped to refresh London nostrils with sheets of paper impregnated with the smells of the seaside and create new words to describe the smell of things such as roast turkey and tar.

page 126 : The Blakes moved half a mile to Green Street (now Orange Street) by Leicester Square. And it was while living there in the summer of 1783 that Blake witnessed a rare phenomenon - a fiery blue meteorite with an orange tail that shot over the London skies. It lit up much of London and inspired a number of his paintings as well as the line in the poem 'Tyger'. 'When the stars threw down their spears/ And water'd heaven with their tears.'

page 226 : Soho, fittingly, was home to Britain's first espresso coffee bar: Moka, at 29 Frith Street. Behind the venture was a Scotsman, Maurice Ross, who bought Britain's first Gaggia machine from Pino Riservato, a travelling salesman specialising in dental equipment who was so concerned at the poor quality of coffee on offer in Britain he acquired the UK concession for the machine...
... the cult US writer William S. Burroughs, subjected the Moka to what he called 'para-psychic bombardment' - sessions of recordings and pictures. 'Now to close in on The Moka Bar. Record. Take pictures. Stand around outside. Let them see me. They are seething around in there. The horrible old proprietor, his frizzy haired wife and slack jawed son, the snarling counter man. I have them and they know it.'

page 230 : In the 1960s De Hems became popular with music business people, for it was said that the bottom three places in the charts could be bought in the pub's Oyster Bar.

Comments

[neilperkin]

Lovely thought. Someone should make a service out of this and do it for all big cities. Imagine being able to walk around being able to read this stuff from your mobile...

[Adam]

Loving this!

Riffing on Neil's idea, you could use Social Light to geotag those locations with media.

http://socialight.com
http://socialight.com/channels/socialight_london

I can imagine some geo stories will be so sticky people would want to re-enact certain events as they pass by - or just perform a few 'para-psychic bombardments' for the hell of it!

[Ben]

Imagine doing that Berners St hoax now. You'd end up with a hallway full of little cards informing you that you were out when you should have been in.