Good afternoon and welcome to Capital Letter, our guide to all that is notable about life in London. We are back in Soho after a summer of intermittent visits to the office on Archer Street, and everything seems to have got swisher, which is exciting for those of you who like chi-chi Scandinavian fashion brands, concept restaurants and having opinions about concept restaurants – which we do, at least some of the time.

We are welcoming pitches for this newsletter, so do make yourself known to editorial@the-fence.com if you’ve got something sweet for us.

If you want to read the latest print magazine – which really is very good – you should know that we are down to our last box at the depot in East Sussex. You can buy one here.

Jimmy McIntosh, the Pintlord himself, is one of our most beloved contributors. We asked him to write no more than 500 words on Kensington. He replied, ‘I am simply unable to describe the beauty of Kensington at such a word count.’ So he’s gone quite a bit longer, and we’ve printed that below, in full.

In Lucian’s Footsteps

In December of 2022 I started a new job, writing copy for a women’s handbag company. Not counting a demoralising and depressing part-time stint as a clerk for a gas and heating company in Motspur Park, it was the first time I had worked in an office, and I was looking forward to indulging in all the things that a Proper Job entailed: having sparkling water on tap; coming in hungover and spending the day hiding in the toilet; making off-colour remarks at the work Christmas party. But what I was perhaps most looking forward to was the fact that my new job was located in the enigmatic bosom of central Kensington.

It’s an area that has always fascinated me; at once both magnificent and beautiful, but also utterly uninhabitable for someone of my means and tax bracket. Kensington as a borough wears many hats, depending on who you are. It’s as much a byword for bougie boredom or gaudy Arab wealth as it is for London noir or old-school eccentricity. There are stately Georgian squares, there are council houses, there are kebab shops that nod to the minimalist Berlin techno scene. My own connection to it has been long and varied. When I was a child, it was all hi-vis and hand-holding on school trips up to one of the borough’s many museums. As a teenager I’d hop the District line from south-west London to Notting Hill: to Carnival, to the overpriced vintage shops, to get hooned underage in the weird sand-filled tiki bar that’s now a Foxtons. In my 20s, I dated a woman who lived on the Warwick Road estate; the great municipal garden residence in the sky and maybe the closest thing we have in the capital to the perspectival nuttiness of Chongqing. And then, at the age of 31, with an hour’s lunch break each day to myself I started to do what any self-respecting Sinclairophile would do, and aimlessly pounded the pavement in every direction after my midday meal, to see what there was to see.

The route I’d often drift into would take me down from the southern end of Kensington Church Street, once home to Biba, Bus Stop, and a myriad other groovy boutiques in the 60s, back when it was as cool as the King’s Road. Today it’s a rather more bland mélange of tea rooms and antique shops, but there’s still a few sites of interest: Rino’s little Italian café, Maggie Jones’s restaurant, a blue plaque for – of all people – Emile Ford, the former Civet Cat pub on the corner (spy the little black feline statuette where the hanging sign would have been) and then, of course, the neo-gothic splendour of St Mary Abbots, tallest spire in London and the great guardian of Kensington High Street.

Here is a list of all the celebrities I’ve ever seen on Kensington High Street: Nick Cave, Emily Maitlis, Sienna Miller, Peter Hitchens, that Irish guy from TikTok who stands next to people and delivers droning Hibernian monologues. But beyond the heavy hitters, Kensington is the perfect place to people-watch in general, and there are few places better than Montparnasse Café on Thackeray Street, where the next section of my stroll would normally take me past. It’s also here where you can first spot what, for me, is the defining feature of this part of the borough, the negative space at the backs of mansion blocks. There’s something almost Parisian – and definitely voyeuristic – about the usually hidden fire escapes and sash windows in full view of the road, the result of angular and haphazard planning as competing moody developers in the 1800s refused to let their streets connect up with each other.

Turn down Ansdell Street – up until recently the incongruous site of the SET artists’ studios – into St Alban’s Grove, and down Stanford Road, which surely must be one of the most architecturally alluring roads in all of London. Then, at the end of the street lies one of my favourite runs in London: a hidden, mewsy wonderland that takes you through the imposing Cornwall Gardens, under the arch at by the Dial House, down an untouched cobbled street, through a verdant alley, and into Lexham Gardens – a massive, Italianate strip of hotels where you can also find the fantastic 70s-built Bosnian embassy.

