'Between Soho and Bloomsbury, between two world wars, between rich and poor lies Songs of Seven Dials. A poetic exploration of one of London's most iconic neighbourhoods, this book illuminates histories both intimate and global. Through the story of one interwar libel trial, Songs of Seven Dials brilliantly explores the tensions of race, class and social inequality that shaped the modern metropolis - and still resonate in the streets of London today.' -- Julia Laite, author of The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey

`An intricate, meticulously researched lament for a lost London, Matt Houlbrook's portrait of Covent Garden's Seven Dials in the early twentieth century foreshadows modern tales of gentrification.' Luke Turner, The Observer

The untold story of a remarkable neighbourhood and the battle to define modern London.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Seven Dials was one of London's most diverse neighbourhoods, home to migrant and working-class communities, bohemian clubs and cafes. But business leaders and city planners had other ideas.

Beginning with a rancorous libel trial of 1927, in which a Sierra Leonean café owner and his wife confronted the racist newspaper that destroyed their business, Matt Houlbrook reveals the surprising history of this remarkable neighbourhood. He traces how tensions that simmered on the streets and finally exploded in court betrayed the politics of urban 'improvement' and the 'colour bar'. Underlying the trial was a series of troubling questions that would define Britain in the twentieth century - about race, class and the boundaries of belonging, gentrification and the kind of city London would become.

Imaginative, powerful and deeply moving, Songs of Seven Dials is an important new history of London in the 1920s and 1930s.

'Absorbing and illuminating, Songs of Seven Dials speaks eloquently about a past that is simultaneously distant and familiar, casting a fresh light not just on a cluster of past lives and London streets, but on the evolution of modern cities all across Europe.' --Marek Kohn, author of Dope Girls and The Stories Old Towns Tell