Reading
Unsurprisingly given its colourful nature, much has been written about Soho. The following is short selection of books, all of which are a great read and would be of benefit to anyone planning to visit Soho.
Dirty White Boy, Tales of Soho by Clayton Littlewood, Cleiss Press 2008. The musings and observations of a clothing store owner in Old Compton St in the 2000s. You will struggle to find a better modern day commentary on Soho. Littlewood's book has been compared to Christopher Isherwood's writings about sordid Berlin in the 1920s. And apart from all that, it is very funny.
Dog Days in Soho by Nigel Richardson, Phoenix 2001. A biography of one sailor's life in Soho in the 1950s, perhaps the single most notorious period in the history of the district. Poignant and very well written. Gives a fine sense of the period just before the evolution of modern day Soho.
Soho: A History of London's Most Colourful Neighbourhood by Judith Summers, Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd 1989. Not easy to find copies of this book but it is worth the effort. Covers the social history of the district from the 18th to late 20th century.
History
Soho has a long and colourful history. The first record of the name comes from the 17th century when the area was pasture after being used as hunting park for the Royal Court of Henry VIII some 100 years earlier.
Despite this royal attention and very grand development taking place in adjoining districts, Soho did not become fashionable until recent times and was mostly known as an area settled by new immigrants. By the mid-19th century it had become the home of prostitutes and low brow music halls. Things looked up in the early 1900s when it gained something of a Bohemian reputation with writers, artists and actors moving in but the sex industry continued to dominate the district until as recently as the 1980s. This lucrative business was always run by organised crime groups and ensured that Soho was a notorious haunt of gangsters throughout much of the 20th century.
The music business began to really prosper here in the 1950s with a beatnik and jazz culture very much to the fore. Perhaps London's most famous jazz venue, Ronnie Scotts, is still thriving today in Frith Street. Many famous rock bands are also closely associated with Soho. The Rolling Stones played their first ever live concert here at the legendary Marquee and The Sex Pistols lived in Denmark Street as well as playing a number of infamous gigs. In the 1970s and 1980s Soho, and the Marquee in particular, was the place in London to head for to check out up and coming and often very controversial British bands.
Since the 1980s, the whole of Soho has undergone rapid transformation and development into a fashionable district of upmarket restaurants and media offices. There are though still a few places which are easily associated with its more colourful past and even a small remnant of the previously dominant sex industry remains.
Modern day Soho has the densest concentration of restaurants, cafés, clubs and bars in central London and truly represents the vibrant, bustling heart of the city. It is also the modern hub of London's media world with multiple advertising agencies, television and radio studios and post-production companies choosing this as their base of operations.
Orientation
This is generally considered to be the area enclosed by Piccadilly Circus, Shaftesbury Avenue and Cambridge Circus to the south, Charing Cross Road to the east, Oxford Street to the north, and Regent Street to the west. Oxford Street is the main shopping street in London but much of it is in the Mayfair-Marylebone district.
The area immediately surrounding Old Compton Street in the southern part of Soho is widely recognised as London's foremost gay village and is a very stylish part of London indeed. There is some overlap with the red light district, though there has been a decline in prostution and strip bars in the area since the 60's and is not quite as seedy as it once was.
Soho is sometimes considered to include London's Chinatown. Chinatown, however, lies south of Shaftesbury Avenue and, having a culture distinctly different from the rest of the West End, adjoining - but not really part of - Soho.