The major thoroughfare of Charing Cross Road leads north from Trafalgar Square to Oxford Street, before turning into Tottenham Court Road. Passing through Leicester Square and crossing Shaftesbury Avenue, the street is home to a number of established institutions such as the Palace, Garrick, and Wyndham’s theatres, and the Hippodrome Casino. The road is also renowned for its specialist and second-hand bookshops. Most of these antiquarian and specialist sellers are located on the ground floor of a block between Leicester Square and Cambridge Circus. To the southern end of the road is the celebrated National Portrait Gallery, accessed easily from Leicester Square tube station, which provides visitors with handy Northern and Piccadilly line services from all over London. Local green space is hard to come by, but Soho Square Gardens is only a short walk away, and is used by local workers as a semi-secret getaway from the hustle and bustle of the West End.

The development of nearby Regent Street and the building up of Westminster Bridge in the mid-18th century led to significant traffic pressure on the north-south axis of the West End. This was especially concentrated around Piccadilly Circus, Charing Cross, and Oxford Street. The two narrow streets of Crown Street and Castle Street could not help in dispersing this congestion so were combined to create the broad Charing Cross Road in 1877, along with Shaftesbury Avenue. The area was home to some of the city’s worst slums at the time, which were abolished with the development. Many of the area’s theatres were opened around this time and have thrived ever since. Leicester Square station was built in 1906, replacing three houses owned by Lord Salisbury, to his extreme dissatisfaction. In the same year Foyle’s bookshop, which had been founded three years earlier, moved its flagship store to the street. In the 1920s the Astoria Theatre opened, and later became a music venue, as well as an important venue for the LGBT community. Sadly, it closed in 2009 and was demolished as part of the Crossrail project.

In the Harry Potter series, Charing Cross Road is the location of the Leaky Cauldron pub. In the books, the shabby pub serves as a gateway between the non-wizarding and wizarding world. Though in the films, the locations used are a florist in Borough Market and an optician’s in Leadenhall.

Charing Cross Road is one of London’s worst affected roads when it comes to pollution. In 2014 it was revealed that Oxford Street was one of the world’s most polluted, and as they intersect, it is likely that Charing Cross Road is not too far behind.

Tottenham Court Road station, located to the north of Charing Cross Road, was selected as a stop on the new Elizabeth line, the central segment of which opened in March 2022. A new western ticket hall on Dean Street was developed and its colour scheme was selected to be ‘dark and cinematic’ to reflect ‘the nocturnal economies that characterise the area.’ The station’s Elizabeth Line platform is 234 meters in legnth, with a capacity of 170,000 passengers per day to travel on the line on 24 trains per hour.