Christchurch Gardens, Victoria Street How easy it is to pass them by Excuses fall willingly from the sky The charities speak with one voice They claim that some are homeless…
Is there any other part of London that packs so much history into so small a space? The few square metres on which the statue of Charles 1 stands in…
The “Dolphin” lamp standards have been burning gas for over 125 years Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the great Victorian engineer, has a very modest memorial. It is embedded in a mausoleum-like…
Phials containing water untouched in 129,000 years LONDON owes its existence to water. Without the Thames there would have been no point in building it. In olden days Westminster –…
Trafalgar Square today with King Charles l looking down Whitehall towards his place of execution Nothing is quite what it seems in Trafalgar Square. It is umbilically tied to Nelson’s…
If the Thames is the bit of London that most Londoners take for granted then the Thames foreshore is the bit they would also take for granted if only…
Road works in our street in Victoria to install new electricity cables this week have uncovered part of the entrance to a vast Victorian prison. The old bricks (above) which…
Me (left) sampling Forty Hall – Chateau Tooting (centre) – and Olding Manor, right A highlight of my sojourn among English and Welsh vineyards last…
The Tate and Lyle refinery at Silvertown It started as one of my walks from Trafalgar Square without crossing a road. Taking up where I left off last time at…
Where to begin? From where you are looking the weather-beaten lawn on the left (above) conceals hundreds of bodies including William Caxton, whose printing works were nearby, Wenceslaus Hollar,…
Spot the difference – National Gallery . . . Carlton House When old buildings in London were pulled down, the bricks and…
Georgian London, as Dan Cruickshank tells us, was partly constructed from the ill-gotten gains of the sex industry. But a shameful amount of the rest was built from the profits…
In a city that takes pride in burying its history, the nondescript office building at 100 Pall Mall, sandwiched between the Reform and RAC clubs, takes some beating. On…
The next couple of days – it closes Sunday – afford a rare opportunity to see the innards of Battersea Power Station before it is converted into an £8bn complex…
To watch a play in the same space – the hall of Gray’s Inn – where it was first staged in 1566, and which has hardly ever been produced since,…