Up West

London's West End has always been bestselling author Pip Granger's spiritual home. While still a baby, she and her father would haunt Soho's bars, cafes, and bookshops. When he moved to Old Compton Street, she experienced this cosmopolitan community as an insider. Taking us back to the 1950s, she describes a vibrant part of London where working girls swung their keys on street corners, coffee bars throbbed to a rock and roll beat, and the scents and flavours of an expanding world swirled from restaurants and delicatessens. Based on the author's own memories and dozens of interviews and written testimonies, "Up West" evokes the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the West End. We also hear the extraordinary, heart-warming stories of people who grew up, lived and worked there in the two decades between VE Day and the beginning of the Swinging Sixties.