Fiona Green
Sarah foreground & me in 2000
1960
Emil Cadoo
The shaman 2015
Fiona Green
Homeless Mary 2015
Fiona Green
Julia playing the Oud 2016
Fiona Green
Julia playing the Oud 2 : 2016
Fiona Green
Artist
By Fiona Green
I first came to Soho aged 18 with my lover,artist William Crozier in 1961.I met artists MacBryde & Colquhoun : Freud & Auerbach (whose parents had fled German) all these artists inhabited places like the Colony Club run by Muriel Belcher, herself of french origins, & who looked a little like the french singer, Edith Piaf. Writer,Paul Potts told me about the times he had eaten a bowl of spaghetti for a shilling in Soho, after the war with his friend Eric Blair (George Orwell)
Soho was noisy, colourful, & filled with small specialised shops run by many who had fled fascism in Europe : I spent a lot of time in the French House, famous for its free french connections, & I went to restaurants run by Italians,Greeks,Hungarians & French. Many famous people had come to Soho over the generations,Karl Marx & his family lived there, & Van Gogh visited : Casanova lived with his mistress in nearby Soho Square where their child was born.
I left art school at 21,married & lived not far away in Fitzrovia,north of Oxford Street, (& the 100 Club.) My husband was a publisher & we hosted a very bohemian open house where many artists,writers & musicians came to stay as we raised our two children.The African National Congress used our house as a "safe house" to hold meetings when Mandela was in prison, & I got to love the singing & dancing that went on at our return after those meetings.
Nowadays, the greedy developers are tearing the heart out of Soho to build the endless "luxury" flats that are killing London's unique character & drove me out of my home of 50 years in Fitzrovia. Down to Devon where I live a calmer life,painting,writing & helping asylum seekers.
Fitzrovia News: Fiona's Fantastic Life.