The London Traveler

Rigby & Peller is famous as the bra shop with a Royal Warrant. Providers of underwear to HM the Queen – quite a claim to fame.
But it’s also a great shop to visit. Shockingly, R&P claims that eighty percent of women wear the wrong size bra – visit here and you’ll get a proper fitting. (You do need to make an appointment though, particularly if you want to go on Saturday.)
Compared to browing the Marks & Spencers lingerie department, with its rows of regimented merchandise, this shop offers you a beautiful dream of frothy underwear in a classy and relaxed …read more

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Many aspects of English culture are planned to confuse the visitor. One of the most confusing is a game, played on the BBC radio show ‘I’m sorry I haven’t a Clue’, called ‘Mornington Crescent’.
You might know where Mornington Crescent is. It’s a tube station on the Northern Line, north of Euston.
The game involves each player naming a tube station, in turn. So it might go like this:
“Euston.”
“Morden.”
“Baron’s Court.”
“Cockfosters.”
“Mornington Crescent.”
And the first player to arrive at Mornington Crescent wins.
Now the confusing thing is the rules. There are all kinds of variants of the game. Trumpington Variations, for example. Or the Tudor …read more

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Not everyone is enamoured of the traditional British seaside resort. Victorian terraces,  amusements arcades,  fish and chips and candyfloss – well, it just isn’t everyone’s bag.
If you’re a fashionista or an antiques lover, and you want to enjoy the seaside, there’s only one place to go – Brighton.
For a start, make time to visit the Royal Pavilion – an amazing fantasy of Oriental style, with its Indian style domes and exotic colours, commissioned by the Prince Regent and transformed by John Nash in the early nineteenth century. (Admission is £8.50 – dear, but worth it. You won’t see anything else …read more

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A wonderful website I’ve just been told about gives you the chance to see UNESCO world heritage sites in 360 degree panoramas.
In London, you can ‘visit’ Greenwich, Kew Gardens, or the Tower of London and see the sights through the photo panoramas – simply use your mouse to rotate the view.
I really enjoyed the  one of Greenwich Observatory – as you rotate you can see that fantastic view of London spread out below, and then the buildings and even a few tourists looking around.  No, of course it’s not as good as being there – but it does give you …read more

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Take a good look at this modern icon, as it might not be around much longer. This housing estate is scheduled for demolition,  and though there’s a high profile campaign by architects to save it,  my money’s on the gelignite.
Robin Hood Gardens was designed in the late sixties by Robin and Alice Smithson, and finished in 1972.  Its design and use of concrete echo Le Corbusier’s experiments with modern housing, for instance at the Unité d’Habitation in Marseille.  It was intended to create “streets in the sky” – a marvellous phrase but one which perhaps disguised some naivety as to …read more

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The Last Night of the Proms is a venerable British institution.  Loved  by some, hated by others, its mix of flag-waving, patriotic folk songs and climax with the singing of Rule Britannia is, if nothing else, utterly memorable.
But the Proms have a lot more to offer. Started by Sir Henry Wood and impresario Robert Newman in  1895 , they’ve been going strong ever since. For 114 years, to be exact.
And the 2008 season starts tomorrow.
What can you hear?
There’s a huge variety of concerts. Controversial violinist Nigel Kennedy is back. You can hear Stockhausen’s Stimmung, an amazing modern work in which …read more

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Every summer sees a new pavilion built at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens. This summer sees a work by Frank Gehry, architect of the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum.
The pavilion is made half of wood, half of timber. Though it rests on four giant steel supports, it’s the wood and glass you notice – the organic weight of the one, the transparency of the other.
Gehry apparently based the design on military catapults drawn by Leonardo da Vinci, and there’s something quite spiky about the way the wooden struts bristle down the back of the pavilion.
But there’s also something rather interestingly random …read more

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Boris Johnson promised us Routemasters. And that’s what we thought we would get. (At least, that’s what most people thought he was saying. But now he’s saying no, he didn’t, he said different buses from the Bendybus.  Hmmm.)
No, what we’ll get is new Routemasters.
The Mayor has announced two competitions for designing the new Routemaster – one for amateurs (‘imagine’), and one for professional design firms (‘design’).  The amateur competition is just a bit of fluff really – prizes are up to £1,000, but they’re being awardedfor ‘fun’ and ‘creativity’.
But the professional competition might come up with a design for ‘a …read more

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Most London ghosts are fairly normal.   (Well, normal for ghosts.) Ghostly actors in the back of a theatre. Ghostly ladies in the Tower of London. The pub regular who loved his local so much he never left.
But here’s a great one. A ghost chicken.
Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, was an early scientist -  back in Shakespeare’s day. He was a real live wire, always experimenting with new things.  Coming back through Highgate in the snow, he had a bright idea; frozen chicken.  So he got his manservant to go and get a chicken; gutted it, plucked it, and shoved its …read more

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If you’re considering a day out of London by the seaside, you might think about going to Southend – or ‘Saafend’ in the local lingo. (I once saw a horse called Saafend on a racing card, and thought for a moment it was an Arab-owned and named horse, till a friend of mine read the name out loud.)
Southend was an attractive Victorian resort once. But much of the centre was destroyed in the 1960s in favour of bright new ‘modern’ architecture. It doesn’t say anything in the town’s favour that one of its major employers is the Inland Revenue.
Famously, …read more

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