London
Jamie in chains
Jamie’s Italian is squeezed into the Devonshire Arms on Denman Street, Soho, borne on the duplicitous winds of TV shows…
Diary
Should we have celebrated VJ Day? Hearing the hieratic tones of the Emperor Hirohito on Radio 4 the other day,…
Man of many worlds
Cult novelist Michael Moorcock on fantasy, his father, and the London he loved and lost
The cavalier Michael
Michael Moorcock has put his name to more books, pamphlets and fanzines than, probably, even Michael Moorcock can count, but…
Something fishy
Selfridges is skilled at making things that are not hideous (women) look hideous (women dressed as Bungle from Rainbow or…
Diary
The week starts well. My debut novel, The Miniaturist, is a year old. On the anniversary of its publication, my…
Is no one having fun?
Who’d be young? Not 25-year-old Tamsin, if her behaviour is anything to go by. A classical pianist who’s never quite…
Wild things
Are adventure playgrounds set to make a comeback, asks Maisie Rowe
The London ear
It’s easy to tag the city’s terrain by writer. But what, wonders Philip Clark, might a map of its music look like?
Chelsea carnivores
The Maze Grill is on a sinister street in Chelsea, between a small Tesco — a boutique Tesco? — and…
Picnics
Strange, isn’t it, that despite having such famously terrible weather, we Brits are so fond of a picnic. It’s something…
Portrait of the week
Home Tens of thousands took part in a demonstration in London against austerity, and thousands more in other cities. Russell…
Myths and legends
The Ivy is a Playmobil-style faux-medieval restaurant in a triangular building opposite The Mousetrap; of the two, The Ivy is…
The green house effect
Buying an eco-home? Expect stifling springs and summers
One vast, blaring cultural circus
In the late 1980s Peter Ackroyd invited me to meet Iain Sinclair, whose first novel, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings, I…
Grills just want to have fun
The Beaumont Hotel is a bright white cake in the silent part of Mayfair, where the only sound is Patek…
Which behaved worse: callous Thomas Cook or cynical Barclays?
Which is worse, morally and reputationally — to be Thomas Cook, shamed by its refusal to show proper human concern,…
High anxiety
Fenchurch is a restaurant that is scared of terrorists. It cowers at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street, a skyscraper…
Labour must estrange its awful voters
And so now we have to suffer the epic delusions, temper tantrums and hissy fits of the metro-left. They simply…
Why won’t the lefties show London a little more love?
London is a bad thing. Everybody knows this now. Britain has had enough of London. Ed Miliband failed in part…
Full employment, Prime Minister? What exactly do you mean by that?
‘Two million jobs have been created since 2010 — but there will not be a moment of rest until we…
Servants of the super-rich
There is a huge industry catering to London’s foreign plutocracy
Goulash and whiplash
Ed is a plank. He was always a plank — and now he is in Ibiza being a plank. Plankety–plankety-plank:…
In praise of the pit bull
Last night I saw a woman dancing with a pit bull terrier. It was about 9 p.m. and her curtains…
Why estate agents aren’t dying out
I don’t like to make business predictions, but — barring some apocalypse — I suspect there will be plenty of…
