The Look of Love: The Life and Times of Paul Raymond, Soho’s King of Clubs
Tuesday, May 21st
7.00-9.00pm
The Society Club, 12 Ingestre Place, London W1F 0JF
Join The Society Club as we welcome Paul Willetts, acclaimed biographer and author of The Look of Love: The Life and Times of Paul Raymond, Soho’s King of Clubs
Celebrated chronicler of Soho bohemia, Paul Willetts, will be discussing his tragic-comic biography of Paul Raymond, on which the stylish new Michael Winterbottom movie is based. Raymond—often labelled by the press as “the King of Soho”—was one of post-war Britain’s most scandalous celebrities, probably best-known as the founder of the Raymond Revuebar, the glamorous strip-club that attracted everyone from Judy Garland to the Beatles.
“This fascinating study is as much a history of London’s square mile of vice as an account of one man’s life… Thoroughly researched and extremely well-written, this is an impressive book. Not since John Dickie’s Cosa Nostra have I read anything that exerts such hypnotic fascination for its sometimes repellent subject.” (The Observer)
Paul Willetts is the author of two previous, much-praised works of non-fiction, Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia and North Soho 999. Alongside these, he has edited four much-praised collections of writing by the bohemian dandy, Julian Maclaren-Ross, who was the subject of Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia, widely nominated as one of the “Books of 2003”. He also devised and worked as co-photographer on Teenage Flicks, a jokey celebration of Subbuteo, featuring contributions by Will Self, David Baddiel and others. His journalism has appeared in The Independent, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and elsewhere.
