Richard Collins, editor of Christopher Howse's Soho in the Eighties, has been hired to cast his critical eye over my manuscript for Tales from the Colony...

"It doesn’t need me to say it, but this is an outstanding compilation, a true social and artistic memoir of the richest kind, with moments of great sadness and absolute horror offset by those of extreme hilarity. Nostalgie de la boue indeed (and I mean that in the best possible way). I loved reading it. Darren has linked it all together admirably; the text flows pretty seamlessly from one extraordinary individual to another. What a momentous sixty years; and what a sad decline and ultimate loss, the moths attracted by the candle that was Belcher, Board and Bacon (and Wojas perhaps) no more once that light had been extinguished. And the whole thing expressed wonderfully well. " Richard Collins