THE EVENING STANDARD
The joy of exploring our hidden history - A London Life

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/

By Nick Curtis
28th January 2008 

I obviously am not alone. A company called Soundmap has brought out a walking tour, to coincide with Tim Burton’s film of Sweeney Todd’s London, taking in the original locations of the Demon Barber’s shop and Mrs Lovett’s pie emporium. Soundmap’s masterstroke is that it’s tours are recorded by knowledgeable local celebrities, then loaded onto an ipod, allowing you to perambulate at leisure and alone.

When Soundmap launched, I took it’s Soho tour, narrated by agony aunt and resident Irma Kurtz. It included stops outside Karl Marx’s old lodgings above Quo Vadis, at the antique water pump on Broadwick Street that caused an 18th-century cholera epidemic, and it began in the 50-year-old New Piccadilly Café on Denman Street, where owner Lorenzo Marioni reminisced on the MP3 track about the time the Hungarian revolution was planned around his Formica tables.

The New Piccadilly has gone now, gutted prior to demolition and the advent of yet more office, hotel and luxury apartment space. It’s worth noticing London’s hidden history before it is gone.

www.soundmap.co.uk