The London Monopoly board takes Whitechapel in London’s East End as its opening square.
Here’s a handy ready-reckoner with which to impress your fellow kitchen-table capitalists when playing the famous board game – one Royal London fact for every square…
■ Old Kent Road: Kent has been a royal dukedom since 1934 (although it had previously been one in the 18th Century), when it was created thus for the fourth son of King George V. (NB: The Old Kent Road is the road to Kent, rather than a road in Kent.)
■ Community Chest: ‘It’s your birthday. Collect £10 from each player’: on the Prince of Wales’s 21st birthday, the Queen gave him an Aston Martin.
■ Whitechapel Road: A statue of King Edward VII can be found opposite the Royal London Hospital.
■ Income Tax: HM The Queen has paid income tax and capital gains tax since 1992. How much? She’s not telling, and neither is HMRC.
■ King’s Cross Station: King’s Cross is named after a monument built in the 1830s (now gone) to King George IV.
■ The Angel Islington: King Henry VIII was fond of hunting in what is now Islington.
■ Chance: ‘Pay school fees of £150’: fees for Eton, where Princes William and Harry studied, are around £10,000 a term.
■ Euston Road: In one of his forays into architectural criticism, Prince Charles once described the Reading Room at the British Library on Euston Road as being like ‘the assembly hall of an academy for secret police’.
■ Pentonville Road: Going back to ancient royalty, the Iceni Queen Boudicca is rumoured to be buried beneath nearby King’s Cross station. Rumoured, but not actually true.
■ In Jail: Queen Mary had her half-sister Elizabeth (I) imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1553.
■ Pall Mall: In the late 18th Century, the Prince Regent’s Carlton House mansion stood on Pall Mall.
■ Electric Company: Electricity was first installed in Buckingham Palace in 1883.
■ Whitehall: The last Duke of Cambridge before Prince William can be found in statue form on Whitehall. He lived from 1819 to 1904 and was Commander-in-Chief of the British armed forces.
■ Northumberland Avenue: Just off Northumberland Avenue, on Craven Passage, stood the Turkish bath where Holmes and Watson once discussed the affair of the Illustrious Client (see Chapter 8).
■ Marylebone Station: King Henry VIII once had (guess what?) hunting grounds near this spot.
■ Bow Street: Not the happiest of hunting grounds for royal associations here: Oliver Cromwell moved to Bow Street in 1645.
■ Community Chest: ‘Pay your insurance premium – £20’: the Crown Jewels are uninsurable.
■ Marlborough Street: The timbers of Liberty’s store on this street are, in part, taken from HMS Impregnable, once the flagship of the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV.
■ Vine Street: Once the home to the West End Central police station. Since its foundation in 1829, the Metropolitan Police has never had recourse to arrest a member of the Royal Family. Yet.
■ Free Parking: King Edward VIII is the first monarch for whom we have evidence of an ability to drive.
■ Strand: Richard II’s uncle, John of Gaunt, once lived at Savoy Palace.
■ Fleet Street: Three queens can be found on Fleet Street in statue form: Victoria, Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. The King and Queen pub, alas, is now a sandwich shop.
■ Trafalgar Square: The Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is presented to the nation by the royal family of Norway. Prince Albert is credited with popularising the Christmas tree in Britain.
■ Fenchurch Street Station: At the King’s Head Tavern that once stood nearby (no. 53, Fenchurch Street), Princess Elizabeth dined upon her release from the Tower of London. On the menu was pork and peas.
■ Leicester Square: Actors and actresses whose handprints appear in Leicester Square and who have played kings and queens on screen: Sir Ian McKellen has played both Richard II and Edward II, as well as a memorable Richard III; Charlton Heston and Alan Bates both played King Henry VIII; Dame Anna Neagle played Queen Victoria; Nigel Hawthorne played King George III; Sir John Gielgud played King Henry IV; Sean Connery played King Richard I; Helena Bonham Carter played Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother); Colin Firth played King George VI.
■ Coventry Street: Named after 17th-century Henry Coventry, secretary of state to Charles II, who owned a house nearby.
■ Water Works: The Diana Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park was the focus of controversy in 2004 when three people were hospitalised from injuries sustained when slipping on the wet surfaces of the ‘interactive’ commemoration. (For the number of loos in Buckingham Palace, see Chapter 3.)
■ Piccadilly: The Queen Mother’s royal warrant was removed from Hatchard’s bookshop, Piccadilly, on her request in 1996 because lurid biographies of Princess Diana were being displayed in the window.
■ Regent Street: Carreras, the tobacco manufacturer of Regent Street, was granted royal warrants by the Prince of Wales (1866) and King George VI. The latter died of lung cancer.
■ Oxford Street: Where, in December 2010, Charles’s and Camilla’s Rolls-Royce encountered around a dozen protestors in the aftermath of an anti-student fees demo. The protestors confronted the car and daubed it in white paint amid isolated cries of ‘Off with his head’. Pictures of the incident made the front pages worldwide. The couple were on the way to the London Palladium and were pictured there later that evening seemingly unshaken.
■ Community Chest: ‘It’s your birthday. Collect £10 from each player’: in this case, the monarch would collect £20, having both a birthday (the day upon which they were actually born) and an ‘official’ birthday (the day upon which the nation celebrates the event).
■ Bond Street: The lyricist of ‘Rule Britannia’, James Thomson, lived above a milliner’s shop on Bond Street.
■ Liverpool Street Station: If you think Liverpool Street station is bedlam today… well it once really was Bedlam – inasmuch as the ‘hospital’ for the insane once stood on the site. Inmates included would-be assassins of royalty – John Frith and James Hadfield for attempts on the life of King George III and Edward Oxford for the attempted assassination of Queen Victoria.
■ Chance: ‘Drunk in charge. Fine – £20’: in March 2007, Prince Harry, a little the worse for wear, lunged at assembled paparazzi when emerging from a night on the Crack Babies at Boujis.
■ Park Lane: At the top of Park Lane sits Marble Arch, moved to this position from Buckingham Palace in 1851 because reputedly Queen Victoria thought it was ugly.
■ Mayfair: Queen Elizabeth II was born at 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair.