"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.