ianVisits

(c) Sotheby’s A collection of Admiral Lord Nelson’s letters, ranging from accounts of naval battles to intimate correspondence with Emma Hamilton, will go on display at Sotheby’s this month, offering a rare chance to see the documents before they are sold…

An intricately painted Ganesha, a roughly textured Christian icon and watercolours inspired by ancient rock art bring very different religious artistic traditions together in a graduate exhibition.

The third and final consultation on the proposed DLR extension to Thamesmead has, unsurprisingly, favoured building it.

Deep under Tower Bridge lies a vast space that seems larger than it is, and during the winter months, the public can go inside to see it.

The first official portrait of King Charles III in formal state attire, with a coronation robe and an orb and sceptre, will be on display in central London for a couple of weeks.

This is a new linear park near Farringdon Station that opened a few months ago St Johns Street is a historic street in Clerkenwell and forms the first section of the original route of the Great North Road – the coaching route between London and Scotland.

Olde London – Parliament Hill, Hampstead Today’s London news round-up: O2 has struck a record deal thought to be in the region of £200m to retain the naming rights to the London venue the O2 in the largest renewal of its kind in UK history.

All new Great British Railways (GBR) trains will be expected to try to offer step-free access without needing staff-assisted ramps, the government has confirmed.

A date for your floral diary, as tickets to next year’s Chelsea Flower Show go on sale later this month.

In 1700s London, if you needed household insurance to protect your home from fire, you had to visit a place that sold “essence of old shoes”.

The busy, noisy A413 road has been protected from the occasional swoosh of an HS2 train after the final segment of a 1.4km concrete tunnel was installed alongside it.

Did you know that Hyde Park should be an airport?

Coinciding with the final few months of the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition in the British Museum, Westminster Abbey will display what the final missing panel might have looked like.

Old London – Commercial Street in Spitalfields around 1907 Today’s London news round-up: Lambeth Council has confirmed that it is due to review the possibility of introducing a four-day week trial.

Last week, two shabby old footbridges at Hither Green railway station were replaced with one single very long spanning modern footbridge, as part of the station’s upgrade to make it step-free and build two new entrances.

Next year there will be a rare opportunity to step into Kew Gardens’ famously large Palm House and see the entire structure for the first time in generations, totally empty of plants.

Visitors to Regents Park may notice some very odd additions at the moment as the annual Frieze sculpture trail returns.

It’s that time of year again, with Christmas in the shops and fireworks in the parks – Fireworks Night is back for 2026, and in a few locations, the displays still include the traditional bonfire.

A new Alice in Wonderland experience opens next month at Dock X in Canada Water, promising to take visitors through ten rooms spanning 26,000 sq ft.

Lots of companies buy corporate-branded goodies to hand out to staff and other worthies, and oh, look, yet another branded water bottle and tote bag.

Olde London – Clerkenwell Green in London around 1898 Today’s London news round-up: At noon today, Mon 5th October, tenants, local residents, and community leaders will stage a rally outside City Hall to urge Mayor Sadiq Khan to block a controversial rede…

The Mayor of London has outlined plans for a single London-wide regulatory regime for dockless bikes that could replace the current borough-by-borough patchwork of rules.

The soon-to-open London Museum has revealed details of its first exhibition in its underground vaults, going right back to London’s earliest story when it was founded by the Romans nearly 2,000 years ago.

Ground has broken on a long-planned upgrade of Pontoon Dock’s DLR station to add six escalators and reduce pressure on its overloaded lifts.

Documents from nearly 1,000 years ago rarely survive, and the British Museum is currently showing two such survivors.

There will be no trains between Staines and Windsor & Eton Riverside via Wraysbury for a week during October half-term, while engineers carry out track and bridge maintenance.

This is a new alley that was created a little over a decade ago when a large block of post-war buildings was rebuilt into two large blocks, with the new alley separating them.

A community photography centre could open in Haggerston under plans by the Association of Photographers (AOP) to turn its east London premises into a place for photographers to work, meet and share ideas.

The dates for Richmond’s annual draw-off have been confirmed, offering visitors a chance to see the River Thames exposing its riverbed at very low tides.

There is going to be an urgent partial closure of the Victoria line on Saturday evening to carry out repairs to the track outside Brixton station.

An American-based artist you might not have heard of is currently filling a gallery space with a series of paintings ranging from life as a migrant to being alone in a pub surrounded by people.

This is a weekly round-up of London’s rail transport news… The image is from an Oct 2022 article: The Elizabeth line will accept European Interrail tickets London Underground If you had been in Berlin, Germany last week, you could have seen one of the Pic…

Old London – Café Royal on Regent Street Today’s London news round-up: A woman has died after “falling from height” in Elephant and Castle this morning, according to the London Ambulance Service.

The Globe Theatre at Bankside has opened a public Shakespeare library and research centre, giving visitors access to more than 6,000 books and a collection of rare Renaissance texts.

If you missed out on the RNLI’s recent exhibition, or fancy seeing more of their floating base, they offer occasional tours of the building.

The man who painted Sunday afternoons is the subject of a new exhibition at the National Gallery, exploring twenty years when Pierre-Auguste Renoir captured the pleasures of Parisian life — and the flirtations beneath its respectable surface.

Whenever something is built in London, an army of armchair warriors love to point out how stupid the designer was – and don’t stop to think that maybe there’s a really good reason it was done that way.

A Japanese Shinto ceremony has marked the start of construction on the British Library’s £1.1 billion extension, a development that will also reserve underground space for a future Crossrail 2 station.

A couple of years ago, a small pocket park that had been displayed at the Chelsea Flower Show relocated to Stratford, offering a mix of sculpture and bug-friendly planting.

Burnt Oak tube station on the Northern line will be closed for a couple of weeks from late October for engineering works to add step-free access.

One of the few major Turner paintings still in private hands will be on display in London for a few days, giving the public a rare chance to see it before it’s sold at auction.

This week’s sale and discount theatre ticket offers from London Theatre Direct.

A confident young woman in a vivid blue dress has strode onto Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth as the latest temporary artwork to occupy the spot.

Later this month, Diana, Princess of Wales’s infamous “revenge dress” will go on public display before being offered for sale at auction.

Surrey Quays station on London Overground’s Windrush line has opened its new entrance, offering step-free access to the station for the first time.

This is a weekly round-up of London’s rail transport news… The image is from a Sept 2023 article: Battersea Park Station upgrade plans could provide step-free access London Underground The Northern line’s Morden extension marks its centenary on Sunday ian…

Thameslink has shown off a prototype for a new seat design that will replace its notorious “ironing board” seats, which the trains have had for the past decade.

The atmospheric Dennis Severs’ House gets even more so in the winter months, and they’re resuming their candlelit Silent Nights next month Just around the corner from Spitalfields Market in East London, Dennis Severs’ House is laid out as a Georgian house…

On 10th September 1897, a London taxi driver became the first person in Britain — and quite possibly the world — to be convicted of drink-driving.

The Tower of London is launching a new early morning tour that lets you get up close with its famous ravens before the tower opens to the public.