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London's love affair with coffee houses continues unabated. In every high street now, it seems, are coffee houses selling exotic mixes as though the drink had just been reinvented.

The beginnings of all this occurred in the 17th century, when the first London coffee house opened in the City. They spread fast, and became places for leisure and business, news and conversation, medical treatments and auctions. So important were they in the fabric of London's society, so influential in radical politics, that the authorities were at times keen to suppress them. But they survived, went out of fashion, fought back in the 19th century as coffee taverns in opposition to gin palaces, and in the 1950s came again with a vengeance. All over London, especially in Soho, coffee bars selling coffee made by Gaggia machines opened up, many of them providing music as an extra, introducing a new wave of musicians and entertainers. They were heady days after the greyness of the post-war years.

This is the story of a London institution, researched thoroughly and told entertainingly.