A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square
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Team Sieni
N 51° 30.588 W 000° 08.808
30U E 697987 N 5710379
A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square: Published 1940; Lyrics by Eric Maschwitz and music by Manning Sherwin and Jack Strachey.
Waymark Code: WM3CGP
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 03/15/2008
Views: 100
A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square is a romantic song first published in 1940. The lyrics are by Eric Maschwitz and music by Manning Sherwin and Jack Strachey. It was probably most famously recorded by Dame Vera Lynn, but other greats such as Nat King Cole, Glenn Miller and Rod Stewart have also performed it.
Berkely Square itself is a square in Central London. This is a most unlikely place for nightingales, but as the song points out, such things happen when true lovers meet. The Square was first enclosed in 1747, at which time the gardens were a water meadow on a bend of the River Tyburn. The Tyburn is now invisible, being culverted underground.
The square is home to a number of famous large London Plane trees, planted in 1789 by Edward Bouverie, the then resident of No 13 Berkeley Square, which are reputed to be the oldest trees in London.
Oddly enough this is not the only wartime song for which Dame Vera Lynn is famous in which unlikely birds appear in famous English locations (Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover being the other).
This was also the title of a 1979 film.