Nights Out : Life in Cosmopolitan London

by Judith R. Walkowitz

• ISBN13: 9780300151947
• ISBN10: 0300151942
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2012-05-15
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Judith Walkowitz is professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the author of City of Dreadful Delight. She lives in New York.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. viii
Acknowledgments	p. xii
Introduction	p. 1
Cosmopolitan Soho	p. 17
Battle of the Empire	p. 44
The "Vision of Salome"	p. 64
The Italian Restaurant	p. 92
Schleppers and Shoppers	p. 144
A Jewish Night Out	p. 182
The Shady Nightclub	p. 209
Windmill Theatre	p. 253
Epilogue	p. 286
Abbreviations	p. 304
Notes	p. 305
Selected Bibliography	p. 377
Index	p. 402
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