London

The human desire to turn life’s mundanities into something altogether more agreeable never ceases to amaze and amuse. Take our homes, for instance. Once we were content to live in caves as long as they kept us dry and were reasonably warm. Then we decided it would be more appealing to build our own caves but with the added benefit of shag-pile carpets, front doors and locks to keep the jungle at bay. This ability to cocoon ourselves from an outside world that had once housed us became something of a status symbol and so we built bigger, more elaborate caves loaded with ostentatious accoutrements such as silk wall linings and

How Rod Stewart kept his hair in place, why the BBC gave its presenters electric shocks and what Paul Gascoigne shot with an air rifle: this month’s London postcode area is N – buckle up for another trivia-packed tour…

In the early years of the 19th century, the extravagant, spoiled and hard-partying Prince Regent had a surprisingly good idea. Encouraged by pals like Beau Brummell, and with the financial backing of the property developer James Burton, the future King George IV hired the architect John Nash to design a new London neighbourhood. His vision was for a series of magnificent streets, many in terraces styled like modern sugar-coated palaces, on Crown-owned land just north of central London. These ‘Regency’ homes would encircle a brand new park which, modestly, the future King would name after himself. The first major Regency streets – including Cornwall Terrace (which was designed by an original nepo baby, Decimus Burton, son

The most recent additions to London’s restaurant scene have plenty to offer – from Palestinian culinary history on a plate and a slice of the American East Coast to a tasting menu with a twist and ramen worth writing home about. Here’s Spectator Life‘s guide to the best new openings to try now – and three more to look out for later in the year. Four to book now Akub, Notting Hill It’s funny how comfort food doesn’t need to be familiar to be instantly recognisable. You may not have grown up eating Palestinian chicken musakhan, but when you taste Chef Fadi Kattan’s version there’s sense of home that’s unmistakable.

Our tour of the trivia behind London’s postcode areas has reached SE, where we find rock stars being embalmed, P.G. Wodehouse reporting on cricket and Westminster Bridge being painted green for a very specific reason. Oh, and Winston Churchill gets a hat-trick of mentions…

Anyone who did Dry January will by now be eyeing the door and contemplating a night on the town. Because it would be a shame to break your sober streak with any old rubbish, here’s a list of the very best places in London to drink right now. Even if you did that very British type of Dry January where you don’t go out for pints but have a bit of wine at home, you’ve definitely earned yourself a treat and should read on. Seed Library X Ruben’s Reubens, Shoreditch The East London hideout of cocktail avant-gardist Ryan ‘Mr Lyan’ Chetiyawardana slides into February with a fresh menu and barbecued

If anyone knows how to do winter, it’s the Scandinavians. The concept of snuggling up with a steaming mug of something caffeinated and a buttery pastry is at the heart of their culture, from the Danish concept of hygge (cosiness – often involving sugar and carbs) to the Swedish ritual of fika (taking time for coffee and cake). Take a leaf out of their book and make a beeline for these five bakeries, which are sure to put a smile on your face this January.  Pophams Bakery, London Fields  Every Saturday, rain or shine, a jolly queue wiggles around the al fresco tables outside Pophams and into the street. London Fields

This month our trivia-inspired tour of London’s postcode areas reaches NW, where Tim Burton snored, Madness caused an earthquake and Desmond Tutu asked policemen for directions even though he knew where he was going…

Last time I visited Toronto, Canada, I stayed in Greektown, home to one of the largest Greek communities in North America. Several scenes from My Big Fat Greek Wedding were filmed here, and street signs are in Greek as well as English. On the day I arrived, jetlagged and disorientated, I happened upon a restaurant that was so authentically Greek I imagined I could smell the pine trees and hear the soft chirp of crickets. A couple of elderly men sat drinking ouzo at the bar, and rather than being led to a table I was taken into the kitchen where Maria (reader, that was her name, what can I do?) was

I have just been proposed to in a somewhat slatternly tiki bar in Mayfair. Not just any tiki bar, but Trader Vic’s, the Polynesian-themed restaurant and lounge underneath the London Hilton on Park Lane. Approaching its 60th anniversary, the bar has seen better days, but for historical purposes my partner of 12 years decided that this dimly lit den would be the location for the proposal of a lifetime. Then wouldn’t you know it – just two weeks later I discover that this cavern of delight where I spent many birthdays is being evicted and will close on 31 December. Trader Vic’s began in the 1950s, when Victor Jules Bergeron

Ferrets at Buckingham Palace, swearing at Wimbledon and the real-life incident that inspired Del Boy’s fall through the bar – it can only mean that our trivia tour of London’s postcode areas has reached SW…

Of all the suburbs in Britain none has become quite so politicised as North London. This slightly leafy (and lefty) swathe in and around Islington – with Hampstead Heath marking its northern edge and Regent’s Park its southern boundary – is treated by our recent political leaders as a kind of shorthand for, to borrow a phrase from Suella Braverman, the ‘tofu-eating wokerati’. Liz Truss took a dig at her privileged metropolitan enemies who ‘taxi from North London townhouses to the BBC studio’ to criticise her, ignoring the fact that Islington is not all Upper Street boutiques and multi-million pound homes. Islington is one of London’s most deprived boroughs, and more than

The Lord Mayor’s Show is a mix of traditional buttoned-up pageantry and let-your-hair-down carnival. A bit like the state opening of parliament without all the MPs, and Notting Hill without the jerk chicken. I am a Freeman of The Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, one of the ‘Great 12’ livery companies of the City of London. The Lord Mayor’s Show is an occasion in which the City’s livery companies – there are some 110 in all – have prominent place. What’s more, the incoming Lord Mayor has a special link to the Merchant Taylors as a member of the Company’s Court. Which is all a roundabout way of saying: I have been roped

When jazz music arrived on our shores in 1919, with the first British tour of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, it received a frosty welcome from many. Other performers tried to get the group kicked off theatre bills, and the tour ended abruptly – with the Original Dixielanders being chased to Southampton docks by a lord who had just found out the lead singer had been trying to seduce his daughter. Happily, in the subsequent 100 years or so, jazz has gone on to earn a firm place in our hearts and record collections. With the return of London Jazz Festival, which runs from today until 20 November, we hunted down

The gastropub, an invention of the early 1990s, is a terrible idea. They burst on to the scene when breweries were made to sell off many of their pubs for a song to make way for competition, encouraging Marco Pierre White wannabes to snap them up and replace cheese sandwiches and pork scratchings with kidneys on toast and anything that could be put together in a kitchen the size of a shoebox. Many of them have food prepared off-premises but charge restaurant prices. There are no proper tablecloths, the glasses are made to survive if dropped on concrete floors and it all feels a bit like going round to your

The 34 early Georgian houses that line Fournier Street, in the heart of Spitalfields, are a perfectly preserved microcosm of East London life through the centuries. Since it was built in the 1720s, the street – which runs between Brick Lane and Commercial Street, in E1 – has variously been home to the city’s wealthiest and poorest. With many of its first residents Huguenot weavers escaping religious persecution in France, the street is characterised by its series of highly glazed lofts, harnessing the light vital for the skilled textile work, with many of the houses subsequently bought by those in the silk trade. Arguably one of the finest houses on the

Mixing business with pleasure can be risky business. For decades the City of London has upheld this doctrine, religiously prioritising office space over new homes to preserve its reputation as a global financial centre. In his 29-year tenure as the City of London’s planning chief, Peter Rees famously allowed only one new residential tower to be built in the Square Mile: The Heron, a 285-apartment building which was completed in 2013. But the aftershocks of the pandemic – recent data suggests that the number of workers at their desks in the Square Mile’s offices is down by around a third; office vacancy rates stand at almost 10 per cent –

I wanted to hate it. In the weeks leading up to my trip to Paris, I was told incessantly about how much of a dump it was, about how I’d be faced with overflowing bins and skilled pickpockets. I was even warned against drinking the tap water.  According to some, to be properly British means hating the French. And there’s plenty to take against: rude waiters, deliberate incompetence in maintaining their side of the Channel crossing, awkward double-cheek kissing, obsessiveness about cheese, astounding corruption in farming subsidies. My trip to France had one rule: do not enjoy it. Do not let them win. But I have a confession to make. It