Bohemian & Libertine · London, Greater London
46 Gordon Square (Bloomsbury HQ)
The drawing room where, one evening in 1907, Lytton Strachey pointed at a stain on Vanessa's dress and said a single unprintable word — and, as Woolf recorded, 'all barriers of reticence and reserve went down'. British conversation about sex was never quite the same; pair with Charleston for where the theory went to live.
More stories at this spot
- 'Semen?' — the evening candour broke in
- Keynes's later residency at No. 46
Sources
Nearby on the map
The pub that named a district: Fitzrovia's all-comers salon where Dylan Thomas drank, Nina Hamnett — 'Queen of Bohemia' — held court on the subject of her lovers, and Quentin Crisp arrived nightly in full defiant maquillage. Louche, literary and gloriously unrespectable.
Documented historyHot spotQueer HeritageThe Caravan Club, 81 Endell StreetLondon, Greater London · England'London's greatest bohemian rendezvous' said the flyers; 'a sink of iniquity' said the prosecution. The basement queer club survived six weeks of 1934 before the raid — but the police files preserved its dancing, its slang and its defiant joy in extraordinary detail, and in 2017 the National Trust reopened the basement as a memorial to it.
Documented historyModern NotorietyMurray's Cabaret Club (where Profumo met Keeler's world)London, Greater London · EnglandThe Soho supper club where showgirls in feathers were forbidden to move — and where the teenage Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies met Stephen Ward, the introduction that set the Profumo affair in motion. Discretion was the house rule; history had other plans.
Documented historySpotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.