LondonLife – Orchids at Kew…
February 19, 2019
The 24th annual Kew Orchid Festival is underway in west London with displays inspired by the flora and fauna of Colombia. For more, see www.kew.org. PICTURES: Above – Orchid stems (Ines Stuart Davidson); Below – A jaguar prowls among the orchids (photo by Jeff Eden); The Legend of El Dorado in a yellow orchid display (Jeff Eden); A sloth in a “carnival of animals” (Jeff Eden); and, Vanda orchids in a display representing the rainbow river, Cano Cristales (Jeff Eden). All pictures courtesy of Kew Gardens.
LondonLife – Chinese New Year celebrations…
February 12, 2019
Chinese or Lunar New Year celebrations in London – the largest outside Asia – were held at various West End sites including Chinatown, on Sunday to welcome in the Year of the Pig.
PICTURES: Garry Knight (licensed under CC BY 2.0)
LondonLife – Snow day at ZSL London Zoo…
February 5, 2019
ZSL London Zoo recently experienced its first “snow day” for 2019. Pictured are Kiri the Kune Kune pig (above) and (below), Humboldt penguins and Asian short-clawed otters. Fun, apparently, was had by all! For more, see www.zsl.org. ALL PICTURES: © ZSL London Zoo.
LondonLife – A look inside The India Club…
January 29, 2019
The rich and tapestried history of The India Club forms the heart of a new exhibition by the National Trust which opens at the Strand-based club this week. A Home Away from Home: The India Club is an audio-based exhibition – featuring interviews with everyone from former staff, freedom fighters, BBC reporters, artists and writers – and highlights the club’s history and its ongoing significance among the British South-Asian community. Borne out of the Indian League which had campaigned for India’s independence, the club was founded in 1951 under the leadership of Krishna Menon, the first High Commissioner to India, with founding members including Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and Lady Mountbatten. Originally located at 41 Craven Street, it moved to 143 Strand, the premises of the Hotel Strand Continental, in 1964. The club, site of what was one of the UK’s first Indian restaurants, remains an important hub for a range of Anglo-Indian organisations and the community of journalists, writers, artists, academics and students who regularly meet in the premises. The exhibition comes as more than 26,000 people have signed a petition to prevent the club’s redevelopment as part of plans to refurbish the building in which its located. Opening tomorrow and running until 1st March, the display is being accompanied by a programme of supper clubs, artist talks, screenings and conversations. The exhibition is free but ticketed. For more, see
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/a-home-away-from-home-the-india-club.
PICTURES: Top – Enjoying the new exhibition in The India Club (courtesy of National Trust); Below – The India Club sign (courtesy of Jake Tilson); the restaurant in The India Club (courtesy of The India Club); the Strand Continental Hotel in which the club is located (courtesy of Jake Tilson).
LondonLife – A Sunday morning in Canary Wharf…
January 22, 2019
PICTURE: Roman Fox/Unsplash.
LondonLife – Millennium Bridge by night…
January 8, 2019
Looking across the Thames toward South Bank and the Tate Modern. PICTURE: JJ Jordan/Unsplash
LondonLife – ‘Human vending machine’ sets up shop near St Paul’s…
December 11, 2018
A “human vending machine” appeared near St Paul’s Cathedral in central London on Monday – Human Rights Day – as part of an initiative to highlight the plight of the estimated 25 million people trapped in forced labour around the world. An initiative of the University of Hull’s Wilberforce Institute, the machine, which was only present for the day, was stocked with everyday food items to illustrate that fruit, vegetables, meat, fish and cheese bought in the UK are at high risk of being supplied, at some point in the chain, by forced labour. To be seen the university’s campus in Hull on Thursday, the ‘human vending machine’ is part of the “It’s Time to Break the Chain” campaign which the institute has launched to “galvanise consumer power and influence companies to combat slavery practices in supply chains across all sectors”. For more on how you can help “break the chain”, see www.hull.ac.uk/special/hidden-human-cost.aspx. PICTURE: David Parry/PA Wire (Courtesy University of Hull).
LondonLife – Christmas comes to ZSL London Zoo…
November 27, 2018
Christmas has arrived at ZSL London Zoo with a series of light sculptures illuminating a mile long festive trail. More than a million pea lights have been used in the first show of its kind at the zoo which taking a month to build, features 200 visual displays including a pair of giant golden giraffes (above), an 11 metre tall Christmas tree made of recycled Christmas sledges (below) and two illuminated flying flamingoes (below). Historic zoo buildings have been lit up as well, including the Grade I-listed Penguin Pool and the historic Mapping Terraces. The trail, which circles the zoo’s 36 acre site so as not to wake up the sleeping animals, has been created in partnership with Raymond Gubbay Limited and designed by Culture Creative. It can seen on selected nights until 1st January. Admission charge applies. For dates and times, see christmasatlondonzoo.co.uk. PICTURES: ZSL London Zoo.
Thousands of people, including Queen Elizabeth II and members of the Royal Family, attended Whitehall on Sunday to take part in the National Service of Remembrance, this year marking 100 years since the end of World War I. The event included two minutes silence at 11am and wreaths were laid at the base of the Cenotaph to commemorate the servicemen and women killed in all conflicts from the World War I onwards. In an historic first, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier laid a wreath during the ceremony. Following the service, a procession involving 10,000 members of the public who were selected by a ballot marched past the monument and through London. ALL PICTURES: Crown Copyright/Ministry of Defence.
LondonLife – River bend…
October 30, 2018
Looking across the O2 Arena towards the Docklands. PICTURE: Claus Grünstäudl/Unsplash
LondonLife – Scientific achievement celebrated in new Quentin Blake wall at the Science Museum
October 23, 2018
A new work by acclaimed illustrator Sir Quentin Blake has gone on show in the Science Museum in South Kensington. The work, which hangs on the external walls of Wonderlab: The Equinor Gallery, features five panels featuring some 20 women and men from the world of science of technology including the “enchantress of numbers”, mathematician Ada Lovelace (1815-1852 – pictured right; her ‘analytical machine’ is below), polymath Jagadis Chandra Bose (1858-1937) – the first scientist to use a semiconductor to detect radio waves, Sir Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) – pictured with his ground-breaking spinning machine, and pilot Amy Johnson (1903-1942) – pictured alongside the De Havilland Gipsy Moth in which she made the first solo flight from Britain to Australia. London-born Blake, who had his first cartoons published in Punch when just 16-years-old, is most famous for his illustrations in children’s books including in works by Roald Dahl and David Walliams. For more on the Science Museum, head to www.sciencemuseum.org.uk.
LondonLife – World War I remembered in St James’s Park…
October 16, 2018
The last in a series of major exhibitions on World War I by celebrated photographer Mike St Maur Sheil, Fields of Battle, Lands of Peace and Reconciliation – 2018 is a free outdoor exhibition in St James’s Park reflecting on the final year of the war. The exhibition, like the others before it, features photographs of the battlefields of World War I as they appear today along with archival pictures and maps. Mike St Maur Sheil says the theme of his displays – which have reached an audience of more than 10 million and been exhibited at locations including Paris’ Jardin du Luxembourg, Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green and at the junction of Broadway and 5th Avenue in New York – “has always been that time and nature have healed the wounds of war and reveal that what were once places of horror and killing have now become landscapes of beauty and tranquillity.” The free exhibition can be seen until 19th November. For more on St James’s Park, see www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/st-jamess-park. PICTURES – Two of the images on show: Top, showing the effect of artillery bombardment upon the landscape at Verdun; Below, the landscape today at Beaumont Hamel on the Somme with the shell holes and trenches still clearly visible. (Mike St Maur Sheil / Mary Evans Picture Library).
LondonLife – Sunset on Millennium Bridge…
October 9, 2018
LondonLife – The life within revealed…
September 25, 2018
Looking at Two St Pancras Square. PICTURE: Dylan Nolte/Unsplash
LondonLife – A different perspective on the British Museum…
September 11, 2018
Looking across the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court of the British Museum, off Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury. Designed by Foster and Partners, the two acre court opened in 2000 and was at the time the largest covered public square in Europe. It’s glass and steel roof features more than 3,300 panes of glass, no two of which are the same. The court features a Reading Room at its centre.
PICTURE: Viktor Forgacs/Unsplash
LondonLife – The race for Doggett’s Coat and Badge…
September 4, 2018
To be held from 4pm today on the River Thames, Doggett’s Coat and Badge Race is a London institution. The race originated in 1715, and sees up to six apprentice watermen (this year there are two – Alfie Anderson and George McCarthy – rowing the four mile, seven furlong course stretching from London Bridge upriver to Cadogan Pier in Chelsea (these days under 11 bridges) as they compete for the prize of a coat and badge (pictured above). The race came about thanks to Thomas Doggett, a Dublin-born actor and noted Whig, who founded it in honour of the accession of the House of Hanover – in the form of King George I – on 1st August, 1714. Doggett himself personally organised the race for the first few years before leaving provisions in his will for it to be continued. It’s been run almost every year since – there was apparently a break during World War II. While it was initially rowed against the tide, since 1873 competitors have had the luxury of rowing with it, meaning race times have dropped from what sometimes stretched to as long as two hours to between 25 and 30 minutes. This year, the event is being held as part of the Totally Thames festival which, among its packed programme of events, also features a series of exhibitions about the race – titled ‘The World’s Oldest Boat Race’, being held at various locations. PICTURES: From The World’s Oldest Boat Race exhibitions. Top – Doggett’s Coat and Badge (© Hydar Dewachi); Below – ‘Doggett’s Coat and Badge’, a coloured lithograph commissioned to mark the first publication of Guinness Book of World Records.
LondonLife – St Paul’s Cathedral rises over the City…
August 28, 2018
St Paul’s Cathedral and the City of London. PICTURE: Brunel Johnson/Unsplash
LondonLife – The dragons have returned to Kew…
August 21, 2018
More than 200 years after they disappeared, the dragons have returned to Kew Garden’s Great Pagoda. The 10 storey octagonal pagoda – which, as we reported, reopened to the public in July after a four year, £5 million restoration project by Historic Royal Palaces in conjunction with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew – was built in 1762 to the designs of Sir William Chambers and was a birthday gift for Princess Augusta, founder of the gardens. Used by the Georgian Royal Family to entertain visitors, it was famously adorned with 80 brightly coloured dragons but these disappeared in the 1780s. Rumours suggested they were used as payment for the Prince Regent’s gambling debts but apparently the truth is more banal – Chambers took them off when he restored the building in 1784 and they were found to be rotten. But they’re back (some of the new dragons are gilded with real gold and while some are hand carved from cedar, others were reportedly made on a 3D printer) and to celebrate their return (and the reopening of the pagoda to the public for the first time in decades, complete with a 253 step climb), we today publish some images. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.kew.org/kew-gardens/whats-on/climb-the-great-pagoda. PICTURES: © Richard Lea-Hair – Historic Royal Palaces.
LondonLife – Waiting for the Tube, Baker Street…
August 14, 2018
PICTURE: Jack Finnigan/Unsplash
