Coordinates: 51°31′34″N 0°07′04″W / 51.5262°N 0.1178°W / 51.5262; -0.1178

Bloomsbury is an area of central London between Euston Road and Holborn, developed by the Russell family in the 17th and 18th centuries into a fashionable residential area. It is notable for its array of garden squares, literary connections (exemplified by the Bloomsbury Group) and numerous cultural, educational and healthcare institutions. While Bloomsbury was not the first area of London to have acquired a formal square, Bloomsbury Square, laid out in 1660 by Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton as Southampton Square, was the first square to be named as such.

Bloomsbury is home to the University of London's central bodies and departments, including the Senate House Library and School of Advanced Study, and several of its colleges, including University College London, Birkbeck, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the School of Pharmacy and the School of Oriental and African Studies. Numerous healthcare institutions are located in Bloomsbury, including the British Medical Association, Great Ormond Street Hospital, the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, University College Hospital and the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine. The British Museum and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art are also located in the area.

Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses.

Called the "Godmother of Punk", her work was a fusion of rock and poetry. Smith's most widely known song is "Because the Night", which was co-written with Bruce Springsteen and reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1978. In 2005, Patti Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, and in 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On November 17, 2010, she won the National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids. She is also a recipient of the 2011 Polar Music Prize.

Angelica Vanessa Garnett, née Bell (25 December 1918 – 4 May 2012), was a British writer and painter.

Angelica Garnett was the daughter of the painters Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell (sister of Virginia Woolf), and was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. She had two half-brothers, the poet Julian Bell, who was killed during the Spanish Civil War in 1937, and the art historian Quentin Bell.

Her mother's husband, Clive Bell, was not her biological father, but was fully supportive of his wife's love affair with Grant, and willingly allowed Angelica to bear his name and to regard him as her father in order that his conservative family would not disinherit her. She was not told of her true parentage until she was 17, although she had grown up living with Grant and her mother at Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex/England, which her mother had rented and shared with other members of the Bloomsbury Group. The farmhouse is now a museum.

Angelica Garnett spent the last 30 years of her life in Forcalquier in the South of France. She died in Aix-en-Provence on 4 May 2012.

Russell Joseph Howard^{[citation needed]} (born 23 March 1980) is an English comedian and presenter best known for his TV show Russell Howard's Good News and his appearances on the topical panel TV show Mock The Week. He won "Best Compère" at the 2006 Chortle Awards and was nominated for an if.comedy award for his 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe show.

Howard has two younger siblings, twins, Kerry, an actress, and Daniel, a systems analyst who suffers from epilepsy, a fact which Howard often references during his act. Indeed, in April 2010, Howard ran the Virgin London Marathon for the first time with both his brother and sister, to raise money for the National Society for Epilepsy. He completed the 26 mile course in 4 hours and 15 minutes, beating his target time of 5 hours. Sponsorship has raised over £7,000 to date.

Howard supports Liverpool Football Club and says that he is "deadly serious" about football. "I still go down the pub and play football with my mates", he commented in 2010.

In terms of political views, Howard appeared at Friends of the Earth's LIVEstock comedy and music event at the Hammersmith Apollo in support of the green campaign group's Food Chain Campaign for planet-friendly farming, on 12 November 2009.