The Londoness


Born in Paris.

Made in London.

Teller of London Tales.

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Wallace Collection

Wallace Collection – A National Treasure

Last updated on February 18th, 2021Tucked 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,…

Prince and Patron, Buckingham Palace, Royal Family, Prince Charles

Prince and Patron at Buckingham Palace

Last updated on March 9th, 2019It’s hard to pick a favourite at Prince and Patron, Buckingham Palace, an exhibition marking the 70th birthday of His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. The 100 works which have been stuffed into the Palace’s Ball Supper Room were personally chosen by the Prince from the Royal Collection, the…

Royal Ascot Guide, Royal Ascot 2021, what to wear to Ascot

A Guide to Royal Ascot

Last updated on May 27th, 2021Royal Ascot is one of the highlights of the London season and an event to which I look forward to every year. I know nothing about horses, gambling or how to wear a hat, but I do enjoy British traditions and a glass or two, maybe even three, of a…

Victorian Tea V & A, V & A Tea review, Museum Tea London, prettiest tea rooms in London, William Morris London, historical tea London

Victorian Afternoon Tea at the V & A Museum

Last updated on June 1st, 2018The Victorian Afternoon Tea at the Victoria and Albert Museum had me at seed cake. These two words always bring my childhood back in a whoosh of nostalgia wrapped in a cocoon of Englishness. If seed cake was good enough for Bilbo Baggins and his Unexpected Party, then it’s good…

Charles I at the Royal Academy

Last updated on April 22nd, 2018Drum roll please, I am about to tell you about an exhibition worth curtsying for, a show fit for royalty. It has pomp, it has circumstance, and its hero is the bad boy of the British royal family, the king who takes the prize for being the first, and last,…

Afternoon tea Houses of Parliament

Afternoon Tea at the Houses of Parliament

Last updated on February 3rd, 2020The Palace of Westminster, or Houses of Parliament as it’s commonly referred to, is one of London’s ultimate tourist hot spots, even if Big Ben is hibernating for the next three years whilst he gets a makeover. When I first arrived in London in the late 1980s, I would count…

Charles II, Art and Power, Queen’s Gallery

King of Bling: Charles II at the Queen’s Gallery

Last updated on September 13th, 2018The English weren’t as partial to the chopping of a royal head as the French were, but the story of this exhibition starts with the trial of Charles I, the ill-fated king whose head was to be severed from his body on the 30 January 1649. Fast forward to 1660…

Andrew Parmley, Lord Mayor of London

So Long and Farewell Lord Mayor of London

Last updated on March 5th, 2021The Lord Mayor of London, Andrew Parmley, and I go back a long way. To 2003 precisely when he was known simply as Dr Parmley, or Dr P. I would be invited to his office on an all-too regular basis to discuss the very bad behaviour of my eldest, Clarissa….

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