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…
The House Beautiful
London has some of the world’s most iconic museums displaying the finest art money can’t buy, but it’s the capital’s little treasures that I want to share with you today. Ensconced in these historical gems, you can amble around at a snail’s pace, savour every museum inch and still have time for tea and cake…
Hello Jack
It’s All Hallows’ Eve, a day for witches and their warlocks, for devils, goblins, banshees, nosferatus and zombies. It’s my favourite tradition of the year, the day when I dream of morphing into a spellbinding Veronica Lake in ‘I married a Witch’ or of riding broomsticks with Julian Sands in ‘Warlock’. Growing up in Paris,…