LDN: HOT OR NOT

It's really true. I'm about to board my one-way flight from London Heathrow, so this last post marks the end of LDN: HOT OR NOT. Tha...

The third of the Donmar West End's blockbuster productions was the sold-out production of Madame de Sade , starring the venerable Dame J...

I was in dire straits - my last day in London was rapidly slipping away from me, the National Dining Rooms didn't serve afternoon tea un...

Transport for London conspired to work against me one last time on my final day in London....hence I arrived 15 minutes late to the National...

The fortunes of unemployment meant that I was able to get to Covent Garden at 10am on a whim - and score a day ticket for a stall circle sea...

Another benefit of unemployment is the freedom to take a leisurely 3 course lunch on a weekday. Thanks to Toptable , I was able to redeem my...

My first day of unemployment and the possibilities for fun seem endless! On the spur of the moment, I decided to join the 10:30am backstage ...

London's oldest spa, the Porchester Spa , was HOT, literally. Sunday mornings are women only, and I was surprised that at 9:55am a largi...

I thought I'd done with Chiswick forever, so I was frustrated when I discovered that I'd have to schlep out there again, on my pre...

Yalin and I both agreed - we didn't dislike Spring Awakening , but we didn't like it either - and we wouldn't recommend it other...

It's a shame that it was only two days before the end of my job that we discovered the nearby gastropub, the Duke of Sussex. It would be...

Burnt by the Sun is a stage adaptation of the Oscar-winning Russian film of the same name. I remember watching the film and being struck by...

You'd better hope that the Warrington was a HOT, given that I was going to be eating there three times in the next week. The stunning Go...

The Notting Hill Coronet still seems to be experiencing heating problems in Screen 1 , its main theatre. Luckily, I didn't have to suff...

Brek had told me to give Altermodern a miss - I think boring was the term used for the Tate's triennial exhibition of modern British ar...

The paintings in the Van Dyck and Britain exhibition were really beautiful and a definite contrast to the stiff linear portraits of his pred...

I love the tagline for the Double Club , a temporary bar, restaurant and disco designed by Carston Holler; 'where the Congo meets the We...

Martin's favourite London restaurant is the old school seafood institution, J Sheekey . The building is split into two - the dark wood ...

Every first and third Saturday of the month, Somerset House volunteers take free guided tours of the building, including hidden spaces tha...

I've got my priorities right - skip the museum, go straight to the museum shop. London Transport Museum is a great place to buy unique ...

In a week I will be staying in the famous Unite d'Habitation, so I was really eager to learn as much as I could about its influential ar...

I don't know much about Le Corbusier, so I thought a talk about his work by Arthur Rüegg, Le Corbusier exhibition curator , would provid...

Dinner at deVille Restaurant, at the fashionable Mandeville Hotel , marked the beginning of farewells with my London friends (sob). Being a ...

Saturday night - opera; Sunday night - heavy metal. Secret Cinema has been on my London to-do list for a while, although it no longer has ...

The famous River Cafe is a London institution probably because (a) it's not cheap (b) it's hard to get a booking; and (c) it's i...

It was fitting that my Valentines Day night was spent in my most-loved London building, the Royal Opera House , and for my last ever ROH per...

Every telephone encounter I've had with Dehesa has always been prompt and friendly, so I already had happy expectations when I met up wi...

As a theatre-hound, I've been lucky to have a pretty good hit rate with my theatre jaunts. Once in a while, though, a piece of theatre a...

The Royal Shakespeare Company have taken their plays on tour to London, and the travelling troupe have landed at the Hackney Empire . In a c...

England People Very Nice is no Shakespearen play (but hey, I'm doing Shakespeare twice this week already) but it does tell an entertaini...

Firstly, I'm uncertain as to why this restaurant was a runner up for Time Out's best design award. The winner of that award, Sake No...

A difficult choice for HOT or NOT, but here goes.... The panoramic views over London's glamorous lights are pretty spectacular from the ...

Alfred Hitchcock's film is given a comedy theatre makeover in the Criterion Theatre's production of The 39 Steps . It's a fun ro...

The challenge with pre-theatre dining is to find somewhere cheap, quick and good. The smaller tea house section of Mourad Mazouz's famou...

As the snows from Russia blew into London, Screen 1 at the Coronet cinema experienced an unfortunately timed heating malfunction which meant...

Bringing the Milanese bakery Princi to London is the new project for master restauranteur Alan Yau, so it was immediately on my to-do list. ...

Tamarind is a discreet high end Indian restaurant in Mayfair which is best experienced on a Sunday. You can go a la carte, but I think you...

Another day, another Time Out Top 50 Restaurant . Wild Honey certainly lived up to its Top 50 rating, with its sedate wooden interior (remin...

If a dining experience was purely about the food, then I can safely say the dishes coming out of this restaurant's colourful open-racked...

It took me four trains to get there, I remained underground for almost half the time it would take me to get from London to Paris, and the r...

Milk is my fourth Oscar Best Picture Nominee film, and I think it is a nomination well-deserved. Sean Penn (also a Best Actor nominee) domin...

The three pumping floors of Topshop at Oxford Circus make up the world's largest fashion store - you can shop, eat, powder your nose, ge...

I don't know why English pub food never developed down the chilli route over the centuries. If I had to choose between bland stodge and ...

Richard Bryant's photography exhibition takes the viewer on a journey across London, from west to east. I really enjoyed his work - he h...

The Courtauld Gallery has been on my to-do list for a while, so I took the opportunity to don some disguise and explore it on an admission-...

When you travel as much as I do, then its inevitable that you become a forex rate tart. I've discovered that the best retail currency ra...

The Wellcome Collection is not one of London's blockbuster museums, like the National Gallery or Tate Modern, but it is unexpectedly in...

We heart Angela Hartnett, so despite sickness, freezing cold and gusting rain, we decided to make a Sunday lunch pilgrimage to her new resta...

I still remember when I first heard Mendelsshon's Hebrides Overture - Grade 11 music class, sticky and sweaty in my uniform, sitting in ...

Dinner at Hakkasan was planned as a quasi-Chinese New Year celebration, but really more of an excuse to work my way down my (long) list of ...

I really like the fact that there is enough interest about science in London that there is a purpose-built building like the Dana Centre , w...

My last ever ROH ballet performance (sob)! In all ballet performances the costumes are beautiful, but in La Bayadere I thought the costumes ...