Jermyn Street is in the heart of London. A stone’s throw from Piccadilly Circus – hub of a beseiged Empire, its statue of Eros removed and crated up for the duration, its plinth a mess of wooden hoardings, plastered with posters urging you to ‘contribute to a Spitfire fund’ and not to be ‘a squanderbug.’ Jermyn Street is a short walk from the Strand – ‘boulevard’ of the largest city on earth, home to Simpson’s Restaurant, the Savoy hotel, the Adelphi Theatre and Charing Cross Railway Station; boat trains to the Continent that no longer run. Jermyn Street’s narrow stretch houses several tailors, some very expensive shirtmakers, the back end of a couple of the Piccadilly arcades and Fortnum & Mason’s, a few obscure publishers, the side entrance of one of the better hotels, the front entrance of several of what are termed ‘discreet’ hotels, an old yet fashionable church and lots of posh flats for those single men-about-town, those bachelors gay, who can afford them. It is, in short, a gentleman’s street.
In the small hours of April 17th 1941, during a very heavy air raid, a German land mine, a device of enormously destructive power, drifted down on its silent chute of shining silk and demolished one such block of bachelor flats. One of the gentlemen who died was a popular singer named Al Bowlly. His most famous song was Riptide.