The Colony Room Club, 1948-2008 : a history of bohemian Soho

The Colony Room Club was opened by Muriel Belcher in 1948. Witty, charismatic and as a lesbian an outlaw herself, she soon attracted the artists and those of a bohemian bent who peopled Soho at the time. Francis Bacon was a founding member, walking in the day after it opened in 1948. He was "adopted" by Belcher as a "daughter" and allowed free drinks and £10 a week. Bacon was followed by other artists, among them Frank Auerbach and Lucian Freud, and over the following decades the club developed its unique atmosphere. Far from grand, it lay at the top of a murky flight of stairs on Soho’s Dean Street, a small and rather unprepossessing room. Nonetheless, the roll call of members and their cohorts who climbed those stairs reads like a who’s who of the arts in the post war period, from painters, writers, musicians, actors, directors and fashionistas to the more louche members of the aristocracy and even some MPs. Dylan Thomas, Noel Coward, William Burroughs, George Melly, John Hurt, Molly Parkin, Zandra Rhodes, Jeffrey Bernard and Christine Keeler were among those who were drawn to the club by the personality and colourful vocabulary of its hostess, by the decadent ambience and the charisma of the company. The club lived on after Muriel’s death and was adopted by the arts crowd of the nineties and noughties. Actor brothers Keith and Kevin Allen, art dealer James Birch, artists Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas, musicians Joe Strummer, Damon Albarn and Alex James, DJ Gaz Mayall, singer Lisa Stansfield and actress Keira Knightley all came to join the party during the final years. Sophie Parkin was given a membership card by her mother Molly Parkin for her eighteenth birthday – an “unusual present”. Molly was a stalwart of the club and Sophie became a regular habitue. As such, with a keen eye she observed the antics at the club first hand, took photos and then wrote the history of this Soho institution, now sadly closed. Packed with riveting and scandalous gossip this is a fascinating history not just of a club but of Soho at large, of an era and the people who defined it. The Colony Room Club was home to Soho's eclectic art community for generations, famously including Francis Bacon. The Colony Room Club was known to the local's as 'Muriel's', after the proprietor Muriel Belcher, of whom Francis Bacon was a great admirer, the artist painted her portrait three times. Muriel would pay Francis ten pounds a week to 'bring in the people you like'. Before long the Colony Room was was welcoming the likes of Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Charles Laughton, E.M. Forster, Tallulah Bankhead, as well as artists Frank Auerbach Colquohoun and Macbryde, who, like Bacon are represented in the Leeds Art Gallery collection. Opinions of the famous artistic drinking den have ranged and changed. Brian Patten described it as 'a small urinal full of fractious old geezers bitching about each other'. Painter, novelist, and journalist - Molly Parkin (Author Sophie's mother) saw the club as 'a character-building glorious hell-hole. Everyone left their careers at the roadside before clambering the stairs and plunging into questionable behaviour'. A club member since the gift of membership as an 18th birthday present, Sophie Parkin herself intimately describes the club as 'fish tank whose water needed changing' "...For the Colony was an Arts Club for the most important artists, ballet dancers, composers, poets, writers, MP's, journalists, architects, gangsters, designers, directors, photographers, publishers, critics, musicians, academics, thinkers, fashionistas, actors, lords and ladies. Many like Dylan Thomas, Jeffrey Bernard, George Melly, and Francis Bacon, had gigantic ego's but all left them outside. The Colony was a private party for outsiders and ostracised members of society, whether you were black, gay, female, an artist or poet, or just liked them. Others who joined the party in the last years included Tracey Emin, Daniel Craig, Kate Moss, Suggs, Sarah Lucas, Jude Law and Kiera Kinghtly"-- Back cover