London
High life
New York I haven’t felt such shirt-dripping, mind-clogging wet heat since Saigon back in 1971. The Bagel is a steam…
Noble art
Noble Rot sits in Greek Street, Soho, on the site of the old Gay Hussar, which squatted here from 1953…
Artist’s Notebook
I’m blessed by the fact that I live almost smack-bang in the middle of old London, a pebble’s toe punt…
Paling into insignificance
The Roof Garden is a pale, Nordic-style restaurant at the top of the glorious Pantechnicon in Belgravia — formerly a…
Boris’s levelling up risks leaving behind London
Boris Johnson’s plan to ‘level up’ Britain sounds long overdue. It implies the creation of a less geographically unequal United…
Fork in the road
You cannot have cars and dining tables in the same dreamscape: it doesn’t work, unless you think carbon monoxide is…
Sadiq Khan’s victory is good news for the Tories
Sadiq Khan is here to stay. London’s mayor has suggested he wants to stay on until 2040. But is this really good…
The London mayoralty needs to be reformed
Who does a capital city belong to? In the case of London tonight, one answer could be ‘Labour’, now that…
Affronted
The problem with London’s fake facades
Pete the Street
‘I’ve been seeing the bare bones of London,’ explains the landscape artist Peter Brown, who is known affectionately as ‘Pete…
Transported
The St Pancras Brasserie and Champagne Bar by Searcys is as expansive as its name, but ghostly. It is an…
London’s mayoral election is an embarrassment
Count Binface, a man who claims to be a 6,000-year-old ‘independent space warrior’, is running to be London mayor. In…
Back to the future
The west end of London is still pale and necrotic, but there are points of light. Hatchards the bookseller is…
London’s mayoral race is a warning to Tories nationwide
The London Mayoral election is more of a procession than a race. The only real question is whether Sadiq Khan…
What can Laurence Fox hope to achieve with his bid for London mayor?
As if the politics of the Western world wasn’t well past parody already, this weekend sees Laurence Fox throwing his…
Reinventing the wheel
For most London-based politicians, there’s a threat that’s worse than Covid. You’ll begin to notice it as we ease out…
Taking office
Is now the time to invest in commercial property?
The EU is stepping up its raid on the city of London
It is not usual for the Governor of the Bank of England to ask permission to make a statement about…
The problem with renaming London’s streets
In Taksim Square, the busy central hub of Istanbul, a large, viril monument stands. In the centre is Mustafa Kemal…
High life
Gstaad Good old Helvetia. I’m quitting her for the rainy but pleasant land of England. The cows are beginning to…
City limits
The phrase ‘rich people’s problems’ has its uses. I once overheard a group in a Knightsbridge restaurant sympathising with a…
Unlived lives
Francis Spufford was already admired as a non-fiction writer when he published his prize-winning first novel, On Golden Hill, in…
Covid sparks a major incident in London
Is the NHS at risk of being overwhelmed? That’s a question of increasing concern in Westminster as hospital admissions rise. Sadiq Khan…
City of gold
Peter Ackroyd on the undimmed spirit of London
Roots of happiness
Turnips is an haute cuisine restaurant inside a greengrocer in Borough Market in London. I suspect others will try this…
