January 2010 Archives

Charing Cross Road: Cambridge Circus to Centre Point

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Go further north up Charing Cross Road and cross over Cambridge Circus - be careful and obey the Pelican crossings - Shaftesbury Avenue is very busy with traffic and the pavements can be very crowded, so there have been numerous pedestrian traffic accidents here over the years.

CXR_upper.gif

Charing Cross Road Cambridge Circus to Centre Point - map via streetmap.co.uk

On your right you will see the distinctive blue livery of Blackwell's bookshop, which is organising the "Evening with William Gibson" event, You should be able to get tickets there @ £7 (£5 concessions).

Charing_Cross_Road_Blackwells_Bookshop_300l.jpg

Across the Charing Cross Road from Blackwell's is the Montagu Pyke pub, which occupies most of the site of the former Marquee Club music venue (circa 1988 to 1995). The pub itself is very large inside, with (relatively) cheap drinks and food (remember that this is the West End of London), so it is a candidate for the William Gibson Board posse pub crawl.

Charing_Cross_Road_Montagu_Pyke_bar_former_Marquee_Club.jpg

Folyes bookshop at 113-119 Charing Cross Road

Charing_Cross_Road_Foyles_bookshop_300.jpg

and the former US chain Borders bookshop at 120 Charing Cross Road {N.B. this closed in December 2009]

Charing_Cross_Road_Borders_bookshop_300.jpg

are almost on opposite sides of the Charing Cross Road from each other.

Borders is on the corner of Denmark Street, which is full of music industry related instrument shops, studios, former printed sheet music publishers etc. which gave it the nickname of Britain's "Tin Pan Alley". In the 18th and 19th centuries it was part of the notorious slum the Rookery in the parish of St. Giles church (at the far end of Denmark Street), infamously depicted by WIlliam Hogarth in his Gin Lane engraving.

As will become clearer, not that much has changed over the years !

Denmark Street is also mentioned by William Gibson in Spook Country

Denmark_Street_or_Tin_Pan_Alley_300.jpg


Cambridge Circus - John le Carré's "the Circus"

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Cambridge Circus is the cross roads of the Charing Cross Road (north south) with Shaftesbury Avenue (east west). It is also the widely assumed fictional setting of "the Circus" - the headquarters buildings of "British Intelligence", as portrayed in the espionage thriller novels (and their resulting films and TV series) by John le Carré, e.g. Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People etc.

Cambridge_Circus_map.gif

GPS grid coordinates:
Latitude: (WGS84) N51:30:47 ( 51.513116 )
Longitude: (WGS84) W0:07:44 ( -0.128802 )

See also this semi-live BBC Jam cam traffic camera image (usually updated every few minutes, unless there is actually some interesting incident, when the feed is censored) from the Charing Cross Road / Cambridge Circus camera, which usually points west along Shaftesbury Avenue towards Chinatown on the left.

N.B. it does not appear that "British Intelligence", certainly not the Secret Intelligence Service MI6, was ever really based at Cambridge Circus.

However, passages from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, perhaps point to a more likely candidate building, just north of the actual Cambridge Circus cross roads itself:

Allowing for some artistic licence, and the author's natural caution and espionage tradecraft, there do not seem to be any buildings actually on the crossroads of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road which fit the descriptions in the novel, which makes several references to the "fifth floor", where the senior members of the organisation had their offices.

The_Circus_bing_labels_440_low.jpg
[via Microsoft maps.bing.co.uk]

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