Once you hit the borough bisector of Cromwell Road, I like to head east to the Gloucester Road area, a glorious slice of Old London with its launderettes and luggage shops and Asian restaurants in hotel basements. If – as was often the case if I was getting the Piccadilly line home – I was doing this walk after work, I’d then head south and sink a few at The Anglesea Arms, a surprisingly decent pub beloved by wealthy Euros and Hooray Henrys alike. Contrary to popular belief, Kensington as a borough has some wonderful and varied establishments – from proper boozers like The Rose & Crown, The Crown, The Pig & Whistle or The Stewart Arms, to genuinely delicious and welcoming gastropubs like The Latimer, The Blue Stoops and The Churchill Arms.

As I’m writing this the leaves are starting to fall and the nights are drawing in. Kensington persists through all seasons; a place to invigorate the soul, to inspire the same sorts of misty-eyed prose that Wordsworth felt compelled to write on Westminster Bridge. Yes, I will never be able to afford to live here but, at least for an hour a couple of times a week, Kensington feels mine.

All the Fun of the Fair

‘You name ’em, they were an Academician’; ‘You’d expect the South London Gallery to know its art onions – and you’d be right’; ‘Hoooo, mama, the National Gallery is full of huge names.’

No, this isn’t our list of back-to-school conversation starters, crafted to ensure our ejection from London’s art world in time for Frieze week. These are verbatim quotes from a new list of the purported 35 best art galleries in London, published by Time Out last week.

There is plenty to unpack here, and unpack it we will, but the top line is clear: by reading our humble yet plucky fortnightly dispatch, you are in the absolute right place for intel on what’s worth seeing in London’s complex and often closed-off galleryland.

As for the guide’s content, we demand a recount. Writing a definitive gallery guide for London is an impossible task – but Time Out’s mingling of esoteric and physically tiny commercial galleries, megadealers and monolithic institutions makes for a confusing read. To recommend the hyper-conceptual, fashion-adjacent gallery Rose Easton – failing to mention its handful of neighbours that, taken together, make Bethnal Green a recommendable art locale – above Tate Britain feels disingenuous. Notable snubs include Auto Italia, Sir John Soane’s Museum and the V&A East Storehouse.

In the last year, all of the galleries listed – and hundreds of others in London – have hosted some shows worth seeing and some better avoided.

Our recommendations? Two banging video-based presentations in east London, both of which finish this Sunday. Start at the Chisenhale for Jasper Marsalis’ Still Life, an eerie audiovisual exhibition in which live streams from IP cameras installed in areas of natural beauty give pause for reflection on the show’s titular artistic tradition. At the other end of the Mile End Road (along which you’ll find endless samosa opportunities), a selection of films by John Smith – the septuagenarian artist whose 2024 work Being John Smith gained him legendary status among a younger generation of artists – will be showing at the Whitechapel Gallery. Bon appetit!

Singing Lager Lager Lager Lager

It feels almost illicit to write something about beer when we have our pints correspondent writing about his west London wanderings, but we simply cannot help ourselves. Everyone has an opinion about the best pubs in the capital, and this newsletter has certainly shared a few, but we think we might have identified the best pint in the city, and in a somewhat unlikely locale.

Superette is on Swain’s Lane, just off the western exit to the Heath. It is an overpriced grocery store of the type you might be able to picture in your mind with your eyes shut: it sells decent sandwiches for a tenner, stacks cans of Perelló olives and carries the St. JOHN range of wines at a steep mark-up. Outside there are a number of stools and benches where Carhartt beanie boys and clipped Highgate housewives meet for coffees and chats.

This is not a promising place for ambrosial cheer, yet for reasons we are yet to fully establish, they offer pints of Pils for £6 only, and serve them in specially frozen glasses. With the sun set to shine in September, you might perch uneasily on one of the stools, taking in the foot traffic of the Swain’s Lane croisette, and gulp the last of the summer. And we should add that the staff are absolutely lovely too.

