The Time Out London blog team

The golden age of working from home has faded. With jobs forcing employees back into the office, workers that fled London during the pandemic are being forced back into their metropolitan routines – the crack-of-dawn morning alarms, the furious traffic jams, the late-running trains that pack people in like sardines and ship us to our nine-to-fives. And to top it all off, finding a decent, affordable home is a competitive, gut wrenching nightmare.  And here comes the other problem: commuter towns that were once affordable pre-pandemic, like Reading, St. Albans and Woking, are filling up fast and catching up with London’s inflated pricing, so where can commuters go now?  ‘Britain’s traditional commuter belts have shrunk back down after the pandemic, but they are not as compact as they were before,’ Savills employee Frances McDonald told The Guardian this month. He also added that new infrastructure like the Lizzy Line has helped better connect western counties to central and east London offices.  So where are these new spaces? Savills researched rail station use and 2025 housing prices to find new, nearby havens for commuters to London.  First up, Iver in Buckinghamshire has a 24-minute travel time into London Paddington with a £2,868 season ticket cost and average housing price of £539,575. The Lizzy line can stop at Iver and take workers all the way to Canary Wharf in under an hour.  Shenfield in Essex comes second with a 23-minute commute to Liverpool Street, an annual...

Quentin Blake – the man best known for drawing the Twits, the BFG, Willy Wonka and the rest of Roald Dahl’s motley crew of characters – has been trying to make a gallery dedicated to illustration happen for a long, long time. In just a few months time, his dream will finally become reality.  The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration is opening its doors in May. Set in an eighteenth century waterworks in Clerkenwell, it’ll be the largest gallery for illustrations in the world, showcasing work from legends of the art form alongside rising stars. Now, its full lineup of debut exhibitions has been confirmed.  Credit: Quentin BlakeAngelo (1970) Quentin Blake: Performance will showcase how Blake’s illustrations have been informed by theatrical traditions, with more than 100 of his original works on display. In his early career, he illustrated opening night performances to sit next to theatre reviews and later on drew the work of Ancient Greek, Elizabethan and modern playwrights, from William Shakespeare to Samuel Beckett.  The centre’s other inaugural exhibition will be the UK’s first show dedicated to LGBTQ+ comic-makers. Titled Queer as Comics, it’ll track queer comic-making from the 1940s to the present day with strip cartoons, graphic novels, zines and, of course, comics. Credit: Dave RichardsBoldfinger (1969) It’s been curated by renowned comics specialist Paul Gravett and will feature the UK’s first published gay comic strip (a 1969 parody of James Bond – ‘randy dandy...

Having started out as a trading place for meat way back in 1331, the City of London’s Leadenhall Market has lived a hell of a life so far. It’s already come way up in the world, having transformed into a fancy indoor retail spot where you can pick up the likes of jewellery, artisanal gifts and a posh lunch. And, as we told you at the start of the year, it’s upping its foodie game in a bid to nip at the heels of destinations such as Borough Market. Since 2024, after trial runs the previous year, Leadenhall has also hosted long-running weekend pop-up markets, showcasing independent traders keen to meet your need for vintage furniture, hand-crafted knickknacks and antiques. The good news is that the Weekend Market pop-ups are set to return from April 11 and run until Christmas (when they’re usually replaced with various Christmas markets). In fact, the 2026 programme is being billed as its biggest yet – not bad for a humble former meat market that’s over 700 years old. Photograph credit: Lucy YoungLeadenhall Market SoLo Craft Fair and The Vintage Furniture & Flea Market will be back with an expanded line-up, offering you more than enough reason to make a trip to the City outside of the working week and check out Leadenhall’s iconic glass ceiling. (Did we mention that the market starred in the Harry Potter films?) In any case, the markets are free to enter, running from 12-5pm. SoLo Craft Fair will kick things off on Saturday April 11, with The Vintage Furniture & Flea...