BUILDING APPRAISAL

摘要

In the urban pantheon of London's Great Estates, Fitzrovia is the mongrel cousin, sandwiched uneasily between the more well-to-do gridded enclaves of Bloomsbury and Marylebone. Being the shared purview of various competing minor landowners, it has always lacked the unifying vision of the truly aristocratic Bedf ords or Howard de Waldens, but this is its great charm, giving it a more permeable character that has made it the setting for often tumultuous artistic shenanigans. Former residents include Whistler, George Bernard Shaw, L Ron Hubbard and - most infamously - Dylan Thomas, who caroused his way through Fitzrovia in the pre-war years. And though those days of louche bohemia are now a distant folk memory, the hostelries of Charlotte Street still do a decent trade in three-bottle lunches for thirsty advertising and media folk.