In Vino Veritas

If you’re the sort of person who harbours an inadvisable wine habit, everyone knows that Andrew Edmunds has long been the lodestar for the capital’s oenophiles. But we have to say that there is competition from anoth place in town, at Tufnell Park’s Authentique. The bottle shop is well-stocked, but the real gems can only be drunk with food, and have a gander at the groupings of Trevallon. The cuisine is really pretty good – especially the set lunch from Thursday to Saturday – but the music is quite loud. Still, this French-run establishment is a reliable throwback to London in the early 2010s, back before the word with the big ‘B’, when the city was the spielraum for the continent’s young thrusters, and wine from the best bits of France was affordable to those of us of inconsistent means (or without an oligarch friend). Excellent if you’re in the neighbourhood, but worth a detour if you’re not, as Mr Michelin himself puts it.

If You Can’t Take a Date, Take a Mate

Many of you will have read the excellent long-read on the rise and the fall of the food influencer in the latest Vittles, which we commend to you here. Might someone write something on the rise and fall of the viral takeaway joints, in which people stand for an hour for hamburgers, pizza, sandwiches and the like. Around where we are, All’Antico Viano had queues all the way around to Wardour Street for the pillow-sized sandwiches that first became famous in Florence. When they opened this year, we had one first thing in the morning, and it was, at best, okay: certainly not worth £15 or the full extent of a lunch break in a long, unbending line. Six months later, and the crowds have moved on: now you can skip in there any old time. Elsewhere, Spud Bros – the baked potato emporium from the north of England – have shut up shop on Archer Street. Yet a new chicken Caesar wrap joint nattily titled ‘Czer’ has the gilet crowd enraptured on Brewer Street. By our calculations, there are now four smash burger establishments in a 150-metre radius.

Might someone dive into this contemporary craze and explain the economics behind it? Our good friends in the private equity industry have quite a lot to do with it. There certainly seems to be a lot of money being made.

Sparkling, English

One thing that people don’t fully appreciate about London is that owning or at least having access to a car unlocks some of the more interesting curios in the capital. One such example is Forty Hall, a Jacobean stately home nestling under the M25. It’s a bleak 20-minute walk from Turkey Street station to the car park, but when you arrive, there is much to see: a beautiful manor house now run sensitively by the Borough of Enfield, lovely grounds with a great Cedar of Lebanon tree, and best of all, the first commercial-scale vineyard in London since the Middle Ages. It’s all volunteer-run, and it’s a delight to see some of England’s old fabric updated for the present age, and in such a charming manner. Do make the weekend visit and crush a cup of wine before the chill winds blow.

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That’s all – please do recommend this newsletter to friends and even foes, in person or on social media, and do let us know if you’ve enjoyed it in the comments below. We look forward to joining you a fortnight from now.

All the best,

TF

Good Afternoon and welcome back to Capital Letter. A smattering of rain has arrived at very long last, which means that an appetite to go out and about should be suitably wetted, if not well and truly doused! Luckily, we have a few tipples to offer you. This week we present our findings from a shack in Epping Forest, the facades of several office buildings, the gods of the Royal Albert Hall and what might be one of the last meadows in London.

As ever, we are always sniffing out the best of the best of what to do in the city, so please do submit your thoughts to all the usual places, not least editorial@the-fence.com. And now, onto the show.

Shacked Up

As the weather starts to reach a reasonable temperature, it’s a fantastic time to venture to Epping Forest for some of the best seafood in the city. Growing in popularity since being taken over by chef Steve Cook pre-Covid, in high summer queue times at The Oyster Shack can stretch to an hour but as the weather cools you would be hard pressed to wait more than 30 mins (ideally you want to arrive just before opening), and can sit it out with a pint from the King’s Oak next door. Sitting atop High Beech with autumnal views of the lower Essex countryside, an order of a dozen Maldon Oysters (£12), a scallop & bacon butty (£7.50), curried mango prawns (£7.50) or a plate of grilled sardines (£9) are easy wins, as is the seafood platter (£37.50) between two if you’re feeling decadent. We recommend getting the train to Leytonstone or Walthamstow and walking there through the forest’s heathlands and meadows (a just over three hour trek), but there is also a car park right next door should you choose to drive.

