Five... Pieces of London's Hitchcockian History
Stroll in the footsteps of the master of suspense
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter… 🎥
This week’s is a handful of key places on the Hitchcock trail in London. Sink a pint in a pub that features in one of his films, visit a collection of murals commemorating his work, stroll by the place where he made the leap from silent films to talkies - the city’s filled with places the director worked and was inspired by.
Thanks for much of the info here to who, apart from being a wealth of arcane Hitchcock knowledge, is also editor of a Croydon-centric newsletter due to launch next month.
The origin story, Leytonstone
Head east to Leytonstone and you’ll land in the heart of Hitchcock’s childhood haunts. He was born at 517 High Road, and though the site itself is a petrol station now, marked by the blue plaque above, there’s also a huge Hitchcockian homage opposite.
And there are plenty of other Hitchcock homages in Leytonstone to justify the pilgrimage: among them the Hitchcock Hotel, a pub and hotel on the edge of Epping Forest with a gently Hitchcockian theme - there are a few nods to the director around the place, including on the menu at their restaurant The Rear Window - and the mosaics at Leytonstone tube station, showing scenes from his films and his life.
If you aren’t passing through Leytonstone anytime soon, you can see the series of mosaics here in this article from Richard Jones.
Studio time, Hackney
Just next to Shoreditch Park stands the place where young Hitchcock got his first big break in the film industry: in 1919 he replied to an advert for somebody to design subtitles for silent films at Islington Studios (later became known as Gainsborough Pictures). Within a few years Hitchcock was working as an assistant director there, and in 1927 he directed his first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, starring Ivor Novello.