Gloucester Crescent in 2016

Gloucester Crescent is an 1840s Victorian residential crescent in Camden Town in London which from the early 1960s gained a bohemian reputation as “the trendiest street in London” and "Britain's cleverest street"[1] when it became home for many British writers, artists and intellectuals including Jonathan Miller, George Melly, Alan Bennett and Alice Thomas Ellis.[2][3][4][5]

Many of the homes on the crescent are Grade II listed buildings including no. 23,[6] the terraces nos. 3 to 22[7] and 24 to 29,[8] and nos. 60 and 61.[9]

The London branch of the School of Sound Recording is located in The Rotunda at 42 Gloucester Crescent.

School of Sound Recording London in The Rotunda at 42 Gloucester Crescent

The former home of playwright and author Alan Bennett at 23 Gloucester Crescent is the setting for The Lady in the Van based on his experiences with the eccentric woman known to him as Miss Shepherd who lived on Bennett's driveway in a series of dilapidated vans for more than fifteen years. Fairchild/Shepherd's story was first published in 1989 as an essay in the London Review of Books. In 1990 Bennett published it in book form. In 1999 he adapted it into a stage play at the Queen's Theatre in London which starred Maggie Smith who received a Best Actress nomination at the 2000 Olivier Awards[10] and which was directed by Nicholas Hytner. The stage play includes two characters named Alan Bennett. On 21 February 2009 it was broadcast as a radio play on BBC Radio 4, with Maggie Smith reprising her role[11] and Alan Bennett playing himself. He adapted the story again for the 2015 film The Lady in the Van with Maggie Smith reprising her role again, and Nicholas Hytner directing again.

Principal photography for the film version The Lady in the Van (2015) began at 23 Gloucester Crescent[12][13] in 2014. The film was shot in and around Bennett's old house in Camden Town, where the real Miss Shepherd spent 15 years on his driveway. According to director Nicholas Hytner, they never considered filming anywhere else.

In 2018 William Miller, son of Sir Jonathan Miller, published Gloucester Crescent: Me, My Dad and Other Grown-Ups based on his memories of growing up on Gloucester Crescent in the 1960s and the famous residents and visitors he encountered.[2][14]

The biographer Claire Tomalin published her autobiography A Life of My Own (2017) which included much detail of her life on Gloucester Crescent where she has lived since the 1960s.[3][15]

Notable residents

23 Gloucester Crescent, home for over 40 years to author and playwright Alan Bennett, and for 15 years on the driveway for Margaret Fairchild

Other residents included the novelist and screenwriter Deborah Moggach;[26][28] writer Susannah Clapp;[27] poet and playwright Louis MacNeice[27] and the Labour MP Giles Radice.[18]

Murder

Edith Eleanora Humphries was murdered at 1 Gloucester Crescent on 17 October 1941. She was found in her night clothes with her throat cut and was taken to hospital but died soon after. Her murder is unsolved. [29]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 The remarkable story of the cleverest street in BritainThe Oldie 1 February 2018
  2. 1 2 3 Gloucester Crescent, and a trip down memory laneCamden New Journal 31 August 2018
  3. 1 2 3 Life and times in NW1: The hard, privileged life of a literary biographerTimes Literary Supplement 10 November 2017
  4. Moran, Joe (November 2007). "Early Cultures of Gentrification in London, 1955–1980". Journal of Urban History. 34 (1): 101–121. doi:10.1177/0096144207306611. S2CID 143646613. Retrieved 27 November 2021.
  5. Bennett, Alan (24 February 1994). "'The Stringalongs'". London Review of Books. Retrieved 27 November 2021.
  6. 1 2 Historic England. "23, Gloucester Crescent (Grade II) (1342077)". National Heritage List for England.
  7. Historic England. "3 to 22, Gloucester Crescent (Grade II) (1342076)". National Heritage List for England.
  8. Historic England. "24 to 29, Gloucester Crescent (Grade II) (1342078)". National Heritage List for England.
  9. Historic England. "60 and 61, Gloucester Crescent (Grade II) (1078315)". National Heritage List for England.
  10. "The Lady in the Van". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
  11. Christopher Orr (22 January 2016). "Review: In 'The Lady in the Van,' Maggie Smith Dazzles Yet Again". The Atlantic. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
  12. Tucker, Reed (28 November 2015). "Why a playwright let a homeless woman live in his driveway for 15 years | New York Post". Nypost.com. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
  13. "The Lady in the Van Press Conference in Full – Maggie Smith & Alan Bennett". YouTube. 13 October 2015. Retrieved 26 December 2016.
  14. William Miller, Gloucester Crescent: Me, My Dad and Other Grown-Ups, Profile Books (2018)
  15. Claire Tomalin, A Life of My Own, Viking (2017)
  16. 1 2 Jonathan Miller says farewell to Britain's cleverest streetThe Oldie 28 November 2019
  17. Colvin, Clare (2011) [2009]. "Haycraft [née Lindholm], Anna Margaret [pseud. Alice Thomas Ellis]". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/97587. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  18. 1 2 3 My love letter to Gloucester Crescent: Author William Miller on what it was like growing up in the bohemian NW1 enclave – Kentish Towner website
  19. Lionel Percy Smythe – Barnsley Art on Your Doorstep (2014)
  20. Almost Famous: website of Nina Stibbe
  21. 1 2 Book Review: Gloucester Crescent by William MillerThe Jewish Chronicle
  22. Jonathan Wolfe Miller – Companies House database
  23. The Camden Town Group in Context – A History of Camden Town 1895–1914 – Tate
  24. Letter from Ursula Vaughan Williams to Alan Bush – Letter No.: VWL3696 – The Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams database
  25. 1 2 Gloucester Crescent by William Miller review – my dad Jonathan Miller and meThe Guardian 24 August 2018
  26. 1 2 3 Kate Bassett, In Two Minds: a Biography of Jonathan Miller: A Biography of Jonathan Miller, Oberon Books Ltd (2012) – Google Books p. 124
  27. "Deborah Moggach: 'I'd like to die listening to Wodehouse'". The Times. 28 June 2019. (subscription required)
  28. Finn, Pat (2019). Unsolved 1941. UK: Independent. ISBN 978-1096467809.

51°32′20″N 0°08′45″W / 51.5388°N 0.1457°W / 51.5388; -0.1457

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