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Better Books

Beat GenerationBookshops in LondonBritish Poetry RevivalIndependent bookshops of the United KingdomUnderground culture

Better Books was an independent bookstore. It was founded by Tony Godwin and was located at 94 Charing Cross Road, London. The shop was a significant location in the 1960s counterculture movement in London.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Better Books (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Better Books
Charing Cross Road, London Bloomsbury (London Borough of Camden)

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Latitude Longitude
N 51.513888888889 ° E -0.12930555555556 °
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Charing Cross Road 92-94
WC2H 0JB London, Bloomsbury (London Borough of Camden)
England, United Kingdom
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Palace Theatre, London
Palace Theatre, London

The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. Its red-brick facade dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus behind a small plaza near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road. The Palace Theatre seats 1,400. Richard D'Oyly Carte, producer of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, commissioned the theatre in the late 1880s. It was designed by Thomas Edward Collcutt and intended to be a home of English grand opera. The theatre opened as the Royal English Opera House in January 1891 with a lavish production of Arthur Sullivan's opera Ivanhoe. Although this ran for 160 performances, followed briefly by André Messager's La Basoche, Carte had no other works ready to fill the theatre. He leased it to Sarah Bernhardt for a season and sold the opera house within a year at a loss. It was then converted into a grand music hall and renamed the Palace Theatre of Varieties, managed successfully first by Sir Augustus Harris and then by Charles Morton. In 1897, the theatre began to screen films as part of its programme of entertainment. In 1904, Alfred Butt became manager and continued to combine variety entertainment, including dancing girls, with films. Herman Finck was musical director at the theatre from 1900 until 1920. In 1925, the musical comedy No, No, Nanette opened at the Palace Theatre, followed by other musicals, for which the theatre became known. The Marx Brothers appeared at the theatre in 1931, performing selections from their Broadway shows. The Sound of Music ran for 2,385 performances at the theatre, opening in 1961. Jesus Christ Superstar ran from 1972 to 1980, and Les Misérables played at the theatre for nineteen years, beginning in 1985. In 1983, Andrew Lloyd Webber purchased the theatre and by 1991 had refurbished it. Monty Python's Spamalot played there from 2006 until January 2009, and Priscilla Queen of the Desert opened in March 2009 and closed in December 2011. Between February 2012 and June 2013, the Palace hosted a production of Singin' in the Rain. From June 2016, the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ran at the theatre until performances were suspended in March 2020 owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The play returned to the stage on 14 October 2021, after a 19-month break.

Phoenix Garden
Phoenix Garden

The Phoenix Garden is a local community garden in central London, England, established in 1984. Located in St Giles behind the Phoenix Theatre, within the London Borough of Camden, the Phoenix Garden is nestled between the busy Soho and Covent Garden areas. The Garden is located just off St Giles Passage and Stacey Street, north of Shaftesbury Avenue and east of Charing Cross Road. The Garden was set up on a carpark in the 1980s, which had itself been established on a World War II bombsite (the site was bombed in 1940). Prior to this the Garden was the site of many houses, including a pub. The Phoenix Garden has survived various challenges, including a major industrial fly-tipping incident soon after its foundation. It is the only one of the original seven Covent Garden Community Gardens to survive to this day. The Phoenix Garden continues to be run by a committee of volunteers comprising local residents and workers. It is a registered charity (number 287502), and used to be known as the Covent Garden Open Spaces Association (CGOSA). The Garden has won first prize for Best Environmental Garden in the Camden in Bloom competition six times, from 2004 to 2010. It also holds regular social events, including an annual Agricultural Show and volunteering work-days. The garden was under threat of closure in 2016, and was closed for an 18-month renovation. It reopened in 2017 with an event space building designed by Office Sian. The garden is featured in the 2019 film Last Christmas.