Raymond Chandler gets famed blue plaque on his London home

For almost 150 years, the storied blue English Heritage plaques have been posted around the city of London marking the homes of its most famous and influential residents. On Tuesday, Raymond Chandler got one.

Chandler, author of “The Big Sleep,” “Farewell, My Lovely,” “The Long Goodbye” and other classic detective novels, is closely identified with Los Angeles. He wrote his noir stories set in L.A. when he lived in Southern California, which he did for the last 40-plus years of his life.

But the Chicago-born Chandler had a British mother and was partially raised in London.

At the turn of the century after Chandler’s American father abandoned the family, his mother took him back to England. Starting from about 1901-1907, when he was a schoolboy, Chandler lived with his mother, grandmother and aunt in London.

That was in a still-standing brick house in Upper Norwood in the London borough of Croydon, where the blue plaque was installed.

Other authors who have been honored with blue plaques include Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, J.M Barrie, Mary Shelley and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

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