Promposal

Are we going to recommend Proms? Yes, yes we are, and one night coming up in particular. Somewhat unbelievably the Metropolitan Opera’s Met Orchestra is making its Proms debut next Wednesday – and there are still some pretty cheap tickets left. It is an all-Strauss programme, and we are particularly excited for the middle section, the final scene of Salome (1905), Strauss’ one-act opera that caused a stir on its first staging for its depiction of categorically the best and most beguiling Biblical story (in our humble opinion): that of the 13-year-old Salome’s dance of the seven veils for Herrod at his birthday banquet. Make of that story what you will, but no one can deny the ultimate drama of those handkerchiefs.

The opera is based on the Oscar Wilde play, which was also the inspo for Ken Russell’s absolutely astonishing version, Salome’s Last Dance, a rarely shown and later-Russell film that was recently nonetheless screened at the Rio cinema in Dalston to a packed audience who all gasped at that very same scene that shocked opera-fiends a century ago. In Russell fashion, the film has got Glenda Jackson with black-kohl schmeared eyes and a scantily clad John the Baptist who prophesies from a dumb waiter that a slippery Salome cranks up every so often.

London’s imagination has clearly been captured by Salome this summer, and it seems only right to follow along at the Royal Albert Hall. The last time the orchestra toed its way into the capital was in March when the Barbican screened a livestream of their iteration of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which everyone seemed to go crazy for. The same director – Yannick Nézet-Séguin – is back, and we are very excited indeed. We are also excited to put a past CL tip to use and visit the Gloucester Arms after in the hopes of catching a pint with the relevant orchestra. See you there.

Dry Spell

There remain very few lawns in London that count as extant. The punishing onslaught of drought, which is slowly and hopefully lifting (!?), has led to a series of green spaces that would be better described as scorched earth. But, amid the dearth, there are a few corners that remain somewhat alive. Our favourite lies in Stamford Hill in the much under-appreciated Springfield Park. Springfield Park has been under-loved for many reasons over the years. For one, it is somewhat overshadowed by its adjoining Walthamstow Marshes.

But, in a period characterised by much slander over east London’s lack of grass, we encourage you to push just over the threshold (into admittedly basically north London) to enjoy a downy meadow looking over a set of pylons and a once-swampy view. Take the long route up from Hackney Downs along a shady and majestic Fountayne Road, and then stop and marvel at the steep and silent hill of great grasses down towards the canal. A tempting thought for a forthcoming bank-holiday weekend.

Never Would I Ever

Angus Colwell has done a fabulous job of compiling a list of 50 places he wants to live the most in London. There are some on the pile that seem more obvious than others. Two of his suggestions are planted squarely on a multi-lane motorway, and one of them is literally a hill. Yet the list is pretty damn strong, especially the Marriott hotel in Swiss Cottage shout. We’d also hazard Ironmonger’s baths in Old Street, the Museum of the Home in Hoxton and Lincoln’s Inn in Holborn, which has an enormous Hogarth in its hall that’s not open to the public, and which rivals the great mural that was restored last year in St Bart’s north stairwell. We invite you to peruse the list and cherry pick the best of the options. Please write to editorial@the-fence.com with your votes.

Am I Clean Now?

The controversial ticket going at the moment is for Cleansed at the Almeida. It’s written by one of our favs (Sarah Kane) and directed by one of our least favs (Rebecca Frecknall). It’s certainly a bold choice for Frecker’s last show as Associate Director – as with most of Kane’s plays there is extreme brutality and violence on stage – and marks another big change for a theatre who has just changed Artistic Director from Rupert Goold to Dominic Cooke. The production has been hailed by some and hated by others, so is the famously brutal play worth watching?

Welllllll, yes and no. For our money the play is still a great one. The point of the violence is that it should take us to the heart of the relationships on stage. Kane is an expert at this, yet in this production, only some of her strengths shine through. Mostly, this is thanks to the text and the performances. Luke Cinque-White and Parth Thakerar are an excellent pair at Carl and Rod, and Stuart Thompson shines as Robin. Leo Bill’s deeply unsettling Tinker is also a phenomenal performance.

Sadly, Frecknall’s production just keeps getting in the way of them. This is not to say taking on Cleansed is an easy task. A director must work out how to stage rape, several physical assults, the quadruple amputation of Carl and the brutal operations that turn Grace into some kind of version of her dead brother Graham. Stylisation and creative approaches have to be found for such events. But where she succeeds in making many striking images (with the assistance of Chris Fisher on ‘Illusions’), overall they lack any kind of coherent meaning. In doing so, they get in the way of the point of staging this violence – it should be elucidating, not obscuring. Not always, but too often, one ends up watching the on stage brutality and thinking ‘oh that’s a cool way of making that blood splatter out over there’, which is decidedly not what one should be thinking.

