FIRST BOHEMIANS (PB)

In the eighteenth century, the teeming half mile centred on London's Covent Garden was the world's first creative 'Bohemia'. Virtually everything that we associate with Georgian culture was produced here. The nation's most significant artists, actors, poets, novelists, and dramatists lived here. They rubbed shoulders with rakes, prostitutes, market people, craftsmen, and shopkeepers. It was an often-brutal world full of criminality, poverty and feuds, but also of high spirits, and an intimacy that was as culturally creative as any other in history.