Interview by Thomas Roueché 
Portrait by Sohrab Golsorkhi-Ainslie

TR Songs of Seven Dials (2025) follows the story of the Kittens, a mixed-race couple whose cafe in central London was closed following a widely publicised libel case they took to the High Court against the weekly newspaper, John Bull. At the time, Seven Dials was known as one of London’s “Black colonies.” Was Seven Dials always of interest to you?

MH No, not really. I came across the case in a Home Office file held at the National Archives in Kew. It didn’t make sense that the case would have generated such attention; it’s a small cafe, and such a run-of-the-mill event for it to be raided and prosecuted. The Home Office file must mention 50 or 60 other premises that were shut down by the police in the same period. It really doesn’t make sense that this case generates questions in Parliament, let alone that it ends up at the High Court of Justice. Two remarkable stories spin out of the file. One is that, because the case ends up as a libel trial, it’s connected to the anti-racist, anti-colonial politics of the 1920s and 1930s. How the Kittens challenge the racism of John Bull echoes how activists in Britain and across the Empire are challenging the colour bar, whether in Kenya, South Africa or Sierra Leone. Ladipo Solanke’s presence at the trial is interesting, because Solanke has just qualified as a lawyer and founded the West Africa Student Union, and is attracting attention for his attack on the racism of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. Even though he’s hardly mentioned in newspaper reports, the fact that he’s in court alongside the Kittens links this case to a much bigger story. The other story is illustrated by the parliamentary question asked by the Conservative MP Viscount Sandon about the powers that the police have. As I pulled on the threads here, I came to realise the connection between the renovation of the Shaftesbury Hotel, just across the road from the Kittens’ cafe, grand plans for the redevelopment of Seven Dials, and the networks of politics and capital that were cohering on Great White Lion Street and its surroundings in the 1920s and 1930s.

TR The language in John Bull reveals extreme racist anxiety, complaining of the “many places frequented by black men … plague spots which are rank with iniquity”. To what extent was the Kitten’s café, and their story, typical or atypical? 

MH At the time, there were similar Black and Asian-run cafes near Tottenham Court Road and in the East End, and if not run by Black or Asian people, run by migrants from across the world. This everyday cosmopolitanism was part of the commercial mass culture of the 1920s. In Seven Dials, the café is pretty typical, with eateries run by recent arrivals from Belgium or France, Jewish migrants from across Russia and Eastern Europe, and people from Italy and Greece. When the Great War ended, there was a moral panic about the number of Black and Asian people in Britain, which was widely seen as a threat to white manhood. There are violent flashpoints like the riots of 1919, and a series of attempts to deport, or repatriate, or make it increasingly difficult for subjects of the empire to live and work in Britain. The Kitten’s case is symptomatic. During the 1920s and 1930s, London was cosmopolitan, but increasingly less so: this frenzied political climate reflects a growing idea that to be British is to be white.

TR It’s interesting that the Kittens remained living on the same street even after losing the libel case and their cafe. Surely the aim was to create a chilling effect that would drive them out completely?

MH The court case, the bankruptcy that follows, and the police harassment in 1928 is what has the chilling effect. The Kittens are British subjects so they have the right to live and work in London, but the owner of one nightclub which opened in the same location was a Russian subject, so he’s deported. Pietro Tapparo, who runs a club for Italian waiters, just seems to disappear.

TR The book is anxious about the myths surrounding the period’s supposedly hedonistic nature – you use the terms “1920s and 1930s” rather than the popular description of the “interwar” years, let alone the “roaring twenties and hungry thirties”.

MH Seven Dials gives you an interesting vantage point on those myths. You get a sense of how the consumerism and mass culture of the Great War’s aftermath is broadly shared. There are cafes and dance halls and places of entertainment in Seven Dials and Soho – not just on Piccadilly. In turn, that creates opportunities for entrepreneurs like the Kittens or Jack Neave and Billy Reynolds who open the Caravan Club [a queer venue on Endell Street], which they would have called bohemian, but which we might call counter- cultural or queer. The Adelphi Rooms on the Edgware Road became popular because of the postwar dance craze. It was a studio for people to learn to dance, rented by a local branch of Sinn Féin for an Irish Republican dance, and by Laurie French, the Jamaican jazz musician and one of the Kittens’ customers, and by a young waiter called Leslie Kinder who runs a series of dances for queer men, often wearing drag. You can also see how the hedonism is built on expropriation and exploitation. Expropriation in the sense that constructing these new nightclubs, or theatres or department stores means stretching the boundaries of the West End into working-class neighbourhoods like Seven Dials. Exploitation, because the success of the West End depends on the cheap and flexible labour of thousands of people who live in these neighbourhoods, often recent migrants from Britain or beyond. The best example in the book is a boarding house run by Nellie Rigiani, at 5 Lumber Court – just around the corner from the Kittens’ cafe. The boarding house is full of young women in their late teens and early 20s, most of whom have moved from the suburbs, the North, or Ireland, to work, making hats, dresses and cigarettes. But this helps us understand the realities behind the clichéd figure of the flapper or the modern woman. It’s partly about moving to London, it’s partly about finding cheap accommodation in a shared house, it’s partly about making ends meet in these precarious, poorly paid occupations. If you start here – at 5 Lumber Court or Seven Dials – the roaring twenties look completely different. .