This is only sometimes the case in a production that gets a little lost in its own visuals, obscuring the text and the excellent performers on stage. We look forward to a new era of direction at the Islington theatre.

Buried Alive

London is a brick city. Sitting on a thick layer of clay and gravel, unlike Bath, Bradford or Oxford, our capital had to import most of its stone for its hefty buildings and grand facades, with our only local resource mostly consisting of London Stock Brick, yellow-tinged rectangles made from brickearth (a silty Ice Age sediment that can be used for building once baked). The fringe benefit of this is that after the Great Fire of London large amounts of stone had to be imported, and Sir Christopher Wren, doing much of the significant rebuilding, had a great fondness for Portland stone. This derives from the Britain’s Jurassic Coast – a 95-mile stretch from east Devon to Dorset which features rock formations from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods – and therefore is dense with fossils, which, as a consequence, are scattered among innocuous office buildings and routinely stepped on by backpacked tourists ticking off St Pauls. The world of urban geology is largely populated by retired archaeologists and enthusiastic amateurs who have meticulously mapped sightings across the city, with highlights including: tactile marine gastropods, brachiopods and bivalves adorning the V&A, the aforementioned Ordovician Nautiloids appearing on the flagstone steps of St Pauls, and so many ancient shells (‘Portland screws’) embedded in the New London Stock Exchange onlookers frequently assume the stone is fake. You can also spot remnants of chaotic marine destruction taking the form of gnarled markings on Waterloo bridge, a vertebrae bone (thought to be a Pterosaur) embedded into a wine bar near St Pauls and a swirling 150-million-year-old ammonite embedded into a ‘Jura Marble’ limestone wall on Plantation Lane. Specific locations can be found on London Pavement Geology’s fantastically detailed map, which now tracks sightings spanning the whole of the UK.

Hidden gems

London’s many restaurants, taken in the whole, are great. But sometimes it’s easy to lose one’s lustre for dining out. So, we want to come up with a list of the best non-restaurant restaurants.

We’ll kick things off with a nod to Londis N16, which serves outstanding canteen-style south Asian food. It’s a classic. They’re best known for their Gujarati curries, but their recent puds have knocked us all home and away. They’re taking a well-deserved summer break, and will be back in business in September. A highly anticipated return.

Next up is Centre 151. Formerly a church, the building was repurposed as a community centre to help refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. With funding from the GLC in 1986, they were able to rebuild the location which now features a rather sweet garden at the rear. But it is all about the pho they do, every Wednesday and Saturday at 1 PM. The prep always begins the evening before and results in a beautiful, unpretentious bowl for just £8. And on a hot day, you should follow your meal up with a walk through the park to Dadash, for an iced hibiscus drink that will have you feeling very merry indeed.

Likewise, the ESEACC community centre in N1 – a converted bath house now used to host local events including a mahjong club – is just up the road and runs a fantastic lunch club on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. To book, you’ve got to send them a Whatsapp (07955 834 748), a sure sign that you are in for something wonderful. Alternatively, you can just turn up and plop down on one of their long tables. This week they have pork belly bossam and wonton kolo mee. Swoon!

Please assist our offerings by writing to editorial@the-fence.com with your best recommendations for non-restaurant restaurants.

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It is with two bids for your time and expertise that we parcel up and send off this newsletter for your consideration. As ever, we want your best tips and tricks, so please do write to us in all the usual places. When we come back, we will be squarely planted in autumn, the most beautiful of the London seasons. Till then, sit tight for the next 14 days.

All the best,

TF

Good evening and welcome back to Capital Letter. It’s the peak of summer, which means that there are certain places you’d be mad to visit, but other bits of the city open up for your leisure. The latest issue of the print magazine is looking magnificent, and is about to sell out, so do make sure to bag your copy here.

This week we take you all over the shop. We start with a trip to Ridley Road, before a stop in Limehouse, a dive into Mayfair and then right out into the wild west of Kempton. Much to get done and far too little time to do it in, so we won’t keep you waiting. Let’s kick things off with a lesson on hygiene.

