Raymond Chandler given blue plaque in mean streets of Upper Norwood

Creator of hard-boiled LA detective Philip Marlowe lived in leafy London suburb while a pupil at nearby Dulwich College

Down those not very mean streets of Dulwich and Upper Norwood a man must go, to see a new English Heritage blue plaque honouring one of the most improbable residents of the leafy and affluent south London suburbs: Raymond Chandler, creator of Philip Marlowe, the 10-minute egg of the world of hard-boiled detectives.

The clue was in the name: while the rumpled, hungover but noble detective would have looked, as Chandler wrote in The Big Sleep, about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food in Edwardian Norwood, he was christened Marlowe in honour of Chandlers house at his old school, Dulwich College.

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