Half Moon Street is a street in the

City of Westminster The City of Westminster is a city and borough in Inner London. It is the site of the United Kingdom's Houses of Parliament and much of the British government. It occupies a large area of central Greater London, including most of the West En ...

, London. The street runs from

Curzon Street Curzon Street is located within the Mayfair district of London. The street is located entirely within the W1J postcode district; the eastern end is north-east of Green Park underground station. It is within the City of Westminster, running a ...

in the north to

Piccadilly Piccadilly () is a road in the City of Westminster, London, to the south of Mayfair, between Hyde Park Corner in the west and Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is part of the A4 road that connects central London to Hammersmith, Earl's Cour ...

in the south.

History

Half Moon Street was built from 1730. It takes its name from a public house that once stood on the corner with Piccadilly."Half Moon Street, W1." in

Notable inhabitants

James Boswell James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 ( N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the English writer ...

, biographer of Dr Johnson, had lodgings in the street in 1768 at the home of Mr Russell, an upholsterer.

Lola Montez Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Countess of Landsfeld (17 February 1821 – 17 January 1861), better known by the stage name Lola Montez (), was an Irish dancer and actress who became famous as a Spanish dancer, courtesan, and mistress of King Ludwig I ...

, mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, lived in the street in 1849. The street was known for its genteel lodgings and apartments which was still the case when Somerset Maugham visited in 1930. The WWI poet

Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both describ ...

also had lodgings in 14 Half Moon Street. In the twentieth century, Sax Rohmer (1883-1959) creator of Dr Fu Manchu, once lived in the street. A blue plaque marks the spot.

Buildings

Among the

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

s in the street are parts of Flemings Mayfair Hotel and Green Park Hotel. Other listed buildings include numbers 6, 7 and 8, 12a, 14, 15, 24, and 25.

In popular culture

Half Moon Street is the setting for the first act of Oscar Wilde's play ''

The Importance of Being Earnest ''The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People'' is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious ...

'' and serves as the character Algernon's home. Sax Rohmer made repeated use of the street in his work. In other early-20th century fiction,

Sapper A sapper, also called a pioneer or combat engineer, is a combatant or soldier who performs a variety of military engineering duties, such as breaching fortifications, demolitions, bridge-building, laying or clearing minefields, preparin ...

's hero

Bulldog Drummond Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond is a fictional character, created by H. C. McNeile and published under his pen name "Sapper". Following McNeile's death in 1937, the novels were continued by Gerard Fairlie. Drummond is a First World War veteran who, ...

lived in the street. The street is the London address of the fictional detective

Paul Temple Paul Temple is a fictional character created by English writer Francis Durbridge. Temple is a professional author of crime fiction and an amateur private detective. With his wife Louise, affectionately known as 'Steve' in reference to her ...

and his wife Steve and also frequently appears in the Georgian and Regency novels of Georgette Heyer. In the 1986 film thriller '' Half Moon Street'', the main character lives in a flat on the street. 61 Half Moon Street is the address of Belinda Blumenthal of Rocky Flintstone's Belinda Blinked series, as mentioned by Cian O'Mahony in 'Footnotes: Understanding The "Timeline"' in Season 6 of the My Dad Wrote a Porno podcast. In the Aubrey-Maturin novel series by Patrick O'Brian, the fictional physician and spy Stephen Maturin lived on Half Moon Street with his wife Diana Villiers at the start of The Ionian Mission.

References

External links

Streets in the City of Westminster {{London-road-stub