Bohemian London

From Thomas De Quincey to Jeffrey Bernard

For more than 150 years, the garrets and pubs of Soho, the salons of Chelsea, the opium dens of Limehouse, and the brothels of Covent Garden teemed with poets, painters, derelicts, drunks, sensualists, homosexuals, crooks, and cranks. In Bohemian London, Travis Elborough chronicles de Qunincey and Coleridge’s hazy laudanum days in Tyburnia; toasts Wilde at the Café Royal; imbibes absinthe with Yeats at the Cheshire Cheese; snorts cocaine with Aleister Crowley; sips bitter with Dylan Thomas; and catches last orders with Francis Bacon. While true Bohemians may be long gone, their style, mores, addictions, and excesses did much to shape the city we know today.