How It All Began
It all started when someone from the Dorchester Hotel group visited my exhibition on the Colony Room Club, back in 2020. They said they’d love to recreate the Colony at 45 Park Lane, formerly the Playboy Club. I didn’t take them seriously until I was called into the boardroom for a high level meeting and suddenly it was all systems go.
Then, after weeks of drawing up plans and sourcing items, disaster struck. The Timescalled me about a rumour that the Colony was going to reopen at the Hilton hotel. I foolishly told them the truth and recounted the club’s colourful history – that if its proprietor, Muriel Belcher, called you a cunt twice in quick succession it meant she liked you! The next day the whole page 3 of The Times was dedicated to a major news item, that the Dorchester was going to recreate the Colony. I never thought that The Times would print ‘cunt’ uncensored, but it did so repeatedly throughout the article. Someone high up at the Dorchester read it over breakfast, choked on their cornflakes and my project was culled … until a chance meeting in August 2023.
Introducing the Colony Room Green Art Installation
Claire Freestone, a curator at the National Portrait Gallery arranged for me to meet Tom Onions and Prue Freeman of Daisy Green, who run Larry’s bar at the NPG. Tom said he loved my book, Tales from The Colony Room: Soho’s Lost Bohemia. We went for lunch at the French House, one thing led to another and by the end of the meal I’d agreed to recreate the Colony, as an art installation, picking up from where the Dorchester had left off, and using my unique archive of material.
I named the artwork Colony Room Green, as a riff on the Colony colour, which permeates the paintings of its most famous patron, the artist Francis Bacon. With its functioning bar, Colony Room Green is unique in being the only artwork in Britain where getting slowly inebriated is all part of the art, and it has featured widely in the press: The Times, Daily Mail, Evening Standard, Financial Times, Soho Clarion, and even Trebuchet magazine, which praised it as a work of installation art.
Famous Visitors & Celebrations
Many famous names have dropped in, the pop stars: Lisa Stansfield, Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream), Clem Burke and Gary Valentine (of Blondie); the actors: Perry Benson (Benidorm) and Peter Davison (Doctor Who); the comedians: Hattie Hayridge and Alexei Sayle; the artists: Maggi Hambling, Gavin Turk and Gary Hume as well as the photographers: Mary McCartney and Neal Slavin (who took the iconic 1980s Colony group photo), to name but a few…
The countless birthday parties held in the space have begun to blur into one, however some are notable for their longevity. Michael Dillon, former proprietor of Gerry’s Club had his 80th birthday there. Soho doyen’s Phyllis, Mary Swan and Michael Heath (the cartoonist) have all celebrated their 90th birthdays down there too. And memorial birthday drinks were held for former Colony barman and legendary bartender, Dick Bradsell (he of Expresso Martini fame) organised by his daughter, Bea.
Supporting Art & Literature
After covid many of the spaces artists, writers, poets and performers could use for free had gone, so part of the reason for recreating the Colony is to put on free events, book launches and talks which otherwise would not necessarily get a toehold in London’s West End, such as Jeff Young’s autobiography, Wild Twin, which we launched, and went on to win the 2025 TLS Ackerley Prize at Foyles. And through the generous sponsorship of Prue and Tom at Daisy Green we have also been privileged to help nurture upcoming writers and authors through the Radio Writers Salon, a bi-monthly event run by Tabitha Potts and Martin Nathan, and the Whip Flash Salonorganised by Lana Citron.
Other talks and in conversation events have featured Ironfoot Jack, King of the Bohemians with Colin Stanley; the punk legend, Jordan with Cathi Unsworth; serial killer John Christie with Booker Prize judge Kate Summerscale; Absolute Beginnersby Bowie guitarist, Kevin Armstrong, (who played down there too). Mike Jackson and Jonathan Blake from Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (whom the feature film,PRIDE was based upon) gave a talk to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1984 Miners Strike, as did the godfather of alternative comedy, Alexei Sayle, author of Stalin Ate My Homework.
Talks, Screenings & Cultural Events
Another highlight was the republication of Frank Norman’s 1968 book, Soho Night and Day. It became a personal mission of mine to try and get it republished. To coincide with the launch at the Colony I organised the first exhibition of Soho barfly, Jeffrey Bernard’s photographs, which were used to illustrate the book, in the Colony‘s corridor.
Due to the war in Ukraine, one of the greatest museums in the world, The Hermitage in St Petersburg, is now practically inaccessible to western scholars. The Hermitage has endured the tumultuous events of Russian history, surviving two Revolutions and two World Wars. A book on its scurrilous history, Culture as Scandal, was pulled by its British publisher and no bookshop in London wanted to launch the book. So, I launched it with the co-author, Geraldine Norman in the Colony and provided a live video link to the museum’s director in St Petersburg, Mikhail Piotrovsky, projected on the Colony Room’s wall. To witness both authors (whilst thousands of miles apart) discuss the museum’s 300 year history at the Colony, was a truly historic event.
October saw the opening of Francis Bacon Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, for which I also recorded part of the audio guide. The exhibition featured many of the women in my book, Queens of Bohemia and Other Miss-Fits, which was displayed in the gift shop. The book tells the story of the women who reshaped post-war British culture and received warm coverage from the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Times Literary Supplement, The Lady magazine and Hatchards, who held a Queens of Bohemia evening with myself and the poet, Annie Freud.
In parallel with the Francis Bacon exhibition at the NPG I organised Bringing Home the Bacon: a series of talks and screenings at the Colony. I commissioned a new score for Bacon’s favourite film, Battleship Potempkin, which was composed and performed live by our resident pianist, Liam Stevens, alongside a screening of the film. A talk on Bacon’s muse, Henrietta Moraes by Maggi Hambling misfired when Maggi had a nasty fall but fortunately the artist, Martha Parsey flew in from Berlin to show her film, Model and Artist; Henrietta Moraes and Francis Bacon and reminisced about her memories of Henrietta. A talk on the Colony’s original proprietor, and Bacon’s ‘Mother’, Muriel Belcher, was given by the artist, Michael Clark, who painted a haunting portrait of Muriel, and another on Bacon’s friend and model Isabel Rawsthorne, by her biographer, Joey Casey. There was also sneek preview screening of Tales from The Colony Room, a feature length documentary based upon my book, currently in post-production.
In January this year Maggi Hambling and I gave a talk on Henrietta Moraes at National Portrait Gallery to NPG patrons, with a private tour of the Bacon exhibition afterwards by its curator, Rosie Broadley. The Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia brought an original Francis Bacon painting from its collection to my art installation for a film project.
Then, for the BBC Radio 4 series Great Lives, Maggi Hambling nominated, Queen of Bohemia and Colony Room habitue, Henrietta Moraes, muse to both Bacon and Maggi. As I had just completed writing a biography of Henrietta, Maggi asked me to partake in the show which was broadcast last April.
Looking Ahead
My biography, Hen, Mistress of Mayhem: A Portrait of Henrietta Moraes will be published in April 2026 by The History Press and is dedicated to the memory of Hen’s friend, Marianne Faithfull who helped me enormously with the book.
There will be a party at the Colony to celebrate its publication in April 2026.
