The streets are thronged with office-workers by day and theatre, cinema, restaurant and club-goers by night. It rarely occurs to these visitors that anyone actually lives there, apart from the odd posh person: of course, the Queen has her place at the end of the Mall, and the Prime Minister is handily placed for a trip to the cinema, while presumably someone sometimes lurks behind the curtains and shutters of the genteel town houses in Mayfair, Knightsbridge, St James’s and the Adelphi. Even today, though, ordinary people live in the West End, usually above the ground floor or tucked away in side streets, or down back alleys. In the post-war decades, there were far more of them. Tens of thousands of native West Enders lived their lives largely out of sight, often in cramped and poky flats above the shops, cafés and restaurants set in the Georgian terraces that lined the streets of Soho and the West End. Although most of these had been built as family homes, very few remained in single occupancy by the end of the Second World War.
