With sales up 12% this year and gin tax profits higher than beer for the first time since the Victorian age, no one can put a finger on what’s responsible for this London gin craze that has emerged in recent years. James Bond’s resurgence under Daniel Craig? We all know 007 fancied the odd sophisticated […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
AS SCIENTISTS and researchers fine-tune A.I technology capable of doing the most sophisticated tasks, the general perception is that not only will they be assigned the mundane stuff that we’d gladly delegate to our steel and wire buddies but eventually even our own jobs. Indeed, politicians and social commentators believe this has already started to […]
The Kray Twins ruled the Hoxton area with a rod of iron in the 1960s but none so notorious as the Elizabethan dueling thespians Ben Jonson (playwright) and Gabriel Spenser (actor) who dished out their own brand of violence on that fateful day on Sept 22nd 1598. Jonson was a distinguished playwright, poet and literary […]
A STREET ARTIST on Shaftesbury Avenue in the West End chats to a passer by while trying to pull in customers. His painting of Bob Marley in the foreground a prominent sign of his talent and acting as a portrait sized calling card. Photo (above) by Eddie Saint-Jean, title photo by Pedro Szekely via Flickr […]
The Kingly Square restaurant and cafe complex in Carnaby Street is the area’s best kept secret. If travelling from Oxford Circus tube, a tiny side street off Foubert’s Place will lead straight into the square and you’ll find yourself spoilt for choice in a wonderland of eateries. From Peruvian restaurant Super Ceviche to the Caribbean […]
Before all you distance runners out there pull on your jogging trainers and snap on your fitbits for your weekly run, ever wondered where the word marathon came from and why it’s the longest endurance race in the Olympics? Well on this day in 490 BCE the Greek and Persian forces met on the plain […]
ON THIS DAY on the evening of September 5th 1666 The Great Fire of London caused its greatest destruction. It began in the bakery of Thomas Farriner on Pudding Lane near London Bridge. On September 2nd the first flames swept westwards through the City of London and would eventually damage 90 per cent of the […]
Hillary Clinton Graffiti/Painting Shoreditch By Street Artist Pegasus
