London Feature

As you wander around London, you'll see lots of small blue, circular plaques on the sides and facades of buildings, describing which famous, infamous, or obscure but brilliant person once lived there. The first was placed outside Lord Byron's birthplace (now no more) by the Royal Society of Arts. There are about 700 blue plaques, erected by different bodies—you may even find some green ones that originated from Westminster City Council—but English Heritage now maintains the responsibility, and if you want to find out the latest, check the website www.english-heritage.org.uk.

James Barrie (100 Bayswater Rd., Bayswater W2); Frederic Chopin (4 St. James's Pl., St. James's W1); Sir Winston Churchill (28 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington Gore SW7); Captain James Cook (88 Mile End Rd., Tower Hamlets E1); T.S. Eliot (3 Kensington Court Gardens, Kensington W8); Benjamin Franklin (36 Craven St., Westminster WC2); Mahatma Gandhi (20 Baron's Court Rd., West Kensington W14); George Frederic Handel and Jimi Hendrix (23 Brook St., Mayfair W1); Alfred Hitchcock (153 Cromwell Rd., Earl's Court SW5); Karl Marx (28 Dean St., Soho W1); Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (180 Ebury St., Pimlico SW1); Horatio Nelson (103 New Bond St., Mayfair W1); Sir Isaac Newton (87 Jermyn St., St. James's SW1); Florence Nightingale (10 South St., Mayfair W1); George Bernard Shaw (29 Fitzroy Sq., Fitzrovia W1); Percy Bysshe Shelley (15 Poland St., Soho W1); Mark Twain (23 Tedworth Sq., Chelsea SW3); H.G. Wells (13 Hanover Terr., Regent's Park NW1); Oscar Wilde (34 Tite St., Chelsea SW3); William Butler Yeats (23 Fitzroy Rd., Primrose Hill NW1).