Fitzrovia - Arts

Arts

Fitzrovia was a notable artistic and bohemian centre from a period dating roughly from the mid 1920s until the present day. Amongst those known to have lived locally and frequented public houses in the area such as the Fitzroy Tavern and the Wheatsheaf are Augustus John, Quentin Crisp, Dylan Thomas, Aleister Crowley, the racing tipster Prince Monolulu, Nina Hamnett and George Orwell. The Newman Arms on Rathbone Street, features in Orwell's novels Nineteen Eighty-Four and Keep the Aspidistra Flying as well as the Michael Powell film Peeping Tom.

Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (1791) was published during his residence at 154 New Cavendish Street, in reply to Edmund Burke (author of Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790), who lived at 18 Charlotte Street. Artists Richard Wilson and John Constable lived at 76 Charlotte Street at various times. During the 19th century, painters Walter Sickert, Ford Madox Brown and Whistler lived in Fitzroy Square. George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf also resided at different times on the square, at number 29. French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine lived for a time in Howland Street in a house on a site now occupied by offices. Modernist painter Wyndham Lewis lived on Percy Street.The house of Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester on Tottenham Street now shows a commemorative blue plaque. Colin MacInnes author of Absolute Beginners also resided on Tottenham Street, at number 28, with his publisher Martin Green and his wife Fiona Green.

X. Trapnel, the dissolute novelist (based on the real Julian MacLaren-Ross) in Anthony Powell's Books Do Furnish a Room, spends much of his time holding forth in Fitzrovia pubs. In Saul Bellow's The Dean's December, the eponym, Corde dines at the Étoile, Charlotte Street, on his trips to London, and thinks he "could live happily ever after on Charlotte Street"; Ian McEwan quotes this in Saturday. McEwan lives in Fitzroy Square, and his novel takes place in the area.

Chartist meetings were hosted in the area, some attended by Karl Marx, who is known to have been to venues at Charlotte Street, Tottenham Street and Rathbone Place. The area became a ganglion of Chartist activities after the Reform Act 1832 and was host to a number of working men's clubs including The Communist Club at 49 Tottenham Street.

The UFO Club, home to Pink Floyd during their spell as the house band of psychedelic London, was held in the basement of 31 Tottenham Court Road. Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix also played at the Speakeasy on Margaret Street and Bob Dylan made his London debut at the King & Queen pub on Foley Street. Oxford Street's 100 Club is a major hot-bed for music from the 1960s to the present day, and has roots in 1970s Britain's burgeoning Punk rock movement. The band Coldplay formed in Ramsay Hall, a University College London accommodation on Maple Street in Fitzrovia. Boy George lived in a squat in Carburton Street in 1981 prior to his success and Neil Howson of Age of Chance lived in Cleveland Street around the same time.

Fitzrovia is also the location of Pollock's Toy Museum, home to erstwhile popular Toy Theatre, at 1 Scala Street.

At the back of Pollocks and in the next block was the site in 1772 of the Scala Theatre, Tottenham Street – then known as the Cognoscenti Theatre – but it had many names over history: the King's Concert Rooms, the New Theatre, the Regency Theatre, the West London Theatre, the Queen's Theatre, the Fitzroy Theatre, the Prince of Wales and the Royal Theatre until its demolition in 1903 when the Scala Theatre was built on the site for Frank Verity and modelled on La Scala in Milan. It was home to music hall, ballet and pantomime. Before its demolition in 1969, to make way for the office block and hotel that exists now, it was used inside for the filming in 1964 of the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night, the Mr Universe World competitions, and Sotheby's Auction in 1968 of the Diaghilev costumes and curtains. It was also briefly in the 1970s, in the basement of the office block, the site of the Scala Cinema and later still of Channel 4 Television. The branch of Bertorelli's Italian Restaurant on Charlotte Street was prominently featured in the film Sliding Doors. Guy Ritchie more recently made RocknRolla using Charlotte Mews, which also features in the film Viva Fitzrovia by Paolo Sedazzari.