Blue Plaque Spotting

Charles Laughton: 15 Percy Street, Fitzrovia, London W1

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Pensom) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:43:00 +0000

Charles Laughton; one of my favourite actors of the thirties and forties. Every time I pass his plaque on Percy Street (spitting distance from Coventry Patmore) I smile, for I can't help but imagine his unforgettable Quasimodo hanging from the window, laughing gleefully at passers by.

In fact, Laughton shared this flat with wife Elsa Lanchester immediately before they emigrated for America and the golden hills of Hollywood. Lanchester was a striking woman. She played the bride in the 1935 classic Bride Of Frankenstein, a character which was clearly an influence on Daryl Hannah's 'Pris' in later neo noir Bladerunner.

Laughton and Lanchester were presumably a little down at heel when they were slumming it in seedy Fitzrovia in the thirties. She later claimed that Laughton was gay, and that once she threw him out of the Percy Street flat when she caught him with one of the area's many rent boys.

Laughton's performances were almost always memorable. During the thirties and forties he starred in some of the most imaginative and powerful films being made anywhere. The Island Of Lost Souls, Mutiny On The Bounty, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The Private Life Of Henry VIII and the excellent noir The Big Clock are just a few that come immediately to mind.

Later, he made a brief foray into directing, and the chilling Night Of The Hunter starring Robert Mitchum is a fascinating testament to what else he could have achieved should he have so wished.

Seek out some of these movies if you haven't seen them. A Hollywood film from the thirties, when the cost of extras and set-builders was cheap enough to build, say, medieval Paris on a studio backlot, complete with cathedral and a cast of thousands, is quite a site to behold.

Coventry Patmore: 14 Percy Street, Fitzrovia, London W1

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Pensom) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:06:00 +0000

Coventry Patmore: not a name I was instantly familiar with I must confess; despite passing beneath this rather theatrical-sounding monicker many times in my nocturnal Fitzrovian sojourns.

But Patmore did not, in fact tread the boards. His plaque announces him as a poet and essayist, and though all but forgotten today he was a household name in the nineteenth century.

Patmore first came to prominence through his friendship with Dante Gabriel Rosetti, which led in turn to his being made an honorary member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, to whose magazine he contributed his poem 'The Seasons'.

He became best known much later in his career though, after publishing 'The Angel In The House' a typical mid-Victorian paean to the feminine ideal which enjoyed enormous popularity toward the end of the century.

I shall leave the last words to Coventry himself:

"I have written little, but it is all my best; I have never spoken when I had nothing to say, nor spared time or labour to make my words true. I have respected posterity; and should there be a posterity which cares for letters, I dare to hope that it will respect me."

George Orwell: 77 Parliament Hill, Hampstead, London NW3

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Pensom) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:18:00 +0000

Yes, I know that this isn't a blue plaque, but I don't intend to be strict about these things. This blog is simply a place to record all those wonderful plaques and inscriptions which I come across every day on my wanderings.

This one was placed by the Heath and Hampstead Society to honour George Orwell, to my mind one of the finest essayists and authors of this or any other age.

Orwell lived here in 1935, whilst writing the acerbic 'Keep The Aspidistra Flying', and shortly before he married and left for Spain and the Civil War.

When he writes, at the end of 'Homage To Catalonia' of quiet suburbs "sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs", I fancy perhaps he had the leafy idyll of Parliament Hill Fields in mind.