Charing Cross Road

around Piccadilly Circus, Charing Cross and Oxford Street, much of it destined from/to Tottenham Court Road, Bloomsbury and nearby routes to all northerly directions.

Charing Cross Road was therefore developed, in conjunction with Shaftesbury Avenue, by the Metropolitan Board of Works under an 1877 Act of Parliament.

A long-standing correspondence between New York City-based author Helene Hanff and the staff of a bookshop on the street, Marks & Co., was the inspiration for the book 84, Charing Cross Road (1970).

The book was made into a 1987 film starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins and also into a play and a BBC radio drama.

A brass plaque on the stone pilaster facing Charing Cross Road commemorates the former bookshop and Hanff's book.

[1] To the northeast of Charing Cross Road are the music shops on Denmark Street (known as Britain's Tin Pan Alley).