Exhibition: Leda in Soho

Love, Leda is a newly discovered, never-before-published queer novel set in and around the streets of Soho in the years before the 1967 Sexual Offences Act.

Cruising Dean Street, taking coffee at Lyons, dropping by jazz clubs off Tottenham Court Road, this intimate portrait of Leda’s queer, working-class, Romany life in a lost Soho is also an important document in the history of fifties and sixties London.

Leda in Soho, an exhibition curated by Luke Roberts, maps the wandering encounters of Mark Hyatt’s extraordinary protagonist onto the streets that neighbour modern-day Foyles, telling Hyatt's own unconventional story, the transgressive history of his old haunts, and giving voice to his street-wise, lyrical prose and poems.

Luke Roberts lectures in modern poetry at King’s College London. His research focusses on twentieth century and contemporary poetry, with an interest in the link between poetry and social history. Luke edited Peninsula Press’s edition of Love, Leda and has co-edited with Sam Ladkin the upcoming edition of Hyatt’s poetry, published in 2023 by Nightboat Books.

This is a free exhibition situated on the Ground Floor at Foyles Charing Cross Road and will run from 26th January to 9th March 2023. Copies of Love, Leda by Mark Hyatt are exclusively available at Foyles for the first five weeks of the exhibition. Each book comes with a free, limited edition foldout map, featured in the exhibiton and designed by artist Ian Giles.