The city’s lights and spirit dimmed during the war, but Soho had still shone, once you knew where to look. The old men in ragged suits still pushed their carts of meagre wares along the gutters. Open doorways leading to staircases lit with tealights reminded passers-by that London’s oldest and hardest workers were still open for business. And basement bars and clubs still catered for the brave souls who didn’t want to spend their nights cowed in their beds, waiting for German bombs to fall.

Knox was too young to do much more than watch all this go on. But watch he did, a nocturnal flâneur soaking it all in. He’d choose a street corner or bench and let the city’s nightlife pass him by, or he’d pick someone out from the throng and follow them to whichever theatre, club, or inconspicuous doorway they were heading for. He didn’t know it at the time, but it was all good training for his future career.

It was Soho that Knox missed when he was fighting in France. So, when it was all over and he returned to London, it was in Soho that he settled. He’d lost count of the places he’d lived before Kemp House. He’d had a room above a restaurant on the corner of Haymarket and Panton Street, lived in what could kindly be described as a garret in Golden Square, and even spent a year in the basement of a grand old townhouse in Bloomsbury Street, next to the British Museum.

A lot had changed since the war. The glow of the city had returned. The first generation that had grown up untouched by the war was coming of age, testing their boundaries and pushing the world to see how far they could make it move. Collars were getting longer, skirts shorter. But some of the old Soho was still there. The men hauling carts now wore demob suits, newcomers and veterans alike were beckoned into dark doorways, and, at any time of day or night, there was coffee to be had.

Bar Italia was never quiet, but Knox hit a lull between the pub-goers needing a shot of caffeine to carry them home and the late crowd after a fix to get them through the night.

He ordered a double espresso at the counter and watched the young waiters with their rolled-up white shirt-sleeves and greased hair cleaning up small cups and plates. The older staff spent their time actually making the coffee, checking their immaculate beards in the counter’s mirrored panels, and harassing the junior staff in rapid Italian. Above them the high wa-wa-was and clavioline notes of Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’ played from an invisible radio.