Chris Waywell

London has many fantastic local curry houses, plus some extremely high-end fine dining options. There are plenty of both that deserve shouting about. Here are some of the ones we think are particularly worthy of your attention (and cash). It’s a mix of great neighbourhood joints and more upscale central London purveyors of South Asian cuisine. Our city’s vibrant Indian food scene offers the full range of regional styles and specialities – from Bombay biryanis to Punjabi grills – it’s a Bollywood symphony of fantastic flavours. RECOMMENDED: The 100 best restaurants in London.

From swanky City skyscrapers to performatively casual warehouse hangouts, the capital has a real crush on a rooftop bar. Whether braving arctic-cold conditions or catching a breeze in a heatwave high, Londoners are blessed with all kinds of rooftops offering a combination of wicked city views and top-notch drinks. Take your pick from hip Shoreditch or buzzing Soho and Covent Garden, it’s time to soak up those sunsets.  Bear in mind, though, that a lot of these places are always in high demand, so we recommend booking tables as early as you can. Lots do offer walk-ins as well, if you enjoy living dangerously. Fancy a square meal high up in the air? Check out London’s best rooftop restaurants. Prefer somewhere a bit more down-to-earth? Here are London’s best beer gardens.   

London might well be the world’s greatest food city (that’s right, we’ve gone there) but with spiralling living costs, it’s not like any of us can eat out as much as we’d like to. So welcome to our list of London’s best cheap eats. Every highlighted dish here costs £10 or less and variety is the name of the game – so expect London staples like fish and chips, and pie and mash, but also discover the best bargain places for banh mi, burgers, gozleme, pizza, shawarma, bao, lahmacun, kebabs, bagels, baps and sarnies. These places give you the kind of buzz only a bargain bite can deliver, while you can relish the fact that you’re supporting small independent London businesses when they need you the most. So hit the streets – filling up in some of London’s best restaurants needn’t empty your wallet.

London is the best. Obviously, we're biased, but come on: it has something to offer everyone. Want to explore the history of cartoons? We've got a museum for that. Rather learn about fans (the cooling type, not the screaming ones)? We've got a museum for that too. History? Check. Science? Check. Wax models, grotesque artifacts, and advertising? Check, check, check! There are more than 170 museums in the capital and many of them are free. Whether you’re teaming up with like-minded friends or going it alone, London’s museums are great places to spend a bit of time. RECOMMENDED: 101 amazing things to do in LondonRECOMMENDED: the best Airbnbs in LondonRECOMMENDED: the best hotels in London This article includes affiliate links. These links have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, click here.

As glorious as the capital is in the summer – think 9 million of us Londoners careening towards the closest beer garden, green space or rooftop bar – the sheer volume of revellers thronging the city can occasionally leave you feeling a tad claustrophobic.  Thankfully, this year has seen domestic travel open up properly again, with day trips and overnight stays in Airbnbs, campsites and hotels. And that means we can once again hit the coast, hike a forest trail or explore a postcard-perfect village whenever the Big Smoke gets a bit much. Planning a quick getaway? Here’s some fuel for your own day(trip)dreams. These are 17 of our favourite day-tripping spots, complete with cute pubs and ace restaurants – all close enough to London to get there and back in one glorious day. RECOMMENDED: 101 incredible things to do in London insteadRECOMMENDED: the best Airbnbs near London This article includes affiliate links. These links have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, click here.

The information on this page was correct at the time of publication, but please check with venues before you head out Don’t just spend Christmas Eve doing last-minute shopping, prepping veg or sitting glumly in the pub. Make the most of every minute of this year’s festive season and have a Christmas Eve to remember, by taking in some of London’s most Christmassy things to do before everything shuts down for Christmas Day. From twinkling lights to the city’s loveliest Christmas trees to make you feel all warm and anticipatory, take a look at our top picks for things to do on December 24 2022.  RECOMMENDED: Our full guide to Christmas in London.

The Zedwell hotel on Great Windmill Street, W1, has one of central London’s oddest atmospheres. Outside, Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square roar away, but inside it is dead quiet. You might be deep under the sea or in outer space. It could be a stormy November midnight or a sunny spring morning. As you move between its 11 floors (this is by arrangement with the management, I didn’t just wander in off the street) you soon lose track of what level you’re on. They all look exactly alike. Its 721 rooms have multiple double beds (rooms are for two, four, eight or 12 guests), plus showers and toilets. No phone, TV, room-service menu, iron, kettle or tatty fold-out map of local attractions. The corridors and rooms also have no windows. If Radiohead opened a hotel, it would be like the Zedwell. Photograph: James Gritz / Alamy The Zedwell is designed to offer one thing: sleep. ‘There’s soundproof flooring, soundproof walls, when you’re inside the room it’s super-quiet,’ says Irshad Khan, former CTO of Criterion Hospitality, which owns the Zedwell. ‘We’ve got special mattresses in there. And we’ve also got pumped-in oxygen that gives you the best night’s sleep.’ No windows means more rooms, which means a relatively cheaper stay, and Khan says that for a lot of travellers, being slap-bang in central London is more important than having a view. ‘We’ve recently been featured on CNN as a sleep-tourism hotspot,’ he adds. In case you’re not familiar with the concept, ‘sleep tourism’ is

Chinese food in London remains a vast and delicious proposition. You can keep things authentic in Chinatown – which is still full of great discoveries – or pop down to a treasured local, or even go all out at a swanky high-end spot. Enjoy Cantonese dim sum, fiery Xinjiang hotpots, poshed-up teahouse staples, fragrant Sichuan dishes and classic Beijing duck and so much more with our scrumptious guide to the finest restaurants in town.  RECOMMENDED: the best restaurants in Chinatown.

In London, there are heaps of charities supporting the homeless, elderly and those with disabilities, and although they need extra hands all year round in order to support the brilliant work they do, they’re always looking for more volunteers over the cold winter months. This year, with the cost-of-living crisis biting hard, the most vulnerable Londoners need support more than ever, so if you’d like to do some good and volunteer this Christmas, get in touch with one of these organisations doing great things.

The information on this page was correct at time of publication, but please check with venues before you head out. December 25 is really the only day of the year when London well and truly grinds to a halt (in the best possible way). But if you baulk at the idea of imposed downtime, or you don't celebrate the big day, you can still get out into the city and do stuff. Yes, public transport is out of action, but you can take a wander around a city that is almost empty of people, or eat in the handful of restaurants that are open. Then you can head home and binge Quality Streets in front of the TV. Here are some of the things you can get up to on Christmas Day in London. RECOMMENDED: Our guide to the best Christmas events in London 2022.

The information on this page was correct at time of publication, but please check with venues before you head out Okay, we’ve made it into 2023. And that has a good ring to it. You’re probably paying the price for seeing off 2022 in appropriate style, but there’s plenty of stuff to do in London on New Year’s Day. Go for a wintry stroll somewhere beautiful. Spend an afternoon in an atmospheric London pub. Or both. You know, it’s a brave new world and all that. Recommended: our guide to New Year in London.

Si sois de esas personas que al irse de viaje organiza al milímetro sus actividades, es probable que no os sobre tiempo para hacer una escapada improvisada. Sin embargo, si sois de los que dejáis todo para el último momento y dais la bienvenida a todo lo que se os presenta, puede que esto os interese, y más si estáis de visita en Londres. ¿Queréis huir de las típicas atracciones de la City? Aquí tenéis una selección de seis ciudades donde podéis ir y volver en un día desde la capital inglesa.  NO TE LO PIERDAS: 33 escapadas cerca de Barcelona

In the 1990s, while the UK was being lectured by the YBAs that art was cool and naughty and full of drunk people (something everyone in the artworld already knew, apart from the bit about it being cool or naughty), there was a whole load of artists plugging away, doing their thing and not worrying too much about what the Daily Star thought about sharks or Myra Hindley. Painters like John Hoyland and Frank Bowling doggedly pursued their craft of big, splashy, gestural canvases. Now those artists are getting a long-overdue reappraisal.   Clyde Hopkins certainly fits into this group well. This show at Castor gallery (which has boldly moved from Deptford to Fitzrovia) consists of a dozen works from the late ’80s and early ’90s. They’re a curious but overall effective mix of intensity and floaty whimsy, often on the same canvas. You can almost see Hopkins – who was also head of painting at Winchester and Chelsea art schools – hiding his light under a bushel. His is a very English kind of abstraction: there is depth, darkness, a muted sadness and humour. ‘May and Dagwood’ and ‘Flattered by the Bee’s Attention’ (surely the most Cardiacs-like title ever applied to a non-Cardiacs work) feature what quickly becomes clear as a Hopkins trademark: delicate collage-like details almost cruelly interrupted by crashing black lines, like an itinerant pisshead spoiling a family picnic. Sometimes, his work tantalizes you to see figuration. Which bit of ‘Seagulls, Brian Sewell, Kicking etc’ is t

I had high hopes for Dolly Parton’s version of ‘A Christmas Carol’. On paper, it sounds like a great idea. Dickens’s tale of a lonely man in a gloomy city literally haunted by his past and then his future is transposed to Depression-era East Tennessee. In an Appalachian mining town, the poor make profits for the town’s only rich man, Ebenezer Scrooge. He owns the mines, the bank and the general store. He is pitiless and joyless. He is the dark side of the American Dream – the man who works his way up from nothing to ensure that everyone else has nothing. But remote and God-fearing communities are always full of ghosts, especially when trapped in the fiercest blizzard for ten years… See what I mean? ‘A Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol’ should be ace: an atmospheric retelling of an immortal tale without all the tall hats and mockney accents. In fact, though, it’s only good in places. After a promising start with howling winds and fake snow, plus some decent bluegrass tunes, it settles into rather lacklustre and familiar territory. It’s not entirely the adaptation, which is by David H Bell and others, with songs by Parton. The Queen Elizabeth Hall isn’t a great space for theatre, and the rather fiddly-dressed static set doesn’t help much. The cast are generally excellent, especially Sarah O’Connor as Scrooge’s late sister Fanny, Vicki Lee Taylor as Mrs Cratchit and Minal Patel as a hulking Ghost of Christmas Present in a miner’s helmet. The band is great, too. What’s missing are D

Among a welter of sometimes hamfisted, sometimes magical, adaptations of Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ in London this year (currently 11 and counting), the one at Soho Theatre is a real breath of fresh wintry air. Cos it’s not really an adaptation of ‘A Christmas Carol’. On the pretext of the Dickens Estate not granting him the rights to the story, self-styled ‘Yorkshire Pudding’ Mr Swallow (comedian Nick Mohammed as seen in ‘Ted Lasso’) is forced to replace Scrooge with Santa, Jacob Marley with an elf and everyone else, including Rudolph Hess the reindeer, with paid-by-the line sidekick Jonathan. There are constant interruptions from P&O Ferries singer Rochelle (Sarah Hadland), who’s waiting for a call from Lloyd Webber, some mountaineering, and the birth of Jesus interrupted by a song about a woman in a relationship with a 25-stone turkey. If this all sounds a bit ‘adult panto’, fret ye not. There are no references to chemsex or Matt Hancock. You can take the bigger kids along, no problem. It’s more a deconstruction of the seasonal ritual of the stage version of ‘A Christmas Carol’. Mohammed goes full Count Arthur Strong with his Scrooge – ‘But fateful schpiiiiirrrrriiiitttt’. When the ghost of Elf Marley warns him ‘You will be haunted by three spirits’, Scrooge/Santa asks, ‘Can I just check: does that include you?’ Tiny Tim is dispensed with entirely, the cast are confused by the space-time continuum of the flashback sequences and whether Angela Lansbury has died in the fu

Why the hell are there so many productions of ‘A Christmas Carol’ in London? There’s a moment in this misbegotten attempt to cut and shut Sherlock Holmes and ‘A Christmas Carol’ that has stayed with me, through the journey home and the long marches of the night. ‘What’s the matter?’ asks the sister – played by a white actor – of her brother, – played by a Black actor – ‘you look pale.’ Titters from (some of) the audience. I don’t know what I’m not getting here, but this doesn’t feel like some super-sophisticated piece of meta-woke prejudice-baiting. It just feels like old-fashioned 1970s-TV ‘comedy’. This is an extreme example of the tone-deafness of off-Broadway import ‘A Sherlock Carol’, but there’s no shortage of others. Briefly, Holmes – troubled by the spectre of his nemesis Moriarty – is called upon to investigate the death of the wealthy Londoner Ebenezer Scrooge. In exorcising his own demons, he solves the case. It’s not that bad an idea. You could – squinting – see Conan Doyle as a popular-fiction heir to Dickens, with characters and phrases that have entered our collective culture. But you get the feeling that writer/director Mark Shanahan really likes Sherlock Holmes and maybe isn’t that into Dickens. Most of ‘A Sherlock Carol’ is just a Holmes story made from parts of other ones. The Dickens-y bits are generic festiveness and some ghosts, and there aren’t really enough of either. More of a problem is the production’s total inability to decide what it is. It’s not

  Jack Thorne’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ is now such a regular annual fixture at the Old Vic that it stands a good chance of being added to one of those ‘You know it’s Christmas in London when…’ lists. Its appeal isn’t hard to understand. It starts with a costumed cast member offering you a mince pie and ends with carolling, handbell-ringing and Scrooge asking for charity donations via card-reader for London’s neediest. In the intervening two hours there are dances, live music, shouting, a turkey on a death slide, cascades of sprouts and the most seasonal and magical single moment you’ll see on the London stage this Christmas, plus a lead you’ll recognise off the telly. It’s a lot. It is not perfect, though, and its imperfections are more apparent in this year’s outing (its sixth) starring Owen Teale as Scrooge. Last time I saw it, Stephen Tompkinson was doing the honours, lumbering about the stage and seeming genuinely at a loss as to why being a moneylender might not be that popular a vocation. His Scrooge’s eventual revelation that being nice is nicer than being nasty was all the more affecting for his initial inability to understand either concept. Teale’s performance is more finely nuanced, but if you’ve ever read any Dickens, you’ll know that nuance is maybe not his stand-out quality. His Scrooge occasionally feels more like a divorced alcoholic copper with anger issues and a lot on his mind, and the production adds relationship drama at the expense of more ghosts and/or wh

Chris Killip might not be as well known as Martin Parr or have the cult kudos of Tony Ray-Jones, but the work he produced in the 1970s and ’80s arguably stands above either of them. Killip was born on the Isle of Man and returned there after quitting commercial photography in the early 1970s to concentrate on the communities he grew up amongst. It still looks like the 1930s: men till fields with horses, stone walls grid the landscape under glowering skies. Killip’s portraits are full of dignity and empathy for the relentless bleak toil of these people’s lives. It would be a fine body of work in itself, but it’s what comes next that makes this show so vital. Taking his cues from the changes he saw happening to the traditional Manx way of life, Killip started exploring other disintegrating communities in the north of England: Tyne shipbuilders, steelworkers in Yorkshire and seacoal scavengers on the Northumbrian coast. The prow of gigantic oil tanker Tyne Pride appears suddenly and surreally at the end of a glum terraced street as children play in its shadow. But the ship’s buyer fell through, and when Killip returns two years later, the shipyard is gone and the street is being demolished.  The overriding emotion here is tenderness There’s a fascinating taxonomy of dress in these photos that speaks its own language of deprivation and necessity: a woman picking coal off a wintry beach wearing a ‘very good fur coat’ or an old man dozing on a bench, his trousers held up with a WWI

London Transport Museum has a new 2022 season of its ever-popular Hidden London tours of unseen parts of the capital’s vast transport network, including some new places they’ve never visited before. They take place on selected dates between October 12 and December 30.  Highlights include tours of Charing Cross and Down Street stations. The Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross have been inoperative since 1999, and since used for lots of film and TV productions. Down Street station, meanwhile, was shut down way back in 1932 because of low passenger numbers (locals presumably all travelled by Rolls-Royce). In WWII, it was used as an air raid shelter and, intriguingly, was used by Winston Churchill during the Blitz. Another perennial favourite are the tours of Aldwych tube station on the Strand near Somerset House, and there are also in-person tours of Shepherd’s Bush station’s hidden nooks and crannies, and the same at Euston Square. Virtual tours allow visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the new Elizabeth line stations at Tottenham Court Road and Liverpool Street, as well as a look at the closed Kingsway Tunnel areas of Holborn. Selected dates between October 12 and December 30.  Full details of all the tours are here.

There’s an old Billy Connolly joke about him ordering dinner in a Mexican restaurant. When his dish arrives, it’s the wrong one, so the waiter just refolds it into the correct shape. That’s too often the perception here of the country’s cuisine: the same old ingredients, just in different formats. London’s many many burrito chains are some of the worst culprits, but Mexa in the Arcade Foodhall beneath Centre Point is aiming to cut through the undistinguished mass of refried beans. Using mainly lime juice.Because, while I liked a lot of the food at Mexa, there was an overwhelming prevalence of citrus on some plates, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else. A seabass ceviche and a prawn aguachile verde were both cheek-puckeringly acidic. The ‘aguachile’ (a liquid infusion of chillis and lime juice) was too sharply one-dimensional and lacked proper chilli claws, though the prawn was super-fresh. At £13 for a small uncooked dish, it was also pretty pricy.Mexa is the offspring of Netil Market’s already-being-lamented Sonoria Taqueria (currently closed and embroiled in a legal dispute over its right to use the term ‘taqueria’, which is… odd), so its taco game is predictably strong. A richly beefy suadero version was satisfyingly succulent and there was a deliciously well-balanced veggie one with grilled cactus and sweet caramelised onion. Top marks, too, to a slow-cooked lamb birria quesadilla, accompanied by a pot of umami-dense jellied consommé. Lamb rarely gets a look-in o

As a reviewer of Stewart Lee’s new show, I was repeatedly told how to review it, and got called a ‘cunt’ for my pains (not personally). So here’s my review. First half: four stars, plenty of jokes. Second half: three stars, not enough jokes. Benefit of the doubt: four stars. There you go. ‘Basic Lee’ is ostensibly about the craft of stand-up comedy, what Lee calls this ‘ritualised ancient folly’. To be honest, his comedy has always been about this, so it’s business as usual only a bit more so. He deconstructs the scansion of the joke. ‘It goes: uh uh uh uh uh, uh uh-uh uh.’ He explains what he needs from his audience in terms of preparation: ‘If you don’t know anything, don’t come and see me.’ And he lets us supply our own punchline to a very good gag about JK Rowling based on what we’ve learned. As Lee himself says, this is a difficult time to be a stand-up: there’s too much material. He still manages to get in stuff about having an erotic response to the Queen’s funeral and Prince Andrew ‘using the Paddington Bears as bait’, plus a load of brilliance about the current Tory cabinet that he reads off cards because ‘there’s no point learning it’. He’s still the classic English vorticist curmudgeon: a boot-putting-in on what he relentlessly calls ‘The Fleabag’ is very very good. If Lee has a problem these days, it’s not that there’s too much happening in the world, it’s that he knows that his devoted audience can anticipate with some degree of accuracy what he’s going to say ab

Wandsworth Council’s annual display is back for 2022, doubling in size to become a two-nighter. Saturday November 5 is the regular fireworks and bonfire. While Sunday November 6 is more family-friendly, with a virtual light display and fewer nerve-jangling explosions. There”ll also be mulled winter warmers, a Sweetieland for kids and autumnal comfort food. It always sells out, so book early. Find more fireworks displays in London.

The Beckenham Scouts are at it again, taking over the park in Croydon Road Recreation Ground for the south London area’s annual firework display, which they’ve been doing since 1946. Go for the child-friendly ‘quiet display’ at 6pm or the loud adult one at 7.45pm: either way, you also get funfairs, hot-food stalls and warm drinks.  Find more firework displays all around London.   

This family-oriented fest (which is £1 for kids under 16) kicks off at 5pm. In addition to the explosions, they’re promising mulled wine, real ale, a barbecue, pizza and more. Prepare to ooh and ahh when the fireworks go off at 7pm. No tickets will be available on the night, so get organised! 

What dates are the London bus strikes? There are strikes confirmed for Wednesday February 1, Thursday February 2 and Friday February 3, and there could be more on the way. Which bus routes are affected? The action primarily affects buses in south and west London run by Abellio. Striking workers are from depots in Battersea, Beddington, Hayes, Southall, Twickenham and Walworth. These are the affected day routes: 3, 24, 27, 45, 63, 68, 109, 111, 130, 156, 159, 195, 196, 201, 207, 267, 270, 278, 285, 315, 322, 344, 345, 350, 367, 381, 407, 415, 427, 433, 464, 482, 490, 671, 969, C10, E5, E7, E10, E11, H20, H25, H28, H26, P5, P13, R68, R70, S4, U5, U7, U9.  and the night buses: N3, N27, N63, N68, N109, N207, N381 Why are bus workers striking and what have the unions said? It’s a dispute over pay: the union says Abellio hasn’t offered its drivers a fair pay rise, despite pay rises being due to take place this month.  Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: ‘Abellio is a vastly wealthy multinational company that could and should be paying its workers a fair pay increase. With workers struggling to cope with rampant inflation, Abellio’s failure to even enter into meaningful pay talks is cold-hearted and callous. ‘Unite is now entirely focused on defending and enhancing the jobs, pay and conditions of its members and the bus drivers at Abellio will be receiving the union’s complete support.’ Abellio London’s managing director Jon Eardley said in a statement: ‘We urge Unite

What dates are the tube, train and Overground strikes? There are two strikes this week as Aslef workers walk out after rejecting another pay offer: Wednesday February 1 and Friday February 3.  Aslef London Underground workers will also strike on the Bakerloo line on Saturday February 4 and Saturday February 11.  Which London train and tube lines will be affected? The strikes on February 1 and 3 will disrupt some of London’s biggest commuter rail services, including Thameslink, Southeastern and Southern.  Other lines into London that will be disrupted include Avanti West Coast, Chiltern Railways, Great Western Railway, Greater Anglia, Great Northern, London North Eastern Railway and the Gatwick Express. Then, on February 4 and 11 only the Bakerloo line will be affected by walkouts. All other TfL services should run as normal.  Are there more transport strikes planned for London in the future? Yes. The RMT has confirmed that there will be a further six months of strikes across the National Rail and the tube in 2023 following a ballot: 94 percent of its members voted to continue industrial action over pay and pensions. As a large number of RMT members work for London Underground, these strikes could very well affect TfL services.  Additionally, Aslef, the main tube drivers’ union, will also ballot its members over more strikes that will shut down the Underground. The union will ask its 2,000 members to vote on action over feared changes to working conditions and pensions. Th

Just as Londoners resigned themselves to another year of continual public transport disruption, with a series of strikes affecting tubes, buses, rail and Overground services that are continuing into 2023, now the cost of their often-non-existent travel is set to go up significantly. How much will tube and bus fares rise by? It’s been announced that fares across the TfL network – that’s buses, tubes and some trains – will rise by 5.9 percent this year. It’s the biggest rise in fares for a decade. It’s also worth remembering that there was a 5 percent increase in TfL fares this time last year. Bus fares will go up by another 10p (like last year), meaning a single journey will now cost £1.75. The daily and weekly price caps on pay-as-you-go tube fares will increase by up to 6.7 percent, depending on the number of fare zones travelled. The rise had been on the cards for a while, with Sadiq dues to make a final call on it. When does the price increase come into effect? TfL fares will go up from March 2023.  Why are fares going up? It’s part of TfL’s long-term strategy to get the network back on a more stable financial footing following the ravages inflicted by the pandemic and lockdowns. The organisation is seeking to generate £6 billion a year in fare revenue over the next few years, a 40 percent increase.    Any other bad news for Londoners? Naturally. London commuters can expect a similar price increase for TfL fares this time next year as well. Oh, and restrictions on over-60

Ordinarily, the prospect of a bit of snow in the capital gladdens our hearts. But the cost-of-living crisis has changed all that. After a week of sub-zero temperatures, snow is forecast for next week. The freezing weather will hit hardest the tens of thousands of Londoners already steeling themselves for a winter of choosing between heating their homes and eating, with Christmas a distant third. So, what are the chances of imminent city snows?  Is it going to snow in London next week? It looks very likely. The Met Office is forecasting snow showers in the capital from Sunday morning, with up to 10cm expected in some areas. It will be accompanied by at least another week of freezing cold, with temperatures falling as low as -10C in parts of the Southeast. There will also be hazardous conditions including freezing fog, which could affect travel. What does snow mean for London? Transport disruption and big heating bills. That’s on top of the unions telling people not to come into London next week because of the strike action on the trains, so even if you’re lucky enough to have a nice warm office as your place of work, you can’t spend your day there, you have to sit at home and burn cash, wear four jumpers or freeze. Sort-of joking apart, this is very bad news for London’s poorest and most vulnerable. The Met has already issued an official health warning, with the National Energy Agency telling the i: ‘many vulnerable people are being forced to choose between unhealthy heat rati

It has been announced that nearly 1,000 new homes are going to be built in South Tottenham, of which 60 percent will be ‘genuinely affordable’. The homes are part of development on a site next to St Ann’s Hospital in N15. The development, which will be built around an existing ‘Peace Garden’, will consist of 995 new flats. It will adhere to ‘minimum requirements’, as laid down by the Mayor’s Office.  Of the 60 percent affordable homes in the development, 50 will be available to be bought by a community organisation for community-led housing. Of the rest, 60 percent will be London Affordable Rent, 22 percent London Shared Ownership and 18 percent London Living Rent. The London Affordable Rent homes will be let on lifetime tenancies. The current Peace Garden will be preserved and extended and remain publicly accessible, and there will be pedestrian and cycle routes through the site to connect it with the nearby high street and Harringay Green Lanes station, while there will be relatively limited parking space available (167). Other existing features of the site, including a Victorian water tower, will also be preserved, among streets of low-rise housing. The scheme is due to complete in 2030.  Interestingly, the development’s website specifically addresses the often disputed term ‘affordable housing’, saying, ‘We understand that the term “affordable housing” can be misused and often confusing. St Ann’s New Neighbourhood will be home to genuinely affordable housing.’ There have

It has been announced that a new commission will assess the case for returning the British Museum’s Elgin Marbles to Greece. Former Tory Culture Minister Ed Vaizey will chair the commission. The Greek government has repeatedly demanded the return of the artefacts by the UK, so far to no avail. This time, Vaizey says a ‘deal is within reach’, although the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has said: ‘The British Museum is prevented by law from removing objects from its collections, except in some narrow circumstances. The government has no plans to change this act.’ There is also a petition seeking to return the famous Rosetta Stone to Egypt, as well as calls for the British Museum to end its sponsorship deal with oil multinational BP.  Here’s everything you need to know about the Elgin Marbles…  What are the Elgin Marbles? The Parthenon Sculptures – known as the ‘Elgin Marbles’ – is a series of ancient Greek sculptural panels that once formed a frieze around the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis in Athens. Since they were brought to London in the nineteenth century, they have been one of the prize exhibits in the British Museum’s collection. Why are they in London? The sculptures were acquired by Lord Elgin in the early nineteenth century off the Turks, who at the time were occupying Athens. Supposedly, they could have been completely destroyed by the Turkish army. Lord Elgin shipped them to London, and later got the British government to buy them off him to cle

Whew. London’s really hot right now. Some might even say apocalyptically hot. We know Londoners love a good heatwave, using any excuse to out on flip-flops and make a beeline for the nearest pub garden, but this is the kind of weather where cramming in somewhere with loads of other people has rarely seemed less appealing. Sure, there are great beer gardens, fancy rooftop bars and our dear old friend THE PARK, but are they actually cool? Not necessarily. Time to think laterally (without actually having to ask an assistant in Iceland if there’s a wifi password).  View this post on Instagram A post shared by QUEENS • skate • dine • bowl (@queens_skate_dine_bowl) Just chill out!  Ice skating might be about staying on your feet, but you won’t mind slipping over too much at Queens Ice and Bowl in Bayswater, where the surface temperature is, of course, freezing all year round. Don’t be tempted to go bowling though, or you’ll immediately become a hot mess again.      Find a very old building  While there’s no definitive answer to the question of which is London’s chilliest building, older generally means colder. Unlike your flimsy newbuilds, these babies have metre-thick walls and great insulation. If you can face the Central line – officially the hottest on the tube – then go and tick St Paul’s Cathedral off your (ice) bucket list (you can get there on foot, too, obvs. Just make sure to stay hydrated.) The crypt, with its tombs of Wren, Nelson and Wellington sh

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has made a repeated call for a rent freeze this winter, following grim data that reveals that rough sleeping has gone up by 20 percent in the capital, prompted in part by the cost-of-living crisis. He called on the government to force private landlords to not increase rents for tenants. ‘Extraordinary financial pressures are putting the poorest Londoners at growing risk of homelessness with the number of people sleeping rough already up by a fifth year on year. ‘We continue to see a revolving door of people ending up homeless as a result of this escalating cost-of-living crisis. This cannot be allowed to continue. This new government must act now to prevent the circumstances that lead to people sleeping rough before thousands more are forced to face a winter on the streets.’ Khan called for a rent freeze back in August, as stats showed that private sector rents had increased in London by an average of 15 percent in just one year, with some boroughs seeing hikes of nearly 20 percent. In a tweet, he said: ‘This is a disgrace. Rents are soaring while landlords profit. I’ve repeatedly asked the Govt to let me freeze rents, saving Londoners £2,988 over two years. With the cost-of-living crisis raging, this is more urgent than ever. The Govt must act.’ The mayor has made sky-high rents in the UK capital a major strand of his campaigning over the years, citing other world cities such as Berlin and New York which have intervened to control rents. Lond

昔々ロンドンにはトラム（路面電車）があった。最初は馬で引っ張られ、やがて電力で走るようになったが、次第に「クール」なものではなくなり、ロンドン議会により高額な費用で段階的に廃止され、1952年には消滅。その後、人々の地上での移動はディーゼルエンジンのバスに置き換わったが、それが大気汚染や道路渋滞の一因となってしまった。 近年ではトラムの良さが見直され、2000年には南ロンドンでトラムが復活したが、今度は、トラムの利便性とバスの無軌道な利便性を併せ持つ、新しい公共交通車両が誕生しようとしている。 この車両は、スペインのエンジニアリング会社Irizarが製造する「ieTram」。路面電車の車両のような形状で、高い天井、大きな窓、内部を分断する要素が最小限に抑えられているのが特徴だ。自転車や歩行者にとってより安全なように、カバー付きの車輪で道路を走る。そして何より、ieTramは電気自動車であり、排ガスを出さないというのが素晴らしい。 このかなり未来的かつ環境に優しい車両が導入されるのは、2023年から。まずは、20台がロンドン南部のルート358（交通マニアや地元の人ならクリスタル・パレスからオーピントンまでといえば分かるだろうか）を走る予定だ。路線の両端の停留所には、電気を補充するための充電ステーションが設置される。ロンドン交通局（TfL）によると、この試みが成功すれば、首都圏のより多くのバス路線でieTramが導入される見込みだという。 2022年初めに天窓、携帯電話ホルダー、USBポートを備えた「おしゃれな」新型63型バスがお目見えしたというニュースがあったが、このieTram導入はそれに続くロンドンのバスファンにとっての朗報といえる。ただ、バスとトラムの融合だからといって、我々がこの新車両を「トラス」とは呼ぶことはない。 あとは、厄介な車やAmazonの配達バン、がれきを満載したトラックなどを道路から排除することだけだ。多少のストライキはしょうがない。それが実現すれば、これらの新車両とともに、ロンドン公共交通の黄金時代が幕開けするといえるだろう。 関連記事 『London is getting these futuristic electric ‘tram buses’（原文）』 『ニューヨークが2025年までに230台の電気バスを導入』 『肉屋を間借りして営業、ロンドンで最も新しい「リスニングバー」』 『歩行者は常に「青」、ロンドン市が新しい信号の拡大を推進』 『ノルウェー系LCCがロンドン〜アメリカ間で複数の新路線を就航』 『ラスベガスでダイアナ元妃をテーマにした常設展がスタート』 東京の最新情報をタイムアウト東京のメールマガジンでチェックしよう。登録はこちら  

Once upon a time, London had trams. They were pulled by horses and later went electric. Then trams weren’t cool anymore, so London’s councils expensively dug up all the tramlines and everyone travelling above ground had to use diesel-powered buses stinking up the atmosphere and clogging up the roads. Now, though, the capital is set to get some eco-friendly public transport that combines the accessibility of a tram with the track-free convenience of a bus. From next year, route 358 in south London (Crystal Palace to Orpington for transport geeks and/or south Londoners) will introduce some pretty futuristic vehicles. Manufactured by Spanish engineering firm Irizar, the ieTram is shaped like a tram carriage, with a high roofline, huge windows and minimal internal disruptions, but runs on the road, with features like covered wheels to make it safer for cyclists and pedestrians (and look more space age presumably). Best of all, the ieTram is electric and emission-free. Twenty of them will run on the route from 2023, with overhead charging stations at both ends to top up the juice. TfL says that if the trial is successful, the ieTram will appear on more bus routes across the capital. It’s more good news for London’s bus fans, following the introduction of the swanky new 63, with skylights, phone holders and USB ports. If we could just get all the pesky cars, Amazon vans and lorries full of rubble off the road, it would be the dawn of a public-transport golden age in the capital, st

I don’t know how old I was when I realised that the word ‘fiesta’ actually meant something. That it is Spanish for ‘party’. Obviously, a ‘fiesta’ was a car. A small Ford car. But as a car-mad child, I had zero interest in the Ford Fiesta – it was a boring, prosaic, slow, homegrown motor. Suitable for single people, young couples, the elderly. It came – as all cars did in those days – in a range of horrible colours: parsnip beige, waiting-room blue, dirty-protest brown. I didn’t have a toy one – why would I? It wasn’t a Ferrari, a cement mixer or a Challenger tank. It was only later that I realised what the Fiesta really meant.  Ford has just announced that the Fiesta will be discontinued as of next year. Since 1976, it’s been through umpteen versions and facelifts and hasn’t been built in the UK for donkey’s years. But in its heyday, it captured a bit of this country’s soul, for good and bad.  Born in an era of endless strikes at Ford’s Dagenham car plant, the Fiesta was entry-level not just to motoring, but to life. The Ford Fiesta wasn’t just a car, it was a safe space. Sometimes an unsafe space. Other Fords of its generation had aspirational foreign-destination names: Capri, Cortina. The Fiesta just went with ‘party’. Maybe a party where your mate is found passed out in the front garden with no trousers or pants. Maybe a cheeky seaside STI. My first experience of weed was in a Fiesta hotbox parked under an electricity pylon with some sheep staring at me. The Fiesta suggest

Two activists from environmental campaigning group Just Stop Oil have carried out a provocative piece of art vandalism in London this morning, throwing Heinz tomato soup over Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ in the National Gallery. In a video clip, the pair are seen approaching the work, before opening the cans of soup and throwing it over the world-famous artwork. They then superglue their hands to the gallery wall. They can be heard saying: ‘What is worth more, art or life? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?’ Activists with @JustStop_Oil have thrown tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the national Gallery and glued themselves to the wall. pic.twitter.com/M8YP1LPTOU — Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) October 14, 2022 The action follows calls for the British Museum to end its sponsorship from oil giant BP, though exactly what this has to do with Van Gogh is a bit harder to fathom.  On the group’s Twitter, they say: ‘Thanks to skyrocketing gas prices, millions of British families won’t be able to afford to heat a can of soup this winter. The cost of living crisis and climate crisis [are] driven by oil and gas.’  Just Stop Oil don’t offer any explanation as to why the Van Gogh artwork was specifically targeted, though presumably it is just a very recognisable work that is known to millions of people, is known to be worth millions of pounds and is located in a gallery that is easily accessible and free. Response t