Features

  • The Top 3 London Theatres
    Posted in: Drama & Theatre, Features

    As the final month of the year approaches and you’re spoilt for choice during the festive season, check out our list of the best three London theatres of recent years. Our focus is on smaller Fringe theatres, which are, nonetheless, punching their weight against the best of the West End. No.1 The Etcetera Theatre Founded […]

  • London Zoo: Contributing to Global Conservation Efforts
    Posted in: Features

    WIDELY recognised as the world’s oldest scientific zoo, London Zoo has changed significantly from when it was first opened in 1828. Its purpose back then was as an extensive collection for scientific study and was managed by the Zoolological Society of London (established 1826). The 20,168 animals from 698 species there today are quite different […]

  • New Brit Novels With an Overseas Flavour
    Posted in: Books, Features

    British authors Rohan Quine and J. S. Jones have novels that whisk you away from the humdrum of the UK to more exotic and glamorous locations. The Beasts of Electra Drive Rohan Quine was raised in South London but lived in the USA for over a decade so his transatlantic background filters into the fictional […]

  • How the Great Poets Captured Autumn
    Posted in: Features, People

    AUTUMN is one of the four seasons most commonly associated with romance because of the vision of lovers walking holding hands through leaves shed by trees in parks and woodlands. This is despite the drop in temperature and if anything the colder weather makes hugs and cuddly behavior even more necessary. Spring would probably claim first […]

  • Why Grime Music Is Forever Linked to London’s East End
    Posted in: Features

    FORGET THE 2017 grime hype for a minute and go all the way back to 2001 when a new sound was born on the mean streets of East London. It was the first marked departure from late 90s UK rap, which copied the accent and beats of the hugely successful American hip-hop that dominated the […]

  • Artists Painting London: How Matisse & the Fauves Brightened Up the Capital
    Posted in: Features, Galleries & Museums, People, Places, Unused

    When the Fauve artists emerged in 1905, led by Matisse himself and creative ally Andre Derain, their paintings would have been pretty OTT by standards of the day to be noted for their vivid, jarring hues. Especially when you consider that around the same period the Expressionist work of Kandinsky and Kirchner were not exactly […]

  • This Day in History: Marie Antoinette Executed.
    Posted in: Features, People

    ON THIS DAY Oct 16 in 1793 Marie Antoinette was beheaded not too far from the specially-built palatial, fairy tale village of Petit Hameau, Versailles where she once fancy dressed as a peasant while real peasants in nearby villages starved. Not too long after telling these peasants who didn’t have any bread to go and […]

  • London Sweet Shops of Yesteryear Here Today
    Posted in: Features, Photos, Places

    THIS THROWBACK sweet shop in Spitalfields celebrates the confectionery sellers of yesteryear where you could pop in with your loose change and buy quarters of rhubarb and custard sweets, bon bons, gobstoppers, mints or menthol candy –  and it exists today. And all the shelves are taken up by jars of this candy and nothing […]