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- For the television series tentatively titled Fleet Street, see Boston Legal.
There is also a Fleet Street in Temple Bar, Dublin.
Fleet Street is a famous London street, named after the River Fleet. It was traditionally the home of the British press, up until the 1980's. Even though the last major news office, Reuters, left in 2005, the street's name continues to be used as a synonym for the British national press. It is now more associated with the Law and its courts and chambers, most of which are located in little side streets off Fleet Street itself.
History and location
Fleet Street began as the road from the City of London to the City of Westminster. The length of Fleet Street marks the expansion of the City in the 14th century. At the east end of the street is where the river Fleet flowed against the mediæval walls of London; at the west end is the Temple Bar which marks the current city limits, stretched to that point when the land and property of the Knights Templars was acquired.
To the south lies the complex of buildings known as The Temple, formerly the property of the Knights Templar, which houses two of the four Inns of Court, the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple. There are many lawyers' offices in the vicinity.
Publishing started in Fleet Street around 1500 when William Caxton's apprentice, Wynkyn de Worde, set up a printing shop near Shoe Lane, while at around the same time Richard Pynson set up as publisher and printer next to St Dunstan's church. More printers and publishers followed, mainly supplying the legal trade in the four Law Inns around the area. In March 1702, the world's first daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, was published in Fleet Street from premises above the White Hart Inn.
At Temple Bar to the west, as Fleet Street crosses the boundary out of the City of London, it becomes the Strand; to the east it evolves into Ludgate Hill. The nearest tube stations are Temple, Chancery Lane, and Blackfriars and it is very close to City Thameslink station.
Fleet Street is a location on the London version of the Monopoly board game.
Fiction and drama about Fleet Street
- A. N. Wilson: My Name is Legion (2004).
- Amanda Craig: A Vicious Circle (1996) (about a fictitious British newspaper tycoon and the world of publishing in general).
- Michael Wall: Amongst Barbarians (1989) (Similar to Lily d'Abo in My Name Is Legion, a white British working class couple takes money from a tabloid in order to be able to help their son).
- Howard Brenton and David Hare: Pravda (1985) (about a Rupert Murdoch-like character).
- A. N. Wilson: Scandal (1983) (About how a political scandal is created by the tabloid press).
- Michael Frayn: Towards the End of the Morning (1967) (a comic novel about failed and failing journalists in a 1960s newspaper)
- Evelyn Waugh: Scoop (1938) (about a fictional British Newspaper, The Daily Beast, and one of its contributors who is sent to an equally fictional African country at war called Ishmaelia)
- Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler: Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Fleet Street is the setting of the operatic musical, which is fictitious, though possibly based on a true series of incidents.)
- Pete Townshend: "Street in the City" (song)
- The Day The Earth Caught Fire: A 1961 science fiction film, starring Janet Munro and Leo McKern where concurrent Russian and U.S. nuclear tests alter the Earth's orbit, sending it spinning towards the Sun. Much of the impending disaster is seen from the perspective of staff at the Fleet Street office of the Daily Express.
- Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities: (Setting of the Tellson's Bank is on Fleet Street).
Non-fiction
- Fritz Spiegl: Keep Taking the Tabloids. What the Papers Say and How They Say It (1983).
- A. N. Wilson: A Short History (2004).
- Alan Watkins: A Short Walk Down Fleet Street.
See also
- Holborn, with a description of the surrounding area
- History of British newspapers
- List of United Kingdom newspapers
- Madison Avenue
External links
- Sweeney Todd and Fleet Street
- Farewell, Fleet Street. Bill Hagerty, BBC News Online. June 14, 2005.
- Fleet Street's finest. Christopher Hitchens, The Guardian Review. December 3, 2005.
- Drinking in the Street. SilkTork, RateBeer Article. January 19, 2006
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