Heritage blue plaque today on 17 July in London. The function is at 30 Langdon Park Road in Highgate, the house where he lived in his student days.The plaque will be unveiled at 12 noon by the former Cabinet Minister Tony Benn. Although a key figure in India's fight for independence and deeply opposed to British imperialism Krishna Menon felt a deep connection with the British public at large. This is why he is still admired and commenmorated by British.

He moved to England from Madras in 1924 – first to Letchworth – and studied law and political science. Later, in the 1930s, Menon worked as an editor at the Bodley Head, where he had a key role in the foundation of the celebrated Penguin and Pelican imprints. Elected as a Labour councillor for the Borough of St Pancras in 1934, he held his seat for 14 years and was Chair of the Library Committee. In this capacity, Menon introduced travelling libraries, children's corners and the loaning of gramophone records – his ambition to open as many libraries in the borough as there were pubs was unrealised, however.

During the Second World War, he served as an air warden around Camden Square where he was living at the time and in 1955 he was made a freeman of St Pancras, only the second person ever to be given the honour – the first was George Bernard Shaw. As part of his fight for India's independence, shortly after arriving in England, Menon refounded the Commonwealth of India League – a low-key campaign group with self-rule for India as its aim. He was an indefatigable pamphleteer and platform speaker: James Callaghan, the former Prime Minister, described Menon as 'the embodiment of the movement within Britain for India's freedom'.

In 1947, Menon was appointed by Nehru as independent India's first High Commissioner in London. Keeping India within the British Commonwealth after gaining independence, and there by setting the precedent for other republican constitutions to remain within it, is often cited among his greatest achievements. Menon resigned his post in 1952 after a row over his part in the purchase of sub-standard jeeps for the Indian Army and was elected to the Delhi Parliament in 1953 following his return to India. However, his Cabinet career ended in controversy when in 1962, whilst Minister of Defence, he was blamed for India's defeat in a border confrontation with China, but he came back to India's Parliament in 1969 as an independent – he was later cleared of any fault.

Howard Spencer, Historian for the Blue Plaques team, said, 'V.K Krishna Menon was a

formidable man – determined in his beliefs, passionate in his pursuit of what he felt to be right, and unafraid of controversy. Having started his political career as a London councillor, he

enjoyed a remarkable and varied career, and served with distinction as independent India's first High Commissioner.' A notorious ascetic, Menon reportedly lived on a diet of tea, drinking up to thirty cups a day,

whilst eating only toast, buns, or biscuits. On 5th December 1974, V.K Krishna Menon died in New Delhi.