Shopping by Candlelight

Asha Birdi went down the markets.

‘Cleanliness is godliness’. This is how J, a trader facing the looming threat of eviction from Dalston’s Ridley Road market, justifies the thick scent of incense permeating his plant shop. Portraits of Haile Selassie and Marcus Garvey decorate the shelves, alongside homemade shea butters and various potted greenery. The sound of reggae can be heard faintly, echoing through the building’s dimly lit halls.

The century-old market has been forced to operate in complete darkness. Since its landlord Larochette – a company registered in the British Virgin Islands – failed to evict all traders on 31 March, and the building was subsequently occupied by activists, all electricity has been shut off. Because of this, J talks to me with a torch strapped to his headwrap. A personal light source has become a business necessity. Only some traders have continued selling to customers.

‘People have passed away, lost their lives, because of the stress of the bigger heads’, J says. He worries about the impact of the proposed eviction on regulars, who come in more often for a conversation than a purchase, and the other traders, many of whose livelihoods have been built around Ridley Road. Larochette claims that the eviction is necessary due to police reports of ‘ongoing anti-social behaviour’, although the Met themselves deny that they have ever called for the closure of the space.

Elsewhere, the faint buzz of Michael Jackson draws me to another trader, Tony, and the small selection of records he’s chosen to keep out of storage. I spot everything from African Head Charge to Lana Del Rey. Tony has been in music for over a decade, and speaks fondly of a visit from DJ David ‘Ram Jam’ Rodigan. ‘Music is spiritual’, he says. ‘It’s the only place you can go where no one is institutionalising you’.

As closing time approaches, the remaining traders lower the shutters on their ghost stalls and join the occupation outside. Games of yahtzee are being played, with the occasional joint and bottle of Supermalt passed around.

Beneath a blue bedsheet roof, brown crates covered in brightly patterned bandanas constitute makeshift seating. Behind me lies a bookshelf holding donated titles by the likes of Sally Rooney and Jhumpa Lahiri. A patterned DIY sign on the wall reads ‘it takes a village’. By the looks of my visit, it surely does. I met a young organiser from Cornwall, a Hackney resident hailing from Sweden, and many Caribbean elders – all involved in the various activities of the campaign to Save Ridley Road. Later that evening, they would be hosting a letter-writing session for political prisoners.

Hope, as far as the eviction goes, is not at all lost.

The same is true for tenants of Gabriel’s Wharf, across the river, on the South Bank. Many of them have formed an association to preserve what they see as an irreplaceable cultural asset, after having been notified by the site’s owner Coin Street Community Builders that their leases would expire this September, and the current traders would not be involved in any vision of ‘regeneration’ for the site.

When I head down to the riverside on a Friday afternoon, I pass by two specialty chocolate shops, neatly populated by the area’s overwhelmingly international crowd, a microcelebrity-owned outlet selling reworked vintage sportswear and a food spot selling damn good cheese toasties. Outside, a pink Union Jack carries an old adage through the summer breeze: ‘Peace, Love, Pie, Mash’.

I am greeted by Liz and Francis, partners in life and work, who own Potters’ Yard Arts and first joined the wharf in 1995. Their shop holds an eclectic mix of pottery, written word and miniature clay sculptures of iconic London houses. A spectacular model of Sigmund Freud’s Hampstead home is on display for any psychoanalysis freaks. Their presence here is emblematic of the Wharf’s initial ethos of supporting independent artists. Just a few shops down, a gallery collective operates on an unusually egalitarian basis, with the artists whose work is displayed rotating responsibilities over manning the shop every 21 days.

Liz and Francis speak tenderly about a recent visit from a couple who had celebrated their engagement on the wharf decades ago, and returned last week for their son’s 21st birthday. ‘The wharf represents something – there is a slightly old-fashioned, innocent feeling about it. People have cried when we’ve told them it will close’. Just opposite their shop sits Jo, a knitwear designer who has been selling on the wharf for 24 years and cites Helen Mirren as one of her most decorated guests. Dressed in a pristine red polka dot dress and matching hair bow – she is known for her outfits – Jo speaks about the potential loss of her shop: ‘I’m going through grief. It’s like a death.’

