Walking and Talking

This article was published on Thursday 22 September 2011

Literary landmarks included 13 Albermarle Street, the site of Oscar Wilde's Club and the famous location of the Marquess of Queensbury’s note, For Oscar Wilde-Somdomite, which started the litigation that led to Wilde's imprisonment and eventual death in France; 1 Savile Row, where tailors Gieves & Hawkes is linked to the creation of 'Jeeves' (the butler to Bertie Wooster) by P.G.Wodehouse, and the Arts Club in Dover Street, founded in 1863 by Arthur Lewis, the artist brother-in-law of the actress Dame Ellen Terry (whose ashes rest in a silver biscuit tin in St Paul's Covent Garden Church). 

Concluding the walk at St George's Church, Hanover Square (Handel's Church) we learnt how both the fashionable and those in need of a wedding for a ‘guinea’, without the need for the reading of marriage banns, were wed. It was the wedding Church of Shelley, Disraeli, John Buchan and George Elliot but better known by many as the wedding location of the actor Stanley Holloway, playing George Doolittle (Eliza's father) in the filmMy Fair Lady, for which he and his friends sing, 'Get me to the Church on Time'. 

For more information on walking tours offered by Richard, please click here.