Country Life

London’s little Italy

IT’S strange to walk around Maida Vale’s stately roads and think that none of this existed until 200 years ago. Of course, woods and fields had long occupied the stretch of land north of Paddington, but the area had no name of its own. Then a battle changed everything. When, in 1806, the British troops inflicted a burning humiliation on the Napoleonic army at Maida —a small Calabrian town few Italians would be able to pick out on a map—a patriotic pub on Edgware Road named itself The Hero of Maida, in homage to commander Sir John Stuart. As houses

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