"Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends." (c)

In times gone by, the ground where Buckingham Street now stands was the riverbed of the mighty Thames and more recently (well, between 1237 and 1672) was in the grounds of the magnificent York House.

 It is one of the most interesting thoroughfares in London, a short street of late seventeenth- and early eighteens-century houses that runs up from the Embankment towards the Strand and a little to the east of Charing Cross Station.
The houses are modest and one or two have been rebuilt but this short street can lay claim to having housed more celebrities that any other comparable street in London.
When London's first great speculative builder - the first modern developer - Nicolas Barbon (1640-1698) bought the land at the end of the seventeenth century he immediately began building the sort of houses that would appeal to the fashionable. Most were complete by 1675.
Number 10 was once the home of David Hume (1711-1776), the brilliant   Scottish philosopher and the father of the Enlightenment. Later on the house was lived in by the famous post impressionist painter Henry Rousseau  (1844-1910).
Diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) lived both at number 12 and at number 14.
Number 12 was later occupied by Queen's Lord Treasure Robert Harley (1661-1724), who invited Jonathan Swift (1644-1718) and William Penn (1667-1745) (of Pennsylvania fame) to dine with him.
Two painters lived in the house at different times - William Etty (1787-1849) and Clarkson Stanfield (1778-1829).
The scientist Humphrey Davy (1778-1829)  carried out some of his most important experiments in the cellar!
Peg Woffington (1720-1760), a celebrated beauty and one of the greatest  eighteenth-century actresses, lived at number 9.
The Russian Peter the Great (1672-1725) stayed at number 15, while Henry Fielding (1707-1754), the creator of  Ton Jones, lived here too, as did - a century later - Charles Dickens (1812-1870) ( and his David Copperfield lodging here).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) lived at number 21.
Most bizarrely of all, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) stayed in a house in the street - exactly which one is disputed - for a short period during 1791.
 Wherein centuries of eminent people had also lived: Queen Mary I, Francis Bacon, the Shah of Persia.

"“The trouble is that people seem to expect happiness in life. I can't imagine why; but they do."(c)

 Nancy Mitford was born on 28 November 1904 in London, at 1 Graham Street (now Graham Place) in Belgravia, London, the eldest of six daughters of Lord Redesdale.

"The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality." (c)

"Вecause I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality."
 Emily Dickinson

Nunhead Cemetery is one of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries in London. The cemetery is located in the Nunhead area of southern London and was originally known as All Saints' Cemetery. Nunhead Cemetery was consecrated in 1840 and opened by the London Necropolis Company.
Consecrated in 1840, it is one of the Magnificent Seven Victorian cemeteries established in a ring around the outskirts of London. The first burial was Charles Abbott, a 101-year-old Ipswich grocer and the last, a volunteer soldier who became a canon of Lahore Cathedral.
 Nunhead Cemetery was opened in 1840, but by the middle of the last century the cemetery was nearly full, and so was abandoned by the United Cemetery Company. This neglect led to the cemetery gradually changing from lawn to meadow and eventually to woodland.
It was reopened in May 2001 after an extensive restoration project funded by Southwark Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund. Fifty memorials were restored along with the beautiful Anglican Chapel, designed by Thomas Little. The cemetery contains examples of the magnificent monuments erected in memory of the most eminent citizens of the day, which contrast sharply with the small, simple headstones marking common, or public burials.

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” (c)

Villiers Street  is a street in London connecting The Strand with The Embankment. It was built by Nicholas Bourbon in the 1670s on the site of York House, the property of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham whose name the street commemorates.
   Rudyard Kipling occupied chambers in No. 43 (formerly 19) over the shop of "Harris the Sausage King" in 1889–91,  and here wrote the partly autobiographical novel The Light That Failed, which contains references to the area. Kipling remarks that:

"From my desk I could look out of my window through the fanlight of Gatti’s Music-Hall entrance, across the street, almost on to its stage. The Charing Cross trains rumbled through my dreams on one side, the boom of the Strand on the other, while, before my windows, Father Thames under the Shot Tower walked up and down with his traffic. "

