The lavender growing tradition in Surrey is kept alive by Mayfield Lavender in Banstead where visitors may stroll through fields of different varieties and then enjoy lavender ice cream or a cream tea ...

Clive was a poet at heart and there is an unsentimental appreciation of the human condition that runs through all his work. He chose his subjects because he saw the poetry in them when no-one else did ...

Now that the summer visitors are here and thronging in the capital’s streets and transport systems, I thought I would send you this fine set of postcards published by Charles Skilton, including my ...

You are invited to visit Spitalfields artist Robson Cezar’s studio in Bow as part of Bow Arts Open Studios this Friday and Saturday, 20th & 21st June, at 181-183 Bow Road, E3 2SP. Contributing ...

‘Many of these paintings were made in kitchens, the heart of any house, café or restaurant. Places that are often a repository of things we have collected, things that have been handed down to us and ...

Henrietta Keeper (widely known as “Joan”), the vivacious octogenarian ballad singer who used to perform at E.Pellicci in the Bethnal Green Rd on Fridays, once invited me to round to her tiny flat to ...

Behold, the twenty storey office block that Network Rail wants to plonk on top of Liverpool St Station. Note the height of Grade II*-listed Great Eastern Hotel in front and observe that this pile is ...

Andy Strowman, poet of Stepney, sent me these photos and the stories which accompany them. Uncle Dave came to visit us from time to time. Maybe my mum knew in advance, it was like having royalty come ...

For years, Viscountess Boudica wrote an autobiography – absurd, bawdy and magical by turns – in daily installments. Entitled There’s More to Life than Heaven & Earth (sadly now discontinued), it was ...

My father was born in 1914 in Fort Street, which ran across that site and was demolished to make way for the “new” Spitalfields market. It is strange that the Roman remains we ...

The Leopard is the symbol of the Goldsmiths’ Company. Whenever I walk through the City to St Paul’s, I always marvel at the great blocks of Hay Tor granite which form the plin ...

Many readers wrote objecting to the first version of the scheme to redevelop Liverpool St Station but now there is a new version all those objections have been discarded. If you want to stop this new ...