Things you didn't know about... Bloomsbury

It's hip to be square in Bloomsbury
Though technically part of the London Borough of Camden, which is usually thought of as north London, Bloomsbury lies firmly in central London. It was developed by the Russell family in the 17th and 18th centuries in much the form it remains today—Georgian-style townhouses around garden squares.

GOSH—Peter Pan lives on in Bloomsbury...
He might never have grown up but, thanks to him, countless other children have. His creator, JM Barrie, generously assigned the copyright to the trustees of a Bloomsbury institution, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children (GOSH) in 1929. The little chap has been steadfastly raising money for them ever since.

The dreaming spires of Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury is a noted seat of learning. It's home to the British Museum, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), the British Medical Association (BMA), the University of London's Senate House Library and the University of London's Bloomsbury Colleges (including Birkbeck, University College and the School of Oriental and African Studies).

Bloomsbury was a good bet for wine and ham a millennium ago
The Domesday Book describes the area as consisting mainly of vineyards with enough "wood for 100 pigs".

Bloomsbury, Bob and Brent
It was to Bloomsbury that Bob Marley headed when he arrived in London in 1972, renting a flat at 34 Ridgmount Gardens. And Ricky Gervais—or David Brent from The Office—lives on Bloomsbury's Southampton Row and is a familiar face at local pubs and restaurants.

A Bloomsbury luminary got stuffed
Influential in the foundation of Bloomsbury's University College, philosopher and social campaigner Jeremy Bentham decreed in his will that his body should be preserved and displayed in a glass-fronted wooden cabinet. It can still be seen at UCL today.

The Bloomsbury Set were ahead of their time
Bloomsbury is practically synonymous with the freethinking Bloomsbury Set—formed around a group of intellectuals who met at Trinity College, Cambridge in around 1900 and all later lived around Bloomsbury. Though accomplished artists, musicians and writers, they became notorious for their sexually liberated views.

Writer Virginia Woolf, married to Leonard, had a lesbian affair with writer Vita Sackville-West, who was herself married to a gay diplomat, Harold... while cross-dressing artist Dora Carrington lived with gay critic Lytton Strachey. When they both fell in love with the same man, Carrington married him and the three set up home together.