This history spotlights Fitzrovia's enterprising twentieth-century immigrant workers. Ann Basu's family of Jewish tailors lived here before the Second World War, just where the BT Tower stands today. At that time the women's fashion trade and the new car industry were sweeping into Fitzrovia; Russian and German anarchists argued in its clubs; Indian revolutionaries practiced at its shooting range; and popular cafe's like Lyons' transformed workers' social lives. The Jews of Fitzrovia and Soho saw each other as being on 'the Other Side' of Oxford Street, and this book reflects Fitzrovia's distinctive 'inbetween-ness' - at the inner edge of central London but apart from the West End. This is 'the other side' of the story: the working-class and 'outsider' voices that have been muted.
