London
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…
Your problems solved
Q. As a writer I find working at home too distracting. I am a longstanding member of the London Library…
Mansion migrants
The super-rich can shrug off Labour’s big tax idea. People like me will be forced out
Tinder feelings
Can mobile dating apps move beyond the promise of a one-night stand?
Square meal
The Portrait Restaurant lives at the top of the National Portrait Gallery, London. It is fiercely modern, but likeable. You…
Quarter
‘No quarter given,’ yelled my husband as he stabbed at a cushion with his stick, spoiling the cavalier effect a…
Palace Notebook
The day of my investiture at Buckingham Palace dawned bringing freezing rain and fierce winds, which lashed at the windows…
