London History, Up Close
Blogs inspired by Cobble's audio walks
Death on Noel Road: Joe Orton, Kenneth Halliwell, and the End of a Partnership
The story of Joe Orton's tiny Islington flat, where he wrote his most celebrated plays, kept his notorious diaries, and met his end in 1967.
25 Noel Road, where Joe Orton lived, wrote and died. Walk along Noel Road in Islington, where the street runs parallel to the Regent’s Canal, and you’ll find number 25. It’s a Georgian terrace that looks much like any other on the street. Look up to the second floor and you’ll spot a pale green plaque from the London Borough of Islington, bearing the name Joe Orton. It is placed high on the building, easily missed, perhaps fitting for a man whose life outpaced his...
moreUCL or ‘Cockney College’: Just How Radical was London’s First University?
University College London was founded to educate the 'middling rich, but found itself ridiculed by the establishment even before opening.
UCL’s main building. On Gower Street in Bloomsbury, University College London’s iconic façade overlooks the perpetual motion of student life, with lectures beginning, seminars ending, and ideas forming. UCL’s student body is one of the most diverse in the country. In a way that matters, it always has been. In 1828, England’s third university arrived in Bloomsbury with no royal blessing, no religious test, and no shortage of enemies. For centuries, the only...
moreJoe Orton Meets The Beatles: The Night Rock Royalty Came to Belgravia
The controversial playwright shared a notable evening with the Beatles' Paul McCartney and a number of other 60s pop icons at Brian Epstein's house.
24 Chapel Street in Belgravia, where Joe Orton and Beatles icon Paul McCartney met in 1967. Number 24 Chapel Street sits on a quiet Belgravia corner, all elegant white stucco and understated wealth. The sort of address where nothing scandalous could possibly happen. Except on the evening of 24 January 1967, when Britain’s most transgressive playwright sat down to dinner with the world’s biggest pop stars. Joe Orton arrived at Brian Epstein‘s house just before...
moreJoe Orton’s Islington Library Vandalism: The Prank That Landed a Playwright in Prison
60s playwright Joe Orton and his partner were made an example of, following an elaborately creative protest against theirlocal library.
On Essex Road in Islington stands a grand Victorian building that looks slightly out of place amongst its neighbours. Red bricks with sturdy stone pillars flanking wooden doors, and a stone crest above. This is Islington South Library, and in the early 1960s it became the unlikely battleground for one of British literature’s most audacious pranks. Between 1959 and 1962, playwright Joe Orton and his partner Kenneth Halliwell waged a campaign of cultural sabotage against...
moreThe Bloomsbury Barrister Who Defended the Indefensible: Charles Phillips and the Ethics of Advocacy
Gordon Square was home to Charles Phillips, a firebrand barrister and anti-death penalty campaigner, who was defined by a controversial case and notorious execution.
Gordon Square sits at the heart of Bloomsbury, one of those elegant Georgian enclaves where the houses seem to breathe history. Number 39, with its pale brick façade and black number plate beneath the balcony, looks out over the central gardens. Its quiet, dignified, and, amidst many other beautiful Cubitt-style Bloomsbury dwellings, unremarkable at first glance. But Charles Phillips lived here from 1847 until his death in 1859, and by the time he arrived, he was already famous. Phillips...
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