It was (….gulp) 60 years ago today that the Beatles came to London to play

The Beatles were invited down to London for a recording test at Decca Studios sixty years ago today, on New Years Day 1962. (In those days New Years…

Oi! What are you doing down there. Sunday morning pictures #4

These CCTVs are everywhere these days. There are around 700,000 in London and that number is only growing. Each London is captured by them 300 times each day,…

Summer in the park with horse: Sunday morning picture #3

This was a lazy late summer Sunday afternoon on Clapham Common. I was horribly hungover and tired. We were walking the dog and picking apart the events of…

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, revolutionary, meet Jerome Klapka Jerome, writer. Another London juxtaposition.

Despite being painted bright green and standing out like a sore thumb in a row of white fronted buildings, the Albany Hotel on Tavistock Place is a tired…

How to get a crane on top of a building

When I came out of work I found that they had shut Eastcastle Street and a fleet of flat bed trucks filled it, parked end to end in…

The Cockpit: Sunday morning Picture #2

It sits on St Andrews Hill at the head of a 21st century development, unbending towards, nor caring about, the preprosterous tail of modernity that sways behind it…

Amen Court: discovering a secret garden between Newgate Prison & St Paul’s Cathedral

Newgate Prison and St Paul’s Cathderal dominated this part of London for centuries. Both took a few blows during that time; each of them was destroyed by the…

No lion, no witch but here’s Wardrobe Place

Wardrobe Place just off Carter Lane, a lovely courtyard dating back to the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire.

Calverts Buildings on Borough High Street

Calvert Buildings – a little bit of Meideval London just off Borough High Street

London juxtapositions…

I’ve been re-reading Mark Lewisohn’s majestic biography of the Beatles (or at least the first volume thereof; we fans are still waiting for him to release the second…