Coordinates: 51°31′8″N 0°7′8″W / 51.51889°N 0.11889°W / 51.51889; -0.11889

Red Lion Square is a small square on the boundary of Bloomsbury and Holborn in London. The square was laid out in 1684 by Nicholas Barbon, taking its name from the Red Lion Inn. According to some sources the bodies of three regicides - Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton - were placed in a pit on the site of the Square.

By 1720 it was a fashionable part of London: the eminent judge Bernard Hale was a resident of Red Lion Square. In the 1860s, on the other hand, it had clearly become decidedly unfashionable: the writer Anthony Trollope in his novel Orley Farm (1862) humorously reassures his readers that one of his characters is perfectly respectable, despite living in Red Lion Square.

The centre-piece of the garden today is a statue by Ian Walters of Fenner Brockway, which was installed in 1986. There is also a memorial bust of Bertrand Russell.Conway Hall—which is the home of the South Place Ethical Society and the National Secular Society—opens on to the Square. On 15 June 1974 a meeting by the National Front in Conway Hall resulted in a protest by anti-fascist groups. The following disorder and police action left one student - Kevin Gately from the University of Warwick - dead.

Red Lion may refer to:

Red Lion (赤毛, Akage) is a 1969 Japanese film directed by Kihachi Okamoto and starring Toshirō Mifune and Shima Iwashita.

Plot summary

Gonzo (Toshiro Mifune), a member of the Imperial Restoration Force, is being asked by the emperor to deliver official news to his home village of a New World Order. Wanting to pose as a military officer, he dons the Red Lion Mane of Office. Upon his return, his attempt to tell the village about a brand-new tax cut is quashed when the townfolk mistakenly assumes that he is there to rescue them from corrupt government officials. He learns that an evil magistrate has been swindling them for years. Now, he has to help the village, ward off Shogunate fanatics, along with the fact that he can't read his own proclamations.

The director, Kihachi Okamoto, is well known for introducing plot twists and surprising endings in his films, and Red Lion is no exception. What starts out as an almost comedic series of misunderstandings between almost comically drawn characters ends up turning far more serious as the film progresses. Tomi (Iwashita), as Gonzo's (Mifune) old flame, is tragically torn between her hopes that Gonzo's new marriage proposal is genuine, and her fears that her life will never improve unless she "goes along" with the corrupt and powerful who rule over the peasant's lives. The film ends with the peasants dancing to the cry of "Ee ja nai ka" ("Why not!?", "Whatever!", or "Nevermind!"), which fatalistically refers to the tumultuous 1866-67 period of Japanese history immediately preceding the imperial restoration and the end of the Edo period.

The Red Lion was an Elizabethan playhouse located in Whitechapel (part of the modern Borough of Tower Hamlets), just outside the City of London. Built in 1567, by John Brayne, formerly a grocer, this theatre was a short-lived attempt to provide a purpose-built playhouse, the first known in London, for the many Tudor touring theatrical companies.

The Red Lion had been a farm, but a single gallery multi-sided theatre (constructed by John Williams), with a fixed stage 40 feet (12.2 m) by 30 feet (9.1 m), standing 5 feet (1.5 m) above the audience, was built by John Reynolds, in the garden of the farmhouse. The stage was equipped with trapdoors, and an attached 30 feet (9.1 m) turret, or fly tower – for aerial stunts and to advertise its presence. The construction cost £20, and while it appears to have been a commercial success, the Red Lion offered little that the prior tradition of playing in inns had not offered, and it was too far from its audiences to be attractive (at the time, the area was open farmland) for visiting in the winter.