Patrick Hamilton

If I’m being honest, I’d never heard of Fitzrovia until about thirty years ago. Then one afternoon, I caught the back end of a play on Radio 4 called Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky. Not a lot on the Dial-Up Internet back then, only the authors’ name, Patrick Hamilton and a list of books he’d written.

I called in at my local bookshop (Ask your Grandparents!) and was delighted to find that the owner was a bit of a Hamilton aficionado. She explained that the play I had heard was based on a trilogy of books written in 1935. A little about Hamilton’s life was passed on and I left the shop with, The Midnight Bell, the first part of the trilogy.

I quickly progressed through the other two parts and began on some of his other works. I don’t intend this to be a piece of literary criticism, only to say that Hamilton draws on the seedier side of London Life in most of his books and that his semi-biographical observations about his surroundings, in many cases Fitzrovia, and human nature in general, make them a very good read.

It was in these novels that my interest in Fitzrovia grew, and many years later, I started taking friends around the area, culminating in the publishing of Finding Fitzrovia a self guided audio tour.

Fitzrovia, as it’s now known was in the past a very transient area. Communities grew and then moved on, there was once a large Jewish population and later an influx of Germans who established a vibrant retail district with many shops and restaurants. It garnered a reputation for furniture making in the late nineteenth century with many of it’s alleys and courts dedicated to the practice. However, up until fifty years ago it was unnamed, being described as the area north of Soho. Attempts to christen it Noho luckily came to nothing. If you’re still at a loss to place the area, then just think Post Office Tower, which stands at the fringes.

It’s possibly one of my favourite districts outside of the City itself and is very unlike it’s brash and brassy neighbour Soho, or the genteel bookish Bloomsbury which sits opposite the Tottenham Court Road . So if you ever find yourself in London with a couple of hours to spare, then take a stroll around it’s streets,

In 2005 the BBC released a DVD based on the trilogy, which is very closely related to Hamilton’s novels. It does give a really good flavour of life in Fitzrovia between the two World Wars. It can be found on Youtube in three parts

Hamiltons novels

Monday Morning (1925)

Craven House (1926, revised edition 1943)

Twopence Coloured (1928)

The Midnight Bell (1929)

The Siege of Pleasure (1932)

The Plains of Cement (1934)

Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (1935 – trilogy of The Midnight Bell, The Siege of Pleasure and The Plains of Cement)

Impromptu in Moribundia (1939)

Hangover Square (1941)

The Slaves of Solitude (1947)

The West Pier (1952)

Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse (1953)

Unknown Assailant (1955)