London

It’s time to get real about gang violence in London

12 May 2018 9:00 am

Hey, Londoners — been stabbed or shot yet this week? Just thought I’d check as the place seems to resemble,…

Our sheltered lives have made us overly fearful: Aminatta Forna’s Happiness reviewed

21 April 2018 9:00 am

In her keynote lecture for a conference on ‘The Muse and the Market’ in 2015 Aminatta Forna mounted a powerful…

Red London: Labour is poised to take the capital

7 April 2018 9:00 am

Ever since last year’s general election, when Jeremy Corbyn inspired the strongest Labour surge since 1945, the Conservatives have been…

Sadiq Khan is a lousy London Mayor. Why hasn’t anyone noticed?

7 April 2018 9:00 am

According to people at City Hall, Sadiq Khan writes some of his own press releases. I can believe it: they’ve…

How to be a tourist in Europe

7 April 2018 9:00 am

Last week, I was in the Florence Baptistery by 8.30 a.m. That used to be early enough to avoid the…

Barren, windswept beauty: the town’s beachfront

Southend-on-Sea has long been a running joke – until now

7 April 2018 9:00 am

Standing at the end of Britain’s longest pier, on a cold and misty morning, looking out across the Thames Estuary,…

How Soho became so-so: Kettner’s Townhouse reviewed

7 April 2018 9:00 am

Sometimes I fret that Soho House & Co is doing to this column what it does to London. It places…

It’s survived universal suffrage and two world wars: restaurant Rules reviewed

16 December 2017 9:00 am

Rules looks as if it voted for Brexit, and now finds itself inside an eternal Christmas Eve, where it is…

Henrietta: a casual restaurant with formal food for people wearing hats

9 December 2017 9:00 am

Henrietta is a restaurant in a boutique hotel on Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, around the corner from the actors’ church…

Security overkill is terror’s real triumph

18 November 2017 9:00 am

The moment the news broke on Halloween that an Uzbek in a rental truck had just killed eight people on…

Goodbye London, Reykjavik here I come

4 November 2017 9:00 am

I have a message for the London mayor, Sadiq Khan: you and your policies stink! While the fuzz are busy…

The queen of hotels

28 October 2017 9:00 am

Jean-Georges at the Connaught — formerly the Prince of Saxe-Coburg Hotel, but it was renamed during the first world war,…

London calling

28 October 2017 9:00 am

Madame Monet was bored. Wouldn’t you have been? Exiled to London in the bad, cold winter of 1870–71. In rented…

Escalators in the atrium of Richard Rogers’s Lloyds building

Lost in the metropolis

7 October 2017 9:00 am

Richard Rogers is to architecture what Jamie Oliver is to cookery. It is not enough for either of them just…

Northern rock

16 September 2017 9:00 am

A fortnight ago, the debut album by a young British guitar band entered the chart at No. 6. You might…

A perfect feast with Roger Allam

2 September 2017 9:00 am

J Sheekey is one of Richard Caring’s older, and better, restaurants. Since he has dowsed the suburbs of London in…

Tapas but no phantom

19 August 2017 9:00 am

I am always surprised to remember that Andrew Lloyd Webber has taste; it must be remembrance of Cats. I was…

A choice of first novels

5 August 2017 9:00 am

Remember Douglas Coupland? Remember Tama Janowitz? Remember Lisa St Aubin de Terán? Banana Yoshimoto? Françoise Sagan? The voice of your…

… trailing strands in all directions

29 July 2017 9:00 am

Letters of Intent — letters of the intense. Keen readers of Cynthia Ozick (are there any other kind?) will of…

Something nasty in the woodshed

8 July 2017 9:00 am

I’ve diagnosed myself with early onset cottage-itis. It’s not supposed to happen for another decade, but at 29 I dream…

Warning: there’s a plague of fake blue plaques

4 June 2016 9:00 am

One of the great distinctions and pleasures of British life has been devalued by cheap imitations

Manchester isn’t oppressed, Andy Burnham – it’s wildly overrated

28 May 2016 9:00 am

Manchester isn’t downtrodden, whatever Andy Burnham says. Quite the opposite, in fact

The lifts are lovely: Tate Modern’s extension reviewed

28 May 2016 9:00 am

Tate Modern, badly overcrowded, has built itself a £260 million extension to spread everyone about the place more. This means…

The RA’s new restaurant prioritises its art over its customers

28 May 2016 9:00 am

The Keeper’s House sits in the basement of Burlington House, a restaurant in disguise. It is quite different from the…

On immigration, are we doing as the Romans did?

21 May 2016 9:00 am

Last week it was suggested that the questions asked of London mayor Sadiq Khan had nothing to do with racism,…