The Victorian Afternoon Tea at the Victoria and Albert Museum had me at seed cake. These two words always bring my childhood back in a whoosh of nostalgia wrapped in a cocoon of Englishness. If seed cake was good enough for Bilbo Baggins and his Unexpected Party, then it’s good enough for Londoness. And thanks
As London revs its engines to re-open after lockdown, I speak to the famous English dandy Beau Brummell. He shares his favourite London secrets and tells me how he would like to have tea with the Duchess of Cambridge. Where do you buy those exceedingly good cravats? I like to shop in Regent, Bond, Jermyn,
The Palace of Westminster, or Houses of Parliament as it’s commonly referred to, is one of London’s ultimate tourist hot spots, even if Big Ben is hibernating for the next three years whilst he gets a makeover. When I first arrived in London in the late 1980s, I would count the days until megalomaniac MP
If you’ve been watching Victoria Series 3, then you’ve recently come across Henry Cole, Prince Albert’s wingman in the creation of the visionary Great Exhibition of 1851. What you probably didn’t know is that the exhibition, dubbed The Greatest Show on Earth and housed inside the glittering Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, would one day
Bankside was once a cacophonous pleasure zone with brothels, bear-baiting, gaming dens and four Tudor theatres: The Globe, The Rose, the Swan and the Hope. Shakespeare and Dickens lived here. Samuel Pepys watched the Great Fire light up the London sky from here in 1666. So, if you’re visiting London, make sure you visit Bankside
You probably know by now that I am too many nationalities to list and that I was “Born in Paris and Made in London.” I am a true Londoner now, a multi-cultural, multi-national mish-mash, and this city truly is where I belong. I’ve been a Londoner since 1988 (with a leave of absence in the