Coin Street says that the wharf was formed as a temporary space in 1988, and that it is working with ‘commercial partners’ to decide a new ‘meanwhile use’ for the site. The traders here question why they cannot stay. For now, just as in Ridley Road, those communities whose livelihoods rest on these shops will continue to campaign. Perhaps, in the capital, there are more than a few things that money can’t buy.

A Great Hampstead Spirit

We were deeply saddened to hear of the passing of one Godfrey Old recently, a legend of Pentameters Theatre, which featured back in the 10th edition of this newsletter nearly a year ago now. A positively Beckettian character and a surprisingly good harmonica player, Godfrey was part of what made the small upstairs theatre at Pentameters special. At weekly open mics, he was the star attraction, and he was also the main person in charge of all things to do with props and tech in the theatre. A friend of The Fence who put a show on there noted how, despite his slow pace, Godfrey was the one who changed all the lights and moved all the scenery. He also apparently had an uncanny knack for teleportation. Leonie, his wife and the main proprietor of Pentameters, would instruct him on some change and he would begin to move, slowly, to that effect. ‘You thought to yourself, it’s going to take him an age to do that’, our friend remembered, ‘and then you’d turn your back for half a second and it would be done’. Capital Letter stands for a true hero, whose passing comes alongside the end of Pentameters Theatre. After fighting many a battle, it was finally evicted from its home above The Horseshoe and replaced by a new theatre, The Circle and Star.

The new build involves ‘A 100″ immersive stage screen’, ‘Calm, professional front-of-house’ and declares itself ‘Climate-controlled throughout’ – a remarkably pompous description of air conditioning. In short, everything that made this a rare bird fluttering in London’s theatreland has been winged and clipped. A home for the beautiful freaks of the area has been lost. And guess which NW3 local is now helping out at The Circle and Star? David bloody Walliams. What more needs to be said?

A Peter Ackroyd Special Edition

As is increasingly well-known, the original Chinatown in London was in Limehouse. The original settlement was in Causeway, and by the 1930s, at its maximum size, there were 5,000 people of East Asian descent living and working there. Most were sailors; Lascar, Chinese and Japanese seamen who had arrived and worked at the Port of London. They came to Limehouse for several reasons, including opium dens and the availability of brothels and, later, the concentration of speciality Chinese markets and restaurants. As new establishments sprang up, so did new street names: Ming Street, Pekin Street and Canton Street, all of which remain and are dotted around Poplar and Limehouse.

But the real crux of our fascination is actually a building in the old Chinatown: St Anne’s Church. St Anne’s Church was built as part of a fleet designed in the 1710s and 20s. Queen Anne’s Tory Government established a wide-ranging commission to get more churches into the city. Lots of architects were brought in for the job – James Gibbs and Thomas Archer, for example. But St Anne’s was done by Hawksmoor, and under the recommendation of Sir Christopher Wren and Sir John Vanbrugh. Hawksmoor was selected for his workmanlike and efficient precision, ideal qualities in an architect there to service the capital’s growing population, and quickly. He wasn’t yet so grand as Wren, but he was just as good. The scheme was funded by a tax on coal entering London’s ports – including through the Port of London in Limehouse. St Anne’s was funded by the port it sat on, and even has a maritime clock on its tower face as a nod to its naval links. There are other appealing aspects. It has a pyramid in its churchyard, which some people think is linked to the stone masons. They also host genuinely fantastic music – in June was the experimental choir Musarc’s summer recital, which included a piece in which performers wandered the nave and gently knocked small rocks together. Plus, a reimagining of Brahms.

Slice by Slice

Everyone knows about the ‘American Candy’ stores that litter central London, but what of the extraordinary proliferation of restaurants hawking American junk food? Well, glorified junk food at bistro prices. Spring Street Pizza in Southwark offers a margherita pizza for £28 only. Now Johnny Boys in Stoke Newington arrives, threatening a menu of cobb salads and patty melts. Is this some form of cosmic payback for the bastardised versions of ‘the pub’ currently taking the States?

Door Furniture

For any brave readers attempting a house move in this absurd summer and needing furniture that doesn’t come flat-packed or upsold at Hackney flea, it’s time to muscle up the courage for Sunbury Antiques Market at Kempton Racecourse. It’s a legendary sourcing spot but most people get it completely wrong.

