London
Bus battles
From ‘The softening of street manners’, The Spectator, 20 May 1916: Generally the public opinion of the ’bus entirely upholds…
Despite rumours to the contrary, the high-speed loco has left the drawing board
There’s a lot of negativity around HS2, and I sniff a Brexit connection. You might think Leave campaigners whose aim…
Gaudy! Bright! Loud! Fun!
Best of postmodernism: is that an oxymoron? Jonathan Meades thinks not
Soho in Somerset
It is summer and the listless metropolitan thinks of grass. It cannot afford to stay at Durslade Farmhouse, Somerset, a…
Sadiq Khan’s virtues
The new Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said he wanted ‘the most transparent, honest and accessible administration London has ever…
Barometer
London’s other mayor How many people could name the capital’s other mayor, the Lord Mayor of London? The office, officially…
Beware the Lycra louts
Cycling in funny clothes is bad for the soul
The axeman next door
What happened when I tried American neighbourliness in London
Tea and honesty
We recently moved -offices from Canary Wharf to Blackfriars bridge. When you move after a long time in one place,…
Polly’s pleb adventure
Down and Out in Paris and London is a brilliant specimen from a disreputable branch of writing: the chav safari,…
Lost in Piccadilly
Batman owned the Criterion in The Dark Knight, but could he do anything about British Telecom? Savini at Criterion, an…
Diary
The Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations start this week with the real thing and barely stop until her official birthday in…
The bitter taste of victory
The Parliament Hill Café is a drab glass box at the bottom of Hampstead Heath, near the farmers’ market and…
Diary
It’s clear that Vladimir Putin has had a facelift, which might explain why Wendi Deng would take an interest in…
Do the Tories want to lose London?
The Labour plotters who dream of ousting Jeremy Corbyn had high hopes for the local elections on 5 May. They…
Send in the Alsatians
Islington is a bellwether, and also a joke: the most unequal borough in London, where social housing leans against £4…
Why we need migrants
It’s not about economics. It’s about our snobbish, slobbish culture
Too high, too fast
You have to get nearly halfway through this book before it starts to show some life. Until that point, as…
Marco Pierre, why?
Wheeler’s is such a dreadful restaurant that I wonder if Marco Pierre White even knows his name is on it.…
The smelly, snobbish death of the public loo
I blame Nancy Mitford: she made the English so frightened of saying ‘toilet’ that now they have hardly any left…
Anarchy in the EU
Paul Cook, the Sex Pistols’ drummer, on fame, notoriety and why Brexit wouldn’t be punk
Who steals books?
At my shop, it seems to be everyone from students to organised professional gangs
Easy to swallow
Pharmacy 2 is the reanimated child of Damien Hirst; it lives inside the Newport Street Gallery in a forsaken patch of…
Diary
The Prime Minister is pretty angry with Boris. But the idea that they’ve competed with each other since school is…
Your problems solved
Q. Former colleagues, with whom I got on very well in the context of the office, are buying a house…
