History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

George Orwell was born as Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903 in India, where his father worked in the Indian Civil Service. He took his pen name from the King of the time, George V and the River Orwell in East Anglia.    Orwell died 70 years ago on this day, 21 January, in 1950.   George Orwell at the BBC Orwell is best known for his books such as The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Animal Farm (1945), and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). In 1942 he rented 10a Mortimer Crescent Kilburn which was the lower half of a large semi-detached house: the ground floor and basement. He moved here w ith his wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy f rom Langford Court, a modern block of flats in nearby Abbey Road. Mortimer Crescent was built in 1854 on the Greville estate and originally called Mortimer Road after Thomas Hill Mortimer. He was the solicitor for both Fulk Greville Howard and the later owner of the property, Colonel Arthur Upton. The houses were built for wealthy an...

This is the first full account of the V2 and V1 weapons that fell in Kilburn and West Hampstead during the Second World War. Londoners had survived the Blitz which lasted from 7 September 1940 to 21 May 1941 . The RAF had defeated the Luftwaffe and had won the battle for air supremacy over London . Then after several years of relative quiet, on 13 June 1944 the first of Hitler’s new weapons arrived. This was the V1 or flying bomb, which was soon nicknamed the ‘Doodlebug’ although Eastenders gave it the more colourful name of the Farting Fury . People had no idea such a weapon existed, let alone what it looked like. Crowds stood and looked up at the sky in wonder as they watched the flying bombs spitting red flames from their tail. One father even called to his wife; Quick, get the children up and come and see this lot. The bloody Huns are sending over planes on fire!   Residents in Croydon even cheered when they saw a V1, thinking it was a German aircraft on fire...