The only way to do it – we’re afraid – is to drive there for the 6:30am opening time (everything good will be gone two hours later) and go straight in. Walk straight past the smattering of jewellery and clothes stalls on your right and towards the large furniture in the far left corner and then make your way round the circumference to the right, circling until you reach the beginning. Many stalls change weekly, but be sure to seek out Rusty for some vintage stoneware, and the sellers in the far-right corner are always rather good, especially for some Italian ceramics. Take cash (more than you think you need), a few large totes, and if you’re planning a big haul, leave items with sellers as you go and take photographs to identify where they are for later – it’s a maze so it will be impossible to remember if you don’t. If you buy anything really big they have a (fairly) reasonably priced delivery service onsite, but you have to be ready to receive it as (especially if it’s in London) they will probably deliver the same day. The early wake-up and sunny weather (none of the furniture is covered so it’s a rather miserable activity in the rain) make August the perfect time to take it on and you can end up back in central London by 9 AM. The next fair is next Tuesday: 11 August. Grab a motor, take your friends and get on down.

Sweetie Darling

With the depressing news that Harvey Nichols is being sold to potential buyers including Poundland’s owner Gordon Brothers and Mike Ashley, it joins the ranks of diminishing or disappearing boutique department stores in the capital – with Fenwick shuttering in 2024 and Browns moving from its iconic Moulton Street location in 2021. These curated, cult multistorey meccas used to be behemoths of the capital’s fashion scene, with the potential to launch careers (John Galliano famously sold out his graduate collections at Browns) as well as cementing London as a major player alongside glossy shopping destinations like New York, Paris and Milan. However now Net-a-Porter, Mytheresa and Farfetch have duly taken over, we fear this may be it for the bougie department store. Liberty is still quite buzzy, albeit with a smaller selection that caters more to trends than taste; Browns’ new location offers its classic array of zeitgeisty brands at a hefty price tag (also see Dover Street Market), and Selfridges and Harrods are too large to bear thinking about. At least it is immortalised in the Ab Fab annals. Still – is there a future for the department store in the age of internet shopping? Let us know your thoughts via the usual channels.

Rus in Urbe

As we’ve detailed here before, there is loads of countryside in London – great rolling fields of the stuff, not just parks and heaths and what have you. There are working farms and great barns of ancestral peace, totally inaccessible to the cagouled masses.

There are villages too, most famously Harmondsworth, right next to Heathrow Airport, but we’ll recommend a visit to somewhere considerably more bucolic. Walton-on-the-Hill is tucked just within the M25, which means that’s in the capital, not in Surrey as the spods claim.

If you get the train to Tadworth from London Bridge, you’ll find yourself in the North Downs in about 45 minutes; then you can yomp over to Walton, and take a visit to one of the most special pubs in the south of England. Known as ‘The Rat’ to locals, The Bell has got a perfectly preserved pre-war interior and can be found at the end of the lane. Will you go this weekend? We would if we were you.

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And so we call things quits for this week’s edition of Capital Letter. As always, you can continue the good times by signing up for our sister newsletter, Off the Fence, or even our figurehead: the magazine itself. In any case, remember to keep in touch with us at editorial@the-fence.com and do tell your friends about this newsletter, and spread the good word on social media.

All the best,

TF

Good afternoon and welcome back to Capital Letter. On the docket this week is a roving conversation with London’s most unreliable narrator and faithful ruler of a north London institution, several ventures to the ICA, a gin and tonic beneath Wigmore Hall and a jaunt to Exmouth Market, plus much else besides.

London continues to look dashing …

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Good afternoon and welcome back to Capital Letter.

We continue to swelter in this heat but have begun to find some good means of dealing with the issue which, of course, we shall share with you forthwith. But it’s hard to get too down on the weather at the moment, because this London summer is just feeling so good right now.

Maybe it’s a successful (for now) World Cup run, maybe it’s the onset of the July sale season, maybe it’s because several boxes of new issues of a certain magazine just came through our doors, who knows? But whatever it is, we have been absolutely gliding through the concrete jungle of late. As ever, we remain dedicated to the city, attempting to make sure your London looks as little like this and as much like this as possible.

So, to that end we’ve got a defence of something that’s horrible, some deep history and plenty of drinking, dancing and merriment. We begin, however, with the obvious.

Beat the Heat

Everyone’s been doing it and they’ve been doing it badly. Just take some of the Guardian’s recