Continuing our series looking at London's best murals.
I'm sure we've all puzzled over this mural, at the northern end of Soho. A crouching figure holds a book, and stares back at the viewer. Meanwhile, a chunky section of tree trunk flees the scene. It's simultaneously one of London's simplest and strangest murals. What does it mean?
The mural was painted in 1988-89 by Louise Vine. It's called Ode to the West Wind, after a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The site, on the corner of Poland Street and Great Marlborough Street, is no accident. A Blue Plaque on the building reveals that Shelley lived here in 1811 — though only for a month before the fickle winds of fate blew him elsewhere.
Shelley's poem explores the death and decay that the autumn winds usher in, eventually undone by the rejuvenation of spring. It can be seen as a metaphor for change and contrast. Only by clearing away the old and decayed can fresh ideas blossom. The mural shows just this. The violent damage to the tree on the left (perhaps a reference to the Great Storm of 1987), is balanced by the calm, contemplative figure with a book of ideas. That's my reading of it, anyway.
Shelley, incidentally, is something of a staple of London murals. You can find his likeness on the nearby Spirit of Soho mural (just off Carnaby Street), and a mile away on the Somers Town mural of Polygon Road.
Enriching lives
The Great Marlborough Street mural was painted over a third of a century ago now, and is still a striking presence on the corner. It had a difficult genesis. Some kind of mural on the site was originally suggested in 1986, as a lasting reminder of that year's Soho Jazz Festival. Nothing came of it until the Soho Society took up the cause. Artist Louise Vines, from the London Wall women's mural collective, was then commissioned to create the site-specific mural.
The project was almost scuppered by financial problems. Funding was secured from Westminster Council and a private sponsor, but the project was still £11,900 short. "If only we can raise enough money to finish the wall, then we will be able to enrich the lives of people who live and work in the area," Vines told the press in 1988. The money was eventually provided by the neighbouring Pavilion Italian restaurant*, and the mural was completed the following year.
It has indeed enriched the lives of many people who've passed by in the decades since. And the corner has even seen its own arboreal rejuvenation. Where once this stretch of Great Marlborough Street had only grey pavements, it's now alive with birch trees. One particularly towering example, planted in 2017, stands directly opposite the splintered tree of the mural.
As Shelley himself put it:
*Vasco and Piertot's Pavilion, incidentally, lasted right up until 2021 when a landlord dispute forced it to vacate after 50 years on Poland Street. It now trades from nearby D'Arblay Street.
See also: The Battersea mural, the Battle of Cable Street mural.
