Embassy of Iran, London

The Iranian Embassy siege took place from 30 April to 5 May 1980, after a group of six armed men stormed the Iranian embassy on Prince's Gate in South Kensington, London. The gunmen, Iranian Arabs campaigning for sovereignty of Khuzestan Province, took 26 people hostage, including embassy staff, several visitors, and a police officer who had been guarding the embassy. They demanded the release of prisoners in Khuzestan and their own safe passage out of the United Kingdom. The British government quickly decided that safe passage would not be granted and a siege ensued. Subsequently, police negotiators secured the release of five hostages in exchange for minor concessions, such as the broadcasting of the hostage-takers' demands on British television. By the sixth day of the siege the gunmen were increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress in meeting their demands. That evening, they killed a hostage and threw his body out of the embassy. The Special Air Service (SAS), a special forces regiment of the British Army, initiated "Operation Nimrod" to rescue the remaining hostages, abseiling from the roof and forcing entry through the windows. During the 17-minute raid they rescued all but one of the remaining hostages and killed five of the six hostage-takers. An inquest cleared the SAS of any wrongdoing. The sole remaining gunman served 27 years in British prisons. The Iran–Iraq War broke out later that year and the hostage crisis in Tehran continued until January 1981. Nonetheless, the operation brought the SAS to the public eye for the first time and bolstered the reputation of Thatcher's government. The SAS was quickly overwhelmed by the number of applications it received from people inspired by the operation and experienced greater demand for its expertise from foreign governments. The building, damaged by fire during the assault, was not reopened until 1993. The SAS raid, televised live on a bank holiday evening, became a defining moment in British history and proved a career boost for several journalists; it became the subject of multiple documentaries and works of fiction, including several films and television series.

The Embassy of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in London is the diplomatic mission of Ethiopia in the United Kingdom. It is located in a terrace overlooking Hyde Park in Kensington Road, South Kensington, next to the Embassy of Iran. The building forms one of a group of Grade II listed stucco buildings, along with the Iranian Embassy and the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum.

14 Princes Gate is the building at the east end of a terrace overlooking Hyde Park in Kensington Road, Westminster, London. The whole terrace is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building. The terrace is called Prince's Gate because it stands opposite the Prince of Wales' Gate to Hyde Park, named after the Prince of Wales who later became Edward VII.Built in 1849, its owners included members of the Morgan family of American bankers. Number 13 and 14 Prince's Gate were combined into an enlarged Number 14 in the early 20th century. From the 1920s to the 1950s it was the official residence of eight American ambassadors. It later became the first headquarters of the Independent Television Authority and was until 2010 the headquarters of the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Kensington Road is a section of road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the City of Westminster, London, forming part of the A315 road. It runs along the south edge of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. To the west it becomes Kensington High Street, to the east it becomes Knightsbridge, while Kensington Gore is the name applied to the middle section. To the north is Kensington Palace and to the south, the road is joined by Palace Gate, Queen's Gate, Exhibition Road, and Rutland Gate (west to east). Kensington Road houses one of the remaining thirteen Grade II listed Cabmen's Shelters used by London's taxi drivers as a place to buy food and (non-alcoholic) drink.The London bus routes 9, 23, 52, 360 and 452 serve Kensington Road. Running adjacent to Kensington Road on the south side, separated by a high wall, is Prince's Gate. It was named after a gate into Hyde Park, opened in 1848 by Edward VII, the then Prince of Wales. In 1855 some stuccoed terraces were built opposite it, facing Kensington Road. They were described by Leigh Hunt as like "a set of tall, thin gentlemen squeezing together to look at something over the way". Many of the individual properties are now embassies or offices. Notable ones include: The Embassy of Iran, 16 Prince's Gate The Embassy of Ethiopia, 17 Prince's Gate The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, 20 Prince's Gate The Embassy of Thailand (branch), 28 Prince's Gate The Embassy of Tunisia, 29 Prince's Gate The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates, 30 Prince's Gate The Embassy of Afghanistan, 31 Prince's Gate (entrance in Exhibition Road)Several notable people lived in Prince's Gate too. Field Marshal Douglas Haig lived and died at No. 21 in 1928; Robert Baden-Powell lived at No. 32 in 1903–14; and Joseph Chamberlain lived at No. 72 in 1880–2. No. 14 was the home of Joseph Kennedy when he was the American ambassador to Britain in 1937–40, accompanied by his son John F. Kennedy.

The Kingston House estate and Ennismore Gardens in Knightsbridge is a green, dual-character area within the western limits of the City of Westminster in London. The first-named is immediately south of Hyde Park, London taking up the park's semi-panorama row of 8 to 13 Princes Gate (demolished) and otherwise, as to more of its wings, set around the east of Princes Gate Garden including a terrace of houses №s 1 to 7 Bolney Gate. The second-named is a garden square of 59 tall creamy-white terraced houses and the approach road to Prince of Wales Gate, Hyde Park as well as the identical-size public, square green of the church that is since 1956 the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God and All Saints facing which green are its anomalous outlier row for a London garden square, №s 61 to 66. The relatively small, broad-fronted house set against the Consulate-used pairing at №s 61 to 62 is № 60 and as with the other 65 numbers of Ennismore Gardens is a listed building. Kingston House estate has some Art Deco features but has no statutorily listed buildings. It has four 1930s to 1950s ranges of flats in 1930s style, arranged in three parts.

The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum (Polish: Instytut Polski i Muzeum im. Gen. Sikorskiego), known as Sikorski Institute, named after General Władysław Sikorski, is a leading London-based museum and archive for research into Poland during World War II and the Polish diaspora. It is a non-governmental organisation managed by scholars from the Polish community in the United Kingdom, housed at 20 Prince's Gate in West London, in a Grade II listed terrace on Kensington Road facing Hyde Park. It is incidentally part of the same Victorian development by Charles James Freake as the nearby Polish Hearth Club. Although the institute is closer to the commercial centres of Kensington, it is just within the City of Westminster. In 1988 it merged with the formerly independent Polish Underground Movement (1939–1945) Study Trust – (Polish: Studium Polski Podziemnej w Londynie).

The Centre for Environmental Policy (CEP) is a department at Imperial College London in the Faculty of Natural Sciences. Its aim is to influence a wide range of environmental issues through research on the environmental, energy and health aspects of global problems. CEP's current director is Professor Mark Burgman.

The Embassy of Tunisia at 29 Princes's Gate in the South Kensington district of London is the diplomatic mission of Tunisia in the United Kingdom.The embassy is situated in a mid 19th-century stucco terraced house overlooking Hyde Park in Kensington Road, Westminster, London, next door to the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates and the Embassy of Afghanistan. The three embassies are part of a single group of Grade II listed buildings at 26—31 Prince's Gate.

The Embassy of Afghanistan in London (Pashto: د افغانستان اسلامي جمهوری سفارت; Dari: سفارت جمهوری اسلامی افغانستان) is the primary diplomatic mission of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the United Kingdom. It is located at 31 Princes Gate in London's South Kensington district.The building now used for the embassy was constructed by Charles James Freake in the late 1850s.Earlier residents include the industrialist Charles Wright, chairman of Baldwins, and George Whiteley, 1st Baron Marchamley.Afghanistan bought this building in 1925.

The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition which took place in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 15 October, 1851. It was the first in a series of World's Fairs, exhibitions of culture and industry that became popular in the 19th century. The event was organised by Henry Cole and Prince Albert, husband of Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom. Famous people of the time attended the Great Exhibition, including Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Michael Faraday (who assisted with the planning and judging of exhibits), Samuel Colt, members of the Orléanist Royal Family and the writers Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson and William Makepeace Thackeray. The opening music, under the superintendence of William Sterndale Bennett, was directed by Sir George Smart. The world's first soft drink, Schweppes, was the official sponsor of the event.

The High Commission of Jamaica in London is the diplomatic mission of Jamaica in the United Kingdom.

The London Map Fair, established in 1980, is a two-day annual event traditionally held in June at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington, London. It brings together around 40 map dealers as exhibitors, and attracts hundreds of other dealers, curators and collectors from around the world. According to Ken Jennings, as of 2011 it was "Europe's largest event for buying and selling antique maps". It is noted for being the largest specialist fair of its kind. Exhibitors offer a range of atlases, travel books, globes, nautical charts, town plans, topographical prints and related ephemera. The fair also organizes lectures by cartographic experts, both mapsellers and academics. Guest speakers have included Peter Barber, former Head of Map Collections at the British Library; Laurence Worms, former President of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association, and writer and broadcaster Nicholas Crane. The fair also organizes talks on map collecting for beginners, held throughout the weekend. The current organizers of the fair are Tim Bryars, Massimo de Martini and Rainer Voigt.