As if the Last Tsar exhibition at the Science Museum wasn’t enough of a treat, London is now getting a Romanov double whammy with a new exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace. Russia, Royalty and the Romanovs has glitz, it has glamour, and it has a generous helping of Russian bling. The exhibition celebrates the…
Review: othellomacbeth at Lyric Hammersmith
Yes, you read that title correctly. I’ve just been to see a mash-up of two of Shakespeare’s plays into one and its name is othellomacbeth. When you think about it, Othello and Macbeth have at their core similar DNA: power, greed and green-eyed monsters capable of turning gullible men into murderous villains. And it’s not…
Covent Garden in a day
Covent 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 St Paul’s Church, the first…
The Wallace Collection – A National Treasure
Tucked behind the Selfridges department store in Marylebone is one of my favourite London haunts, 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, salmon and strawberry pink, emerald green and indigo blue….
The Swanky Savoy Hotel
She’s the hostess with the mostess, London’s grande dame who has partied through two world wars and slept with movie stars, politicians and royalty. Today, the Savoy Hotel in London is celebrating her 129th birthday and if her walls could talk, they would whisper about the great and the godly and the bold and the…
Horniman Museum – A London Cabinet of World Curiosities
I’ve never understood why so many Londoners have never been to, let alone heard of, one of my favourite places: the Horniman Museum. I know it’s located in the leafy suburb of Forest Hill, but you could hit two birds with one stone and visit the Dulwich Picture Gallery. I promise, it’s worth the trek….
Victorian Afternoon Tea at the V & A Museum
The 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 enough for Londoness. And thanks…
The Art and Craft of William De Morgan
He was the leading ceramic artist of the Victorian age, and his works still adorn Leighton House in Kensington, the Tabard Inn in Chiswick and Postman’s Park in the City of London. Fantastical beasts, parading peacocks, and gleaming flora make an appearance in some of the 80 works on display at the Guildhall Art Gallery,…
A London Literary tour for Kids
It’s time to hop into your winged slippers and take a trip round a magical London – one where childhood dreams never end. These London tales tell of a honey-loving bear from Harrods, an eccentric detective, boys with magic powers, giants and a Gothic vampire. So, without further ado, let’s take a swashbuckling, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious literary…
Afternoon Tea with Alan B’Stard (well, sort of)
The 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 the days until megalomaniac MP…