"The Englishman telephone box is his castle" (c)

"The Englishman telephone box is his castle. Like the London taxi, it can be entered by a gentleman in a top hat. It protects the user's privacy, keeps him warm and is large enough for a small cocktail party".
Mary Blume
The red telephone box was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880- 1960) and, along with the red post box and the red London bus, is an instantly recognizable symbols of Britain.
Scott's design of the K2 cast iron telephone kiosk won a Post Office sponsored competition in 1924. His updated K6 design follwed in 1935.
A leading architect, Scott is famous not only for his telephone boxes. His achievements include producing the winning design for Liverpool Cathedral and overseeing the rebuilding work required at the Houses of Parliament after the Second World War.
The red K2 telephone box was introduced to the streets of London in 1926. It was used solely in the capital and only a few were erected elsewhere under special circumstances.
The K2 is both impressive and imposing, weighing over an imperial tonne. On top of the kiosk, on all four sides is the Royal crest of King George V formed from a series of holes to provide ventilation.
K2 telephone kiosks are older and larger than the more widely used K6 telephone box and are very rare.
 Only about 1500 K2 kiosks were produced and only a few remain today.

"An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself." (c)

Today is  200th anniversary of Charles Dickens's birthday, an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period.
In 1846 Dickens lived  at 1 Chester Row, Belgravia, the year that he founded and began to edit The Daily News.

" But they do say, in a circuit of some half-mile round the blue umbrella in Leadenhall Market" (c)

LEADENHALL MARKET.

Leadenhall, the chief market for poultry and game in London, is one of the sights of the metropolis, especially at Christmastide. On this spot, off Leadenhall Street, stood Sir Hugh Neville's house, which was converted into a market as far back as 1445. Leadenhall is one of the markets under the control of the City Corporation.
The City’s ownership of Leadenhall Market began 600 years ago when a former Lord Mayor, Richard ‘Dick’  Whittington, gifted Leadenhall to the City in 1411 and Lord Mayor, Simon Eyre, replaced the Hall with a public granary, school and chapel in 1440 as a gift to the citizens of London. The market was enlarged to provide a site for selling poultry, grain, eggs, butter, cheese, herbs and other foodstuffs. In the next 200 years Leadenhall Market was a centre of commerce with further markets for wool, leather and cutlery. In 1666 Leadenhall Market largely escaped the great fire of London, with only a small amount of damage to the Herb Market.
In 1881 the building was redesigned by the City's architect, Sir Horace Jones, also architect of Billingsgate and Smithfield Markets. His designs featured wrought iron and glass, which replaced the earlier stone structure.
The Poultry Market remained until the 20th century, by which time all shop units were let for the sale of meat, fish or provisions. By the mid 20th century the shops were also being used for general retailing and leisure and by the end of the century Leadenhall Market, now a Grade 2 listed structure, had evolved into one of the City’s five principal shopping centres.

" I believe marriage should be something more than agreeing to share the same house and butler." (c)

Upstairs, Downstairs is a British drama television series originally produced by London Weekend Television and revived by the BBC. It ran on ITV in 68 episodes divided into five series from 1971 to 1975.
Set in a large townhouse in Edwardian, First World War, and Inter-War Belgravia in London, the series depicted the lives of the servants "downstairs" and their masters "upstairs". Great events feature prominently in the episodes but minor or gradual changes are also noted. It stands as a document of the social and technological changes that occurred between 1903 and 1930.    
 In 1936, Sir Hallam Holland and his pretty young wife Lady Agnes return from a diplomatic posting abroad and take up residence at 165 Eaton Place...
The house used for the exterior shots of 165 Eaton Place was a real house and is still standing in London. Standing in for number 165, 65 Eaton Place had a digit 1 painted in front of the number each time before filming in a vague attempt to give the real occupants some sort of anonymity. The house survives practically unchanged from the early seventies although the interior is now separate flats instead of a single dwelling.