THere are many interesting photos throughout the Book, including one of Miss Shepherd's horrible van, and lots of photos of the various intellectuals living in the Crescent.

from 1850 to 1863. At the south-west corner of Porchester Square the flats of the Colonnades are in If the book is taken as a whole, it is really about William Miller's relationship with his difficult but brilliant father. It is about how children live in the shadows of their larger-than-life parents, and how they live up to the expectations set for them. It is also very much about William Miller's frustration with the education he was given. of Porchester Square, where many plots were subleased by George Wyatt between 1853 and 1855, (fn. 51) No wonder Gloucester Crescent, eminently satirisable, has been immortalised so often. Bennett wrote a TV soap opera, Life and Times in NW1, in the 1960s. Then, in his The Lady in the Van, on stage and screen, Dame Maggie Smith made a heroine of Miss Shepherd. Lately there was Love, Nina, by Nina Stibbe, au pair to Mary-Kay Wilmers, owner and editor of the London Review of Books (who, with her husband, film director Stephen Frears, bought the Mellys’ house in 1971). But the sharpest satire remains the 1960s strip in the Listener by Mark Boxer, The String-Alongs (in book form, The Trendy Ape). How gleefully Boxer, a Cambridge contemporary of the Tomalins/ Stringalongs, caricatured the Crescent’s glitterati, their Oxbridge pretensions, Left-leaning politics, TV polemics and colour-supplement lifestyles:No. 23: writer Alan Bennett and vagrant Margaret Fairchild lived at the Grade II listed building [6] – Bennett in the house, and Fairchild in a series of dilapidated vans parked on the driveway, as immortalised in Bennett's memoir, stage play and film. [18] to the boundary, and those to the east lie in the Bayswater area. (fn. 120) North of the railway, rebuilding has He also chooses to tell his story from the point of view of himself as a child, which carries a real risk, given the milieu, of a kind of disingenuous preciousness. But it also has the advantage of cancelling out the glittering and distracting CVs: children don’t see those things, and this book is about the effect of parents on children – or, to be precise, the effect of one particular parent on one particular child, in a particular place and time. It was normal to encounter Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, John Cleese and his father rehearsing in the sitting room In the period between the World Wars the building of Porchester hall, with its adjacent library and

Road and its estate and other offices at the northeastern end of Westbourne Terrace by 1934. (fn. 105) There Square, (fn. 124) has enabled it to retain its original resemblance to Bayswater. The eastern end of Orsett Terrace (formerly Orsett Place), although much altered,

Church Times Bookshop

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. William’s was, on the whole, a happy childhood and his primary school years were idyllic. As he grew up, he wanted nothing more than to please his Dad. Having always regretted abandoning medicine, Jonathan wanted his son to be a doctor and this, along with his parents' insistence on a state education, led to some misguided educational choices. Bullying and difficulty with exams made William's life at secondary school thoroughly miserable and the reader really feels for him. Public transport connections are extensive with Camden Underground station (Northern Line) being 0.3 miles from the property and the Eurostar, The West End and the City all accessible in under 20 minutes (service permitting). This home is located on a sought-after residential tree lined street, and both Regent’s Canal and Regent’s Park are less than half a mile away, as are two popular preparatory schools, the bohemian atmosphere of Camden, and the terraced streets of Primrose Hill. Now, Miller’s second son, William, has written a memoir about what it was like to grow up among all these famous names but, above all, what it was like to be the son of Jonathan Miller, at the height of his fame as TV presenter, theatre and opera director, and author (not to mention neurologist). At his best, William captures the atmosphere of “competitive typing”, as books and scripts poured forth, garden parties and people popping in and out of each other’s houses. Alan Bennett, a friend from Beyond the Fringe days, had his own key to the Millers’ home and was a frequent guest.

This was before the Clean Air Act and there was unbelievable squalor – there was soot from the railways on everything. A lot of the houses had bedsits in them, and there were also interesting, radical people coming in to live here.” The census collection is designed so that each group of postcodes should contain at least 100 people (50 in Scotland).The Lady in the Van Press Conference in Full – Maggie Smith & Alan Bennett". YouTube. 13 October 2015 . Retrieved 26 December 2016. The London branch of the School of Sound Recording is located in The Rotunda at 42 Gloucester Crescent. Harrow Road a short terrace had been built. Brindley Street, Alfred Road, and their neighbours already

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]

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According to William, the three children were never good enough. William lives completely in the shadow of his brilliant father, always trying to please him, always failing. He takes science A-Levels to satisfy his parents, both doctors, and it all goes wrong.