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Notting Hill in London

Sunday, 5 November 2023 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Great Britain / Großbritannien
Category/Kategorie: General, London, Shopping Reading Time:  4 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road Market. From around 1870, Notting Hill had an association with artists.

For much of the 20th century, the large houses were subdivided into multi-occupancy rentals. European, Caribbean (both African Caribbeans and White Caribbeans), African, Indian, Arab, Asian, South American, and other immigrants were drawn to the area in the 1950s, partly because of the cheap rents, but were exploited by slum landlords like Peter Rachman and also became the target of white Teddy Boys in the 1958 Notting Hill race riots.

In the early 21st century, after decades of gentrification, Notting Hill had by then gained a reputation as an affluent and fashionable area, known for attractive terraces of large Victorian townhouses and high-end shopping and restaurants (particularly around Westbourne Grove and Clarendon Cross). A Daily Telegraph article in 2004 used the phrase “the Notting Hill set” to refer to a group of emerging Conservative politicians, such as David Cameron and George Osborne, who would become respectively Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer and were once based in Notting Hill.

Notting Hill provides the setting for novels by G. K. Chesterton (The Napoleon of Notting Hill), Colin MacInnes (Absolute Beginners), Michael Moorcock (the Jerry Cornelius quartet), R. C. Sherriff (The Hopkins Manuscript), and Alan Hollinghurst (The Line of Beauty). Dan Waddel’s The Blood Detective is a murder novel set in the past and present – featuring Notting Dale. The area’s newer, wealthy residents are satirised in Rachel Johnson‘s novel Notting Hell (2006) set in grand houses surrounding a fictional communal garden. Sam Selvon‘s 1956 novel The Lonely Londoners set in Notting Hill portrays the lives of Caribbean immigrants making their way in post-World War II London. The area is also the setting of the films: The Knack …and How to Get It (1965), Performance (1970) featuring Mick Jagger, Lava (2001), and Paddington (2014). Notting Hill serves as the locale for the 1999 romantic comedy Notting Hill, starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. A film set in the same streets but showing a different story of the area is Pressure (1976), by Horace Ové, examining the experience of those of Caribbean descent in 1970s Notting Hill including police brutality and discrimination. The Notting Hillbillies were a country rock project formed by Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler in 1986. They released a single album, Missing…Presumed Having a Good Time, in 1990. Notting Hill is often referred to as ‘the most Instagrammable district in London’ due to the abundance of photogenic restaurants and pastel-coloured houses.

Read more on – Notting Hill area guide, Wikivoyage Notting Hill and Wikipedia Notting Hill (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.