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Hidden Gems of London: The Cellar Door, Aldwych, London

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by Martin J Frankson in Review, Uncategorized

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burleque, cellar, cellar door, door, Frankson, jazz, kitty la roar, London, martin, Noir


Close your eyes and imagine London without its dark little secrets.

Can you?

No?

Don’t worry, why would you want to. To imagine such a London is like imagining a family without its drug-addled aunts and uncles no one speaks off.  What would be the point?  It would be a little dull indeed.

The Cellar Door jazz bar on Essex Street, just a couple of blocks south of Covent Garden, is certainly one of the most decadent little secrets in town as not many people seem to know about it which is a shame in some ways but selfishly, I was a little pleased about this. It occupies a tiny subterranean converted space that once was a Victorian gentleman’s convenience.  

 The entrance is quite non  descript and in fact, unless you knew it was there, you could scurry past it many times without knowing it was there. In fact, I had mistaken it for the entrance to some underground construction site as you can see below:

CELLARDOOR1

My friend and I indeed walked past this spot several times looking for it at night until I saw a remarkably well dressed man descend down the steps at 7pm. Either he was a ghost or someone who didn’t mind getting his threads dirty in an underground sewer. I deduced he was neither and on closer inspection, I saw a very small poster on one of the perspex panels. It was then I knew we had found the right spot.

We made our way down and through the black doors and into a world of black sobrieny and shimmering rose-red where we were greeted by a hostess who took us to our table. The interior decor put me in mind of all those 1920’s Berlin and 1950’s Soho cabaret clubs that we have seen in dozens of movies and retro-television depictions but a lot smaller. At first, it seemed a lot bigger but the far walls were decked in floor to ceiling mirrors that gave a false but welcome sense of roominess otherwise it would have felt a little claustrophobic.

Just enough room to swing a cat in more than ways than one.

We took our seats. There were only a dozen or so people in. A mixture of city girls catching up with one another over salads, night time prowlers, couples, city types, office workers delaying the homebound train until as late as possible and two very intense looking Chinese businessmen with white shirts open and ties so distressingly undone that they looked like tightly coiled wires of stress.

We were there for the evening’s entertainment, Kitty La Roar and Nick of Time in the longstanding Kit Kat Kabaret evening of decadant jazz and swing. The black curtains in the corner were opened to reveal Nick on keyboards, a saxophonist and Kitty herself.

She looked like Betty Draper from Madmen meets Marilyn Monroe. She looked every inch the tragic bottle blonde. Her mannerisms, facial expressions and stance were almost cartoonlike in their faithful representation of the eras that her chosen musical genre incubated in. I dont mean that in a negative way however. I had felt I had timetravelled to that certain past of the smoked-filled 20th century and had come face to face with one of it’s citizen femmes fatales.

The lights dimmeds, the cocktails were served, the ice cubes chattered and the music started.

Jazz and swing standards, infused with experimentation, improvisation and original numbers filled the next couple of hours with the most perfectly and enigmatically executed jazz and swing performance I have seen for a very long time. These were artists at the top of their field.  Being at close quarters magnified the force of the impact. This was an evening of sultry, sexy jazz in a sumptious, glitzy little cabal of a retro yet sleek winebar. As the evening wore on, more people melted in from the outside and I think there were no more than forty people present at any one time.

Kitty La Roar is no work-a-day jazz singer. She has performed for Hugh Hefner and Prince Ranier of Monico as well as much bigger audiences. I doubt very much Kitty La Roar is her real name but I want it to be her real name.

She seemed to much in character to be a real person. I couldnt imagine her shopping for ready meals in a Tesco Metro or queuing up to have her gas card being topped up. She only comes into existence when the lights go down and the music strikes up. She does not come on stage but is conjured. She doesn’t so much as perform but embody a bygone age and sling it into the far future which we occupy right now.  Her highheels, each a dagger that has speared a man’s heart or twenty, sharpening on each and every note ready for the next lady-kill.

She was jazz. She was swing. She was night-time itself.

Later on that night, an older man sat down in front of me. He wore a shades, a hat and what looked like a sheepskin jacket. Many people made their way to him to greet and pay homage to him. I have no idea who he was but he seemed to be a face. My friend and I exchanged many postulations and imaganeerings of who he might be. A gangster, an impressario, a major artist?

Who knows and I don’t want to know. In my mind he was presumed-dead gangster who faked his own death and only spends his time amongst a small coterie of the entrusted. Who were these people? He was adulated by scruff and Savile-row alike before they slinked back to their seats moments later.

At around eleven, the performance segued to its conclusion and fini.

