London
Who is – and isn’t – welcome in Sadiq Khan’s London?
Right-wing Frenchman Eric Zemmour, who is expected to run for the presidency of his country next year, has been designated persona…
High life
There’s a narrow stretch of Chelsea, south of the King’s Road from Oakley Street to Ormonde Gate, that reminds me…
Faking it
Whitcomb’s is in The Londoner hotel on the south-west corner of Leicester Square. The Londoner calls itself ‘the world’s first…
The real Greek
Lemonia lives in the old Chalk Farm Tavern in Primrose Hill, which is better known as the set of Paddington.…
Harriet Harman calls for Cressida Dick to resign
Labour’s Harriet Harman has called for Cressida Dick to resign as chief of the Metropolitan Police after Wayne Couzens was…
High life
It’s nice to be back in London, and Glebe Place is a delight. Mind you, it’s not the mansion I…
Fit for a king
A French creole restaurant rises in the sullen ruins of London. It is called Louie, for French king or trumpeter,…
London notebook
In London for the first time in 18 months, I was as excited as a child on a birthday outing.…
It all streams past
To write about London and its rivers is to enter a crowded literary field. Many aspects of watery life in…
France’s provocateur is coming to London
Five years ago, London’s affluent French poured their dosh into the campaign of Emmanuel Macron. This time around, supporters of…
The Liberal Democrats have a dangerous vision for the City of London
Liberals have always set great store by laws and declarations. It was joked about Lord Loreburn, the liberal Lord Chancellor…
Spirit of place
In a 1923 book called Echo de Paris, the writer Laurence Houseman attempted to conjure up in a very slim,…
Writers to the rescue
William Loxley’s lively account of ‘Bloomsbury, the Blitz and Horizon magazine’ begins with W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood emigrating to…
The clever radical who led the City’s transformation
It’s a vivid example of unintended consequences that the swimming-pool builders of southern England should owe so much to Sir…
Is London being ‘levelled down’ already?
In his ‘levelling up’ speech in Coventry this week, the Prime Minister insisted time and again that this was no…
Ritz assessment
The Ritz is still here, and still gaudy. No grand hotel in London feels quite so complete, if pink; as…
Don’t ‘Kill the Bill’
Are the rights of protesters and the rights of all other citizens fairly balanced? Think back to the Extinction Rebellion…
A boat trip back through time
I was looking forward to my dinner at Daquise in South Kensington, a Polish restaurant that’s been there for ever…
Capital gains
Don’t pity me for living in 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…
