The blue plaque quiz: can you guess who lived in these London houses?

1. 

   Which painter lived at 87 Hackford Road, South Lambeth?

   1. William Morris

   2. Vincent Van Gogh

   3. John William Waterhouse

   4. John Singer Sargent

2. 

   Which musician lived at 34 Montagu Square, Marylebone?

   1. Keith Moon

   2. Sid Vicious

   3. Sandy Denny

   4. John Lennon

3. 

   Which American poet lived for a short time at 3 Chalcot Square, Primrose Hill?

   1. Sylvia Plath

   2. Jack Kerouac

   3. Ezra Pound

   4. Walt Whitman

4. 

   Which director lived at 153 Cromwell Road, South Kensington?

   1. Stanley Kubrick

   2. Alfred Hitchcock

   3. Clint Eastwood

   4. Charlie Chaplin

5. 

   Which musician lived at 23 Brook Street, Mayfair?

   1. Jim Morrison

   2. Janis Joplin

   3. Brian Jones

   4. Jimi Hendrix

6. 

   Which author lived at 58 Sheffield Terrace, Holland Park?

   1. Arthur Conan Doyle

   2. Dorothy Leigh Sayers

   3. PD James

   4. Agatha Christie

7. 

   Who lived at 28 Dean Street, Soho? He wrote the first draft of his groundbreaking book here.

   1. Charles Dickens

   2. Karl Marx

   3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

   4. Mark Twain

8. 

   Which composer stayed for a brief period at 180 Ebury Street, Belgravia? (Blue became the standard colour for official London plaques after the second world war.)

   1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

   2. George Frideric Handel

   3. Benjamin Britten

   4. Frederic Chopin

9. 

   Which writer lived at 29 Fitzroy Square, Fitzrovia?

   1. George Orwell

   2. TS Eliot

   3. Virginia Woolf

   4. TE Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia")

10. 

    Which person, who was new to London, spent time living at 20 Baron's Court Road, Barons Court, while studying law in the late 1880s?

    1. Enid Blyton

    2. Mahatma Gandhi

    3. Florence Nightingale

    4. William Butler Yeats

Solutions

1:B - Van Gogh was a lodger at number 87 while working at the London branch of his employers, the Dutch art dealer Groupil & Co in 1873. He fell in love with his landlady's daughter, Eugenie, and after declaring his love for her and finding out she was already engaged, he left Hackford Road and moved to Kensington for a short time. Van Gogh was only 20 when he first arrived in London, and had not yet found his vocation as a painter. , 2:D - In July 1968 Lennon moved into the basement maisonette in Montagu square and stayed for around five months, while he was working on the Beatles' self-titled album (known as the White Album). The flat had been bought by Ringo Starr in 1965, and was briefly rented by Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix before it became the first home Lennon shared with Yoko Ono. It was here that they took the controversial naked photograph for the cover of Two Virgins. During their time at number 34 the flat was raided by police who found traces of cannabis, which led to Lennon’s conviction for possession. , 3:A - Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Plath moved to England with her husband, the British poet Ted Hughes, in 1959. She wrote her first novel, The Bell Jar, while living in Chalcot Square, and published first volume of poetry, The Colossus. Hughes and Plath lived in Primrose Hill until they moved to Devon for about a year in 1961. , 4:B - Born in Leytonstone, east London, Hitchcock moved to Cromwell Road a year after the release of his first feature film The Pleasure Garden (1925). He designed the furniture and fittings for the flat which he kept in London, and once remarked: “I never felt any desire to move out of my own class.” In 1955 he took American citizenship and moved to Los Angeles with his wife. , 5:D - Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix first arrived in London in 1966. After the release of his album Are You Experienced, Hendrix joined his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham at her flat in number 23. He lived here for months before leaving to tour the US in March 1969. , 6:D - Originally from Devon, the detective author famous for her characters Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, lived in Sheffield Terrace from 1934-1941 with her second husband until they were driven out by bombing in the second world war. In this house she completed her books Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile., 7:B - The German revolutionary and author settled permanently in London in 1849 with his family. He moved to Dean Street in the winter of 1850-51, living in relative poverty. He wrote the first volume of Das Kapital here, carrying out research at the British Museum reading room. In 1856 he moved to Kentish Town. , 8:A - The young prodigy was in London on a grand tour of Europe with his family when his father Leopold was taken ill. The family stayed in Ebury Street for a few weeks, and it is here where eight-year-old Mozart composed his first symphony, so as not to disturb his father while he recovered. , 9:C - The English writer moved to Fitzroy Square with her younger brother in 1907, taking the place of former resident George Bernard Shaw on a five-year lease. Finding the neighbourhood to be too noisy, she moved to the quieter Brunswick Square in November 1911. , 10:B - Gandhi arrived in London aged 19 and lived at number 20 as a law student in the late 1880s. Board and lodging cost him 30 shillings a week, and as his landlady struggled to cater for his vegetarianism, he moved after about eight months.

Scores