My friend and I had trains to catch so with sadness, we gathered our coats, scarves and bags and left and made our way back to the real world above. I emerged too quickly as I felt the  onset of artistic bends forming bubbles in my blood.

How the cold air of this February evening felt like the kiss of an aunt hot on the heels of being kissed by a vampiress.I’ve always maintained that the singular fatal flaw of addiction is that it opens up the doors of rooms that are beautiful but forbidden and it’s the devil himself to leave them. Sure, we can leave them but the memory of their evil splendour can never be got rid off.

That was how I felt on my way to Covent Garden tube station, snaking through the snakes and dancing past the detritus of the night. I kissed my friend goodbye as she went eastwards on the Jublilee and I westwards to Green Park. On my way back to my hotel,  I felt deflated at being flung back into the arms of the ordinary world I had only a few hours earlier, took leave off but yet I was still in a mellow haze and I never felt so chilled out in such a long time.

Jazz like that beats valium any day of the month.

A mesmorizing performance and only for a tenner entrance fee too and the drinks menu was surprisingly reasonable in price.

So, you might be wondering, is held on the other nights of the week. At the time of this going to press, The Cellar Door plays host to burlesque, drag nights, Saturday afternoons of ‘High Tea and Tease’ which includes card games and magic and open-mic night on Tuesdays.

CELLARDOOR2

 

If you love jazz or the sultry-but-ever-so-slightly-seedy but in a respectable and safe and kosher setting, I cannot recommend The Cellar Door enough. I will be setting many scenes in this bar in my next novel such was my inspiration.

As I alluded to earlier in this review, I get the impression not many people know about this place. It’s a shame but like that free car parking spot you found that’s handy to work, why spoil it by telling everyone.

My many many thanks to my dear friend Fiorina for recommending this! It always takes an Italian to recognise a class act I always say!

 Visit: http://www.cellardoor.biz

Interview with….Anya Lipska, author of Where the Devil Can’t Go

31 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by Martin J Frankson in Interviews

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Tags

anya lipska, crime fiction, crime writing, London, Poland, where the devil can't go


In this latest interview in the series, London-based crime writer Anya Lipska, author of Where the Devil Can’t Go, a novel set amongst the Polish emigrant community of the East-End, talks to me about all things literary and some things, well, let’s find out!

So, Anya, tell me….

What is the most inspiring book (any genre) you have read and why?

Sorry, but I have to choose two. The Odessa Files by Frederick Forsyth is the book that first opened my eyes to how exciting a thriller could be. My Dad had a high cupboard where he kept his ‘adult’ books. In the school hols, the minute he left for work, I used to climb onto a chair to reach this treasure trove. There was Lolita, The Ginger Man…all the usual suspects, but Odessa was the revelation.  I read it under the bed covers with a pocket torch, under the laurel bush in the garden, anywhere I could. In his pomp, Forsyth was just the master of great storytelling.

My other inspiring book is, cheekily, a trilogy – Rites of Passage by William Golding. It’s a ripping yarn about a long 19th Century sea journey full of danger and colour, as well as an insightful commentary on class and hierarchy, and a coming of age story about an initially callow young man whose outlook and moral sense are transformed by the events on board ship.  It’s one of those books that will stay with me forever.

What is your favourite crime novel?

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.

Apart from being a ‘good read’, what feelings would you like your readers to come away with after having read your work?

I think the mark of a really good book is for it to stay with you: so if the themes and characters in my work endure in the reader’s mind for a bit, I would be very happy.

What kind of writing annoys you the most and why?

Lingering depictions of sadism or violence.  I think it is important – essential even – to see violence and/or its consequences: that’s what gives crime writing its meaning. What doesn’t work for me is when it’s there not to further the plot but simply for the sake of a prurient thrill.

Is this modern age, writers are having to engage with social media and become their own self-promoters in a way that didn’t exist even 5 years ago. Is there still room for the talented misanthrope or does success now depend on being socially adept?

Good question! But on reflection, I think that Twitter is actually the shy person’s friend, because it’s much easier to approach people you admire, or like the sound of, in neutral cyberspace.  Imagine what it was once like to have to phone someone up ‘cold’ and risk an embarrassing slap-down! Twitter also offers an extraordinary opportunity to make contact with fellow crime writers.  I’ve been blown away by the generosity of the scribbling community I’ve met on Twitter – people like Rachel Abbott and Emlyn Rees being just two examples of the many fellow writers who I’ve found to be hugely supportive and generous.

How important is the depiction of factual or historical accuracy in writing or do you think writers should have complete carte blanche in what we invent?

