Around Town

Public art

Public art always looks good in parks and flashy city piazzas, but in and around London we’ve got a few choice bits of public sculpture sited in housing estates or municipal areas. There’s a particularly good collection in the unlikely setting of Harlow – where Henry Moore’s ‘Family Group’ sits in the foyer of the Civic Centre, while Rodin’s Eve and Elisabeth Frink’s Boar stand outside in the Water Gardens. If London was a gallery, these would be worth the entry fee alone. Read more

Dennis Severs' House

18 Folgate St, Spitalfields, E1 6BX

This quirky historical house in east London is more theatrical than authentic (look very closely and you can see that impressive eighteenth-century features have been creatively cobbled together from cardboard and other odds and ends), but it's one of those very rare attractions that is genuinely unique. It was put together over 20 years by Severs, a Californian who died in 1999 after bequeathing the property to the Spitalfields Trust. Around him grew a partially accurate story of a twentieth-century artist who preferred to live without electricity and other mod cons and used visitors’ imaginations as his canvas. To visit the house is to travel between 1724 and 1914, encountering traces of the fictional Jervis family, ever present in the house, yet never seen. Read more

Claire de Rouen Books

121-125 Charing Cross Rd, WC2H 0EW, 020 7287 1813

Specialising in photography and fashion (plus a wonderful range of arty magazines), this tiny bookshop – perched above a sex shop – is packed with beautiful tomes. Authors love it – they’re forever popping in to say ‘hi’ to owner Claire and her assistants, and you can frequently pick up signed copies of the books. A genuine London treasure. Read more

Smoking areas

Some smoking areas are busier than the dancefloor. London clubland hasn’t adjusted to the smoking ban yet and you can guarantee that it’ll be harder to fight for a space on the gated-off concrete outside than it will be to find dancing space next to the DJ booth.

Gay's the Word

66 Marchmont St, WC1N 1AB

Despite nearly going under due to rising rents in its Bloomsbury locale in 2007, Britain’s only dedicated gay and lesbian bookshop is, reassuringly, still going strong. Established in 1979 by members of a gay socialist group, the shop nearly didn’t open at all – Camden Council was reluctant to grant it a lease, until it was persuaded with the help of a local councillor called Ken Livingstone. The stock covers fiction, history and biography, as well as more specialist holdings in queer studies, sex and relationships, children and parenting. Read more