Last updated on December 28th, 2023Is there anything better than a good book and a slice of cake? I think not. London has some enchanting bookshops where you can practically curl up with your favourite tome and tuck into a delicious slice and a cuppa. Here are 12 of the best bookshop cafes in London….
Secret London
Secret London: a guide to London's cultural gems including quirky, historical and unusual places that tourists don't always see.
Thames Rockets – London’s fastest boat trip
Last updated on August 16th, 2020I’d like to say this is going to be a cultural post, but in all honesty, it’s going to have some adrenaline thrown in with a dash of James Bond. Having said that, you get to see London’s most iconic sights with me, something I don’t talk about very often,…
Covent Garden in a day
Last updated on August 17th, 2020Covent Garden is London’s living theatre, a canvas of the city’s enchanting past and its immersive present. It was once Nell Gwynn’s playground with her King, and home to the oldest theatre in London with its 500 ghosts of theatre past. Eliza Doolittle sold flowers to Mr Henry Higgins outside…
Wallace Collection – A National Treasure
Last updated on December 28th, 2023Tucked behind the Selfridges department store in Marylebone is the Wallace Collection, one of my favourite London haunts. It’s an eighteenth-century city pile with a jaw-dropping art collection and a 500-strong furniture depository which would make Marie Antoinette feel perfectly at home. It’s a sea of crimson red, rococo gold,…
A History of the Savoy Hotel | 10 Secrets about “London’s Greatest Hotel”
Last updated on June 2nd, 2021The Savoy Hotel in London is the hostess with the mostest, London’s grande dame who has partied through two world wars and slept with movie stars, politicians and royalty. If her walls could talk, they would whisper about the great and the godly and the bold and the beautiful that…
A Tour of Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham
Last updated on May 15th, 2022Strawberry Hill House in London’s leafy suburb of Twickenham is possibly the most unusual house in London. If Oscar Wilde and Nicky Haslam had sired a love child in the eighteenth century, I think it would have been its architect, a Horatio “Horace” Walpole. He had wit, he had style,…
In the Flesh – Erotic Art in London
Last updated on May 14th, 2024It’s time for me to take you on another fleshy tour of saucy London where we visit some of the best erotic art in London. I can reliably inform you that In the Rude was one of the most popular posts on Diary of a Londoness last year. Which of…
A Tour of Turner’s House in London
Last updated on May 15th, 2022Most people I speak to don’t know about Turner’s house in Twickenham. You won’t see his famous seascapes in Sandycombe Lodge, his west London home in the borough of Richmond-upon-Thames, but you will be in the presence of the only three-dimensional work of art Joseph Mallord William Turner’sleft behind: the…
Things to do in Oarsome Hammersmith
Last updated on September 25th, 2024There’s so much more to Hammersmith than getting hammered during the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. This corner of west London has been my home for the last ten years, and as a local, I can tell you there are plenty of fun, relaxing and exciting things to do in…
GoBoat London | Self-drive along London’s canals
Last updated on May 15th, 2022What better way to explore all of London’s watery gems than by canal, or, to be more specific, via GoBoat? I always think of Little Venice as the Montmartre of London. It’s picturesque, bohemian, eclectic and soulful. It’s wedged between Paddington’s high rises and grungy Camden, and it neighbours majestic…