It’s a question that goes to the heart of my writing.  Although Where the Devil Can’t Go is set in contemporary London, part of the plot is rooted in Seventies and Eighties Poland when the country was under Soviet control, so l read an enormous amount about postwar Poland and the Solidarity movement that eventually restored democracy. I did, of course, use artistic license, but I didn’t do anything that altered the history in any fundamental way: that would offend against my journalist’s training! For instance, I mention a dissident priest who was abducted and beaten to death by the security forces in the Eighties. Essentially that’s a true story – Father Jerzy Popieluszko was brutally murdered by the regime. I changed his name and some of the circumstances, but not the essentials.  Had the Communists not indulged in that kind of behaviour I think it would be wrong and misleading about the nature of that era to invent it. Personally, I like to learn stuff from books, even  novels, and if I find out someone has totally invented the fundamentals I am outraged!

Why do some writers stand the test of time and others don’t? Is it really down to luck or zeitgeist or some other factor? 

All of the above, I suspect. Everyone knows Chandler, for instance, and that’s partly because he was a brilliant stylist with a wicked wit, but it also has to be because Bogart and Bacall brought his writing to millions. Were there other Thirties noir writers as good?  Absolutely.  But the luck and zeitgeist factor weren’t with them.

When did you first start to write fiction? 

My first real attempts came in my twenties and thirties, though I blush to recall the results. Maybe I was just a later developer, but it took me a while to find my ‘voice’ – which is the first essential for any writer.

What led you to believe in yourself as a novelist?

The wonderful Andrea Best, of Random House Germany, raving about ‘Devil’ – and giving me a deal!  Of course, there had been plenty of moments along the way when people whose opinion I respect – like my agent – loved the book:  but I have to say that, for a really compelling vote of confidence, a bank transfer is hard to beat.

Which crime novelists occupy the most of your bookshelves?

I adore European crime. To name just a few: Andreas Camielliera, creator of the fabulous Inspector Montalbano, full of heart and humour (and good food), now brilliantly adapted for TV; and Fred Vargas (French) and Marek Krajewski (Polish) for their sheer originality and distinctiveness. I’m also a fan of US crime: I’m a big fan of James Lee Burke, Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, and from the wonderful 1930s, Chandler & Hammett.  In the UK, my fave crime read of last year was Snowdrops by A D Miller.

Any embarrassing novel-buying moments you’d like to share?

I refuse to be embarrassed by any book purchase, so long as it does what it says on the tin! A great story is a great story and sometimes all you want is a ripping yarn for the plane or poolside. When I’m really poorly I get out my tattered old Just William books: even with a killer dose of the flu they are still laugh-out-loud funny.

Do you have much creative input in your cover design?

Yes, because in the UK at least, I’m in charge.  I loved working with my designer on selecting an image and watching her cast her spell over it. I know some published authors have barely any input to the choice of cover so that is one major advantage of indie publishing…

If you could spend a day as anyone, real or fictional, contemporary or historical, who would you chose and why? 

I’m not sure I’d want the responsibility of being someone because then I’d have to choose Stalin or Hitler and immediately go and top myself…but if I could be an observer in a particular era, I think I’d choose the Roman Senate in the time of Julius Caesar, with a side-visit to Roman Britain (by BA rather than galley if you’ll allow it).

I’ve always loved Robert Graves’ I, Claudius novels, and also ripped through Twelve Caesars by Suetonius – which is written in a surprisingly immediate and accessible style.  And, thanks to Project Gutenberg, it’s free to download.

What is your ultimate authorial ambition?  

Blimey.  I suppose it has to be to write a book that people say changed their life.

Does crime fiction have a responsibility to expose to public consciously, unsavoury aspects of society that are misunderstood and hidden and can crime fiction play a part in changing society for the better?

I think that any book that sets out to ‘send a message’ is in big trouble…but of course writers, like everyone, have a moral sense, and moral and ethical issues and dilemmas that arise out of real life are at the forefront in crime writing.  

And last but not least, what would your final meal be in the condemned cell?

I’m tempted to say liver with fava beans and Chianti. But as I’m a Very Greedy Person this deserves a serious answer. So, fresh crab with a bottle of Pouilly Fumé, to be eaten while watching surf crash onto a moonlit beach (through the barred window.) And for pud, chocolate cake with a hacksaw blade inside…

For more information about Anya Lipska and her debut novel Where the Devil Can’t Go , please visit http://www.wherethedevilcantgo.com

You can also buy the book from Amazon http://tinyurl.com/cwd7nct

Follow Anya on Twitter @AnyaLipska

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