London experiences

Famous Hampstead residents

Alongside notable natives like actor Stephen Fry and author Evelyn Waugh, the Village of Hampstead has been a magnet for notables, artists, and celebrities since the 19th century. This is just a short list:

Among the legions of writers and authors we count Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, D H Lawrence, John le Carré, Martin Amis, P. L. Travers (Mary Poppins), T.S. Eliot, Ian Fleming, John Fowles, Aldous Huxley, A.A. Milne, George Orwell, Robert Louis Setevnson, H.G. Wells, and a nearly complete set of major Romatic poets: Lord Byron, Percy Bysse Shelly, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats (whose Hampstead home is now a museum).

Musicians Sting, Ozzy Osnourne, Paul Robeson, Boy George, Liam Gallagher (of Oasis), and Hary Styles (of One Direction) all have called Hampstead home.

Artists John Constable, Lucien Freud, Walter Gropius, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Piet Mondrian, George Romney, and the architect George Gilbert Scott have lived here, as did psychiatrists Sigmund Freud and his daughter Anna Freud.

Hampstead was home to both the the famed adventurer and diplomat Sir Richard Burton (famous for his English translations of One Thousand And One Nights/Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra), and the famed Welsh actor who took his name, Richard Burton.

Other actors folowed: Peter Cook, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dame Judi Dench, Michael Palin, Elizabeth Taylor, Helena Bonham Carter, Ricky Gervais, Judy Garland, Jeremy Irons, Peter, O'Toole, and James Corden, plus director Ridley Scott.

However, in 2015 Cumberbatch and his wife moved just east to Dartmouth Park, and celeb power couples Tim Burton/Helena Bonham-Carter and Gwyneth Paltrtow/Chris Martin (pre-divorce) decamped just south nearby Belsize Park along with James Corden (who then moved Stateside to take over The Late Late Show) and Cameron Diaz. Are Hampstead's glory days as the Beverly Hills of London over?