Continuing our re-run of his classic Dabbler series, The Slang Guide to London, Jonathon Green is seeking out Alsatia... It’s gone: Water Lane’s gone, not even the name. Mitre Lane’s gone, buried beneath some pile of glass. Ram Alley’s called Hare Court and shelters My Learned Friends. Whitefriars Street, now irony ... Read More...
London
Susan Muncey reviews the major Alexander McQueen retrospective at the V&A and marvels at the late designer's constant creativity... Commercial yet contrarian, Lee Alexander McQueen CBE (17 March 1969 – 11 February 2010) inhabited a parallel world to most of those around him. Being so rapidly catapulted from council house kid to multi-millionaire couturier ... Read More...
Nige admires the work of Charles Holden, the architect behind Southgate Tube Station, one of London's finest Art Deco Underground stations... That is not a newly landed art deco UFO above - it is Southgate Underground station, towards the end of the Cockfosters branch of the Piccadilly Line. I discovered this part of ... Read More...
For sheer painterly pleasure, Nige says you can't do better than visit the John Singer Sargent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, running until 25 May... To the National Portrait Gallery for the John Singer Sargent exhibition, Portraits of Artists and Friends, which is, unsurprisingly, brilliant. Such dash, such effortless technical mastery, ... Read More...
We've teamed up with Artfinder - the online affordable art marketplace - to showcase artists who we think deserve to be seen by a wider audience. Our second choice is Nicola Albon, whose candid photographs capture London life 'as it is lived'... Nicola says of her work: I started photographing at night ... Read More...
Launching our new series in which writers share their favourite pubs, Henry Jeffreys waxes lyrical about a proper boozer that celebrates diversity East End-style... Before moving to Lewisham (or Blackheath as I sometimes say when in polite company) a couple of years ago, I spent twelve years living in the East ... Read More...
Misti Traya, American expat living in London, falls in love with Paddington and decides to have a go at making marmalade... Just before Christmas, I took my three year-old to the cinema for the first time. We saw Paddington and were equally charmed. It was funny and darling and the calypso band that played throughout ... Read More...
Bookseller Steerforth recalls his battles with the bibliokepts - both oddball amateurs and professional book thieves... In his memoirs, Jeffrey Bernard used to talk about the distinct social groups that frequented his regular pub, the notorious Coach and Horses in Soho. Alongside the actors, stage hands, dancers and drunks, there were ... Read More...
My work done, I toddled the length of Bermondsey Street peering critically into windows. Here was a teensy art gallery selling coffee; next door, in stark contrast, was a teensy coffee shop selling art. A barrel-chested man in ironic clothes with an improbably small dog was being rude to the baristas. ... Read More...
An apartment block that only the most well connected are invited to live in? Another mysterious case for the Wikiworm, taken from the weirder side of Wikipedia The Albany, or simply Albany —(since the mid-20th century some have claimed that the definite article is not in use among the fashionable)— is an exclusive apartment complex ... Read More...