Nights Out
Life in Cosmopolitan London
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Yale University Press
Published:15th Mar '12
Should be back in stock very soon
London’s Soho district underwent a spectacular transformation between the late Victorian era and the end of the Second World War: its old buildings and dark streets infamous for sex, crime, political disloyalty, and ethnic diversity became a center of culinary and cultural tourism servicing patrons of nearby shops and theaters. Indulgences for the privileged and the upwardly mobile edged a dangerous, transgressive space imagined to be "outside" the nation.
Treating Soho as exceptional, but also representative of London's urban transformation, Judith Walkowitz shows how the area's foreignness and porousness were key to the explosion of culture and development of modernity in the first half of the twentieth century. She draws on a vast and unusual range of sources to stitch together a rich patchwork quilt of vivid stories and unforgettable characters, revealing how Soho became a showcase for a new cosmopolitan identity.
“Walkowitz chronicles convincingly, disinterring obscure newspaper stories, skilfully using police reports, and amassing excellent material…Nights Out is the result of skilful, persevering research and conscientious thought: it marshals much recondite material to make a rewarding book. Walkowitz writes well…[a] lively, affable, thought- provoking book.”—Richard Davenport-Hines, Times Literary Supplement
“Exemplary. . . . A new and invigorating history of this ‘potent incubator of metropolitan change’ and its multiple meanings for the metropolis in the first half of the twentieth century. . . . A tour de force of meticulous and industrious research that provides us with what will surely be the last word on many aspects of Soho life in the first half of the twentieth century. . . . Splendid.”—Jerry White, History Workshop Journal
“…a highly entertaining insight into one of the most popular areas of the metropolis.”—Julie Peakman, Who Do You think You Are magazine?
"A scrupulous and intelligent survey of a mythologised area where those qualities are rarely found. A real contribution to the history of place."—Iain Sinclair
ISBN: 9780300151947
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 885g
432 pages