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     having given the neighbourhood a name. With the war over, Nina still remained loyal to the Fitzroy, even though it was now
     better known as a pick up place for gay servicemen than for artists; an element of protection was afforded by its more celebrated
     regulars: the gay MP Tom Driberg, Hugh Gaitskell, Scotland Yard detectives Jack Capstick and Robert Fabian (‘Fabian of the
     Yard’), as well as the official hangman, Albert Pierrepoint. Most days Nina could be found at the bar and, if drinks were
     forthcoming, she would sometimes stay there all evening. If not, it was on to the Wheatsheaf, the French or the Swiss House
     on Old Compton Street.
    There she would sit, perched on her stool, in her twenties coat with a furcollar,her beret cocked on the side of her head, often looking the worse for wear. In her autobiography Janey Ironside, professor
     of fashion at the Royal College of Art, described her as wearing ‘a very shabby navy suit with a rusty black shirt and grubby
     wrinkled cotton stockings. She was dirty, smelt of stale bar-rooms, and very pathetic.’ 7 Her conversation became increasingly abrupt and bizarre, her opening gambit inevitably: ‘Got any mun, deah?’ delivered in
     her cut-glass public school accent while rattling the tobacco tin in which her friends, and anyone else she could beg from,
     were expected to contribute to the price of the next double gin. When she did try and clean herself up the results were disastrous.
     ‘I took my grey dress to the dry cleaner’s and my dear, it just shrivelled up because of the gin soaked into it over the years.
     All they gave me back was a spoonful of dust.’ 8 She was only sixty-six when she died in 1956, falling on to the iron railings outside her flat in Paddington; almost certainly
     a suicide.
    After six o’clock the northern reaches of Fitzrovia became depopulated as the nomadic tribes moved south in a tidal drift
     towards Soho and the pubs of Rathbone Place: the Wheatsheaf, the Marquis of Granby and the Bricklayer’s Arms. London boroughs
     had different opening times for their pubs. Through a quirk of the asinine licensing laws, the Fitzroy Tavern, the Wheatsheaf
     and the Bricklayer’s Arms all closed at 10.30 p.m. because they were in Holborn so that as closing time drew closer there
     was an exodus to the nearby Marquis of Granby which, being on the other side of Rathbone Place, was in Marylebone and stayed
     open until 11 p.m.. The more energetic hotfooted down Rathbone Place and across Oxford Street to Soho, where all the pubs
     stayed open until eleven. The nearest acceptable one was the Highlander (now inexplicably called the Nellie Dean), on Dean
     Street.
    The Wheatsheaf on Rathbone Place is famous as the home from home of another fixture of that period, the writer Julian Maclaren-Ross
     as well as being one of the many watering holes frequented by Dylan Thomas. They were on friendly nodding acquaintance, having
     worked together writing film-scripts during the war, but both demanded their own courtiers and the loyalties and allegiances
     of the Wheatsheaf ’s patrons were much fought over so they never stood at the bar together. Maclaren-Ross had a fixed routine:
     from midday until closing time at 3 p.m. he drank at the Wheatsheaf, standing in his habitual place, propped against the far
     end of the bar near the fireplace. If he thought he would be late he tried to send someone to take up the position for him;
     it would have been intolerable to him to have to join the jostling crowd in the middle of the bar, where the service was not
     so good.
    He stood beneath one of the tartans – not his own, as he often pointed out, (unnecessarily, as most people knew this was not
     his real name; he was born James Ross in South Norwood in 1912 – the Julian was an affectation, and was the name of a neighbour
     who assisted with his birth). 9 Dressed in his usual moth-eaten teddy-bear coat, dark sunglasses despite the pub gloom, a