The London Traveler

Charity shops are a very movable feast. I remember one in Islington that was full of the most dire clothes  – really tatty, threadbare, old men’s clothes – but where occasionally you could find beautiful vintage dresses for a few quid. Then there are some where customers complain that the staff know the value of what they’re selling far too well – no bargains perhaps, but a chance to get very, very nice stuff for a secondhand price.
Oxfam’s new boutiques are the second kind of charity shop. There are now three of them – all in West London.
As well …read more

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Following my report on ‘Last Stop’, Ralf Obergfell’s exhibition of photographs on the last eighteen months of the Routemaster’s service for London Transport, I had the chance to interview the photographer about his work.
LT: When did you first encounter the Routemaster bus? How far back does your fascination with it go?
RO: I first saw the Routemaster on TV at my parents’ house in Staufen, on the edge of the Black Forest. I was 12 or 13 years old.
LT: How did the project for Last Stop get started?
RO: I’m a founding member of photodebut, which was set up in 2002 as …read more

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I’ve already blogged how London is used as a dead ringer for foreign locations in film. But equally, many London locations which are film-friendly are used to stand in for other more famous sites.
The photo above shows why film makers are not going to use number 10, Downing Street as a location. You can’t get anywhere near it – the whole road is blocked off by those high iron barriers and gates. So it should be no surprise that other places in London have worked as stand-ins for Number Ten.
45 Upper Grosvenor Street provided the interior of Number 10 in …read more

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Americans in London always organise some nice Independence Day celebrations. But this year the British Museum is helping out.
There will be lindy-hopping. There will be jazz. There will be American food. There will be American beer tasting!
It all coincides with the exhibition The American Scene, which shows prints from Hopper to Pollock. Festivities start at 630 in the evening in Room 24.
For the more studious, there’s a talk on collecting American prints at 1.15 in the afternoon in Room 90.
And the Great Court is open till nine in the evening with a mix of vigorous activites including basketball and American …read more

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Two dates for cash-strapped opera lovers – the BP Big Screens will be showing two operas from the Royal Opera House in July.
We kick off with Verdi’s Don Carlos on the 3rd of July, at 6pm. There will be big screens in Trafalgar Square and at Canada Square Park in Docklands.
Then Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro will be broadcast on 16 July, with screens in Trafalgar Square, Canada Square Park in Docklands, Lakeside shopping centre and Chertsey Road, Sunbury.  The showing starts at 7pm.
Okay, it’s not the same intense experience as seeing the opera in the house. But it does …read more

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I have to admit I’m the kind of person who really likes to track down little continuity issues when I’m watching films.  It’s a bit nerdy. Well actually it’s very nerdy.
Now when you really know London, you can get very nerdy indeed about precise locations. And that’s great fun. Tony Reeves obviously enjoys this and his book Movie London is full of the most intriguing details about London locations which have been misused in film.
For instance, in The Killing of Sister George, Beryl Reid stomps down a little passageway between Heath Street and Hampstead Grove, in north London. But she …read more

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Have you ever thought what London would look like after global warming raises the sea level? Which parts of London  would be left – and how people would live in it?
That’s the starting point for Squint/Opera’s Flooded London exhibition, which opens Friday at Medcalf bar and restaurant in Exmouth Market, as part of the London Festival of Architecture.
This should be quite a surreal vision… a wonderful pastoral future in a tropical, leafy London, with skyscrapers gently decaying under the surface of the lagoon. Definitely worth a visit.
Where: Medcalf, Exmouth Market
When: 20 June – 20 July
How much: Free

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The Momart fire was one of the great disasters of Britart. In a single warehouse fire, works by Tracy Emin, Damien Hirst,  Gavin Turk, and other artists were destroyed – and one of the works lost to the flames was Hell, by Jake and Dinos Chapman.
But now, the Chapman brothers have revived Hell – calling it F***ing Hell this time round – and even improved it, making it bigger.
It’s a really strange work, replaying atrocities and war crimes using little plastic soldiers. The sheer banality of evil is what strikes you – the idea that these little plastic toys with …read more

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One of the most amusing things I’ve found in Tony Reeves’ book Movie London is the way London pops up in many films as… somewhere completely different!
Quite often, London becomes Russia. Well, I can see the point of that when in The Music Lovers St Sofia’s Orthodox Cathedral in Bayswater is used as the church where Tchaikovsky’s wedding is held. Appropriately, the cathedral is in Moscow Road! It also figures as a St Petersburg church in the Bond film Goldeneye.
Other Russian locations include Drapers Hall, Throgmorton Street, which becomes St Petersburg in Goldeneye and the Moscow headquarters of Tretiak Oil …read more

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“Fitzrovia” is the area around the Post Office Tower… or Telecom Tower, whatever you want to call it. It’s a funny area, not quite part of Oxford Street with its bustle, not yet really North London, and still a bit off the beaten track.
It was actually developed in the eighteenth century by Charles Fitzroy, Baron Southampton, who gave his name to Fitzroy Square and Fitzroy Street.  However, he didn’t own all the land, so other developers bought up small plots and built housing there – giving the area a patchwork, irregular street plan quite unlike the fine avenues and squares …read more

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