Belgravia - Belgravia in Literature and Popular Culture

Belgravia in Literature and Popular Culture

The novels of Anthony Trollope (1815–1882): The Way We Live Now, Phineas Finn, Phineas Redux, The Prime Minister, and The Duke's Children all give accurate descriptions of 19th century Belgravia.

In Brideshead Revisited, a novel by Evelyn Waugh, Belgravia's Pont Street is eponymous with the idiosyncrasies of the British upper classes. Julia, one of the main protagonists, tells her friends, "It was Pont Street to wear a signet ring and to give chocolates at the theatre; it was Pont Street to say, 'Can I forage for you?' at a dance."

In Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford's magnum opus, the heroine's aunt, who is raising her to mix in the best society, is said to "keep her nose firmly to Pont Street".

Flunkeyania Or Belgravian Morals, written under the pseudonym 'Chawles', was one of the novels serialized in The Pearl, an allegedly pornographic Victorian magazine.

In the popular British television series Upstairs, Downstairs (1971–1975), the scene is set in the household of Richard Bellamy (later 1st Viscount Bellamy of Haversham) at 165 Eaton Place, Belgravia. It depicts the lives of the Bellamys and their staff of domestic servants in the years 1903–1930, as they experience the tumultuous events of the Edwardian era, World War I and the postwar 1920s, culminating with the stock market crash of 1929, which ends the world they had known. In 2010, filming began on a mini-series intended to pick up the story of one of the main characters, Rose Buck, in 1936, as she returns to 165 Eaton Place to serve the Holland Family as the housekeeper.

In the first episode of the television programme Sherlock (Series 2), the modern-day Holmes stars in "A Scandal in Belgravia", loosely based on the Arthur Conan Doyle short story "A Scandal in Bohemia".

In the Woody Allen movie Match Point, Chloe Hewett, the daughter of a wealthy businessman tells the lead character, Chris Wilton, a low-rent social climber, that she grew up in Belgravia and that she would be happy to show him all the really good places.