Hammersmith in Popular Culture
Hammersmith features in Charles Dickens Great Expectations as the home of the Pocket family. Pip resides with the Pockets in their house by the river and partakes in boating on the Thames.
News from Nowhere (1890) written by William Morris is a utopian novel that describes a journey upstream the River Thames from Hammersmith towards Oxford; it is of growing interest to contemporary ecological and socialist political movements.
In 1930, Gustav Holst composed a work for military band (later rewritten for orchestra) entitled Hammersmith to reflect his impressions of the area, having lived across the river in nearby Barnes for nearly forty years. It begins with a haunting musical depiction of the River Thames flowing underneath Hammersmith Bridge. Holst was a music teacher at St Paul's Girls' School, where he composed many of his most famous works, including The Planets suite. A music room in the school is named after him.
Hammersmith has provided a location for several television programmes, including the BBC comedy series Bottom, Channel 4's TFI Friday, and the vampire drama Ultraviolet. The opening credits of Bottom show the Hammersmith Broadway (also mentioned in The Pogues' song Dark Streets of London) development, then called Centre West, when it was under construction. In addition, the Flying Squad were Hammersmith-based in the 1970s TV series The Sweeney. Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective contains scenes that appear to be under and adjacent to Hammersmith Bridge, and Peter Howitt's Sliding Doors includes scenes in and around Hammersmith Bridge. The popular Thames Television series Minder also features black and white photographs of Hammersmith Bridge and the Blue Anchor pub in the closing credits.
The BBC's 2008 Miniseries Lost in Austen stars Jemima Rooper (who was born in Hammersmith) as Amanda Price, a character who lives in modern day Hammersmith, but is transported (through a portal in her flat's bathroom) into Jane Austen's fictional story Pride and Prejudice. Amanda Price gets stuck in fictional Georgian England and upon returning to Hammersmith of the 18th century, discovers it to be a small village miles from London.
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