Peyton Skipwith
Dirt & Glory
The Street of Wonderful Possibilities: Whistler, Wilde & Sargent in Tite Street
By Devon Cox
Frances Lincoln 287pp £25 order from our bookshop
Which is the street that merits the accolade ‘The Street of Wonderful Possibilities’? Wall Street? Bond Street? Regent Street? Queer Street? Actually it has characteristics of all of these. Tite Street in Chelsea was created in the early 1870s out of the muddy thoroughfare connecting the new Chelsea Embankment to Royal Hospital Road. A decade earlier, the Metropolitan Board of Works had compulsorily purchased a substantial tract of land on the north bank of the Thames from Lord Cadogan in order to create both the Embankment and a healthy sewage system for London. Once the work had been completed, the Board of Works gradually began to let or sell plots of land for building, in the process creating a new street named after Sir William Tite, architect of the Royal Exchange and a former MP.
Initially the land was cheap, despite its proximity to Westminster and Kensington, and attracted the attention of several aspiring artists and architects, with the result that during the ensuing years Tite Street developed into an artists’ colony, where the raffish world of bohemia mingled freely and on equal terms with royalty and aristocracy. Inspired by the example of Edward Godwin,
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Don't forget to enter the competition to win a year's @royalacademy membership and a year's subscription to Literary Review.
Entries close on the 18th December.
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/page/ra-competition-literary-review-2019
'Together the Marcoses established a new style of deluxe autocracy, one characterised by glitz and kleptomaniac graft.'
Peter Conrad on Lauren Greenfield's new documentary about Imelda Marcos, 'The Kingmaker'.
http://ow.ly/FFSg50xsH7D
Thrillers by @sophiehannahCB1, @ccmacdwriter, Rebecca Wait, @deborah_masson, @helensedgwick, Chris Hammer, @stephycha, @McCrumMark, @LesleyKara and @BarryForshaw3.
PLUS, @NJCooper_crime picks her favourite crime novels of 2019.
http://ow.ly/YjiP50xrsnl