Bloomsbury

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

Bloomsbury is an area of the London Borough of Camden, in 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 health-care institutions. Although 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 to several of its colleges, including University College London, the Institute of Education (IOE),Birkbeck, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the SOAS, University of London. It is also home to the University of Law and New College of the Humanities. The numerous health-care institutions located in Bloomsbury include 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. London Contemporary Dance School and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and are also located in the area.

Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf (née Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Woolf suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life, thought to have been what is now termed bipolar disorder, and committed suicide by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59.

Early life

Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen at 22 Hyde Park Gate in Kensington, London. Her parents were Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) and Julia Prinsep Duckworth Stephen (née Jackson, 1846–1895). Leslie Stephen was a notable historian, author, critic and mountaineer. He was a founding editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, a work that would influence Woolf's later experimental biographies. Julia Stephen was born in British India to Dr. John and Maria Pattle Jackson. She was the niece of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and first cousin of the temperance leader Lady Henry Somerset. Julia moved to England with her mother, where she served as a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones. Julia named her daughter after the Pattle family: Adeline after Lady Henry's sister, who married George Russell, 10th Duke of Bedford; and Virginia, the name of yet another sister (who died young) but also of their mother, Julia's aunt.

Bloomsbury Group

The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was an influential group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists, the best known members of which included Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strachey. This loose collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied together near Bloomsbury, London, during the first half of the 20th century. According to Ian Ousby, "although its members denied being a group in any formal sense, they were united by an abiding belief in the importance of the arts". Their works and outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality.

Origins

The male members of the Bloomsbury Group, except Duncan Grant, were educated at Cambridge at either Trinity or King’s College. Most of them, except Clive Bell and the Stephen brothers, were members of "the exclusive Cambridge society, the 'Apostles'". At Trinity in 1899 Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, Saxon Sydney-Turner and Clive Bell became good friends with Thoby Stephen, and it was through Thoby and Adrian Stephen's sisters Vanessa and Virginia that the men met the women of Bloomsbury when they came down to London.

Kenneth Williams

Kenneth Charles Williams (22 February 1926 – 15 April 1988) was an English comic actor and comedian.

He was one of the main ensemble in 26 of the 31 Carry On films, and appeared in many British television shows and radio comedies, including series with Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne.

Life and career

Kenneth Charles Williams was born on 22 February 1926 in Bingfield Street, King's Cross, London, the son of Louisa ("Lou" or "Louie") Morgan (1901-1991) and Charles Williams (1899-1962), a barber and strict Methodist from Somers Town, London. Kenneth Williams stated in his diaries that he believed he had Welsh ancestors due to his parents' surnames. Williams had a half-sister, Alice Patricia "Pat", born illegitimately before Louie had met Charlie Williams. He was educated at Lyulph Stanley School, later becoming apprenticed as a draughtsman to a mapmaker. In 1944, aged 18, he was called up to the Army. He became a sapper in the Engineers Survey section, doing much the same work that he did as a civilian. When the war ended he was in Singapore, and he opted to transfer to the Combined Service Entertainment Unit, which put on revue shows. While in that unit he met Stanley Baxter, Peter Nichols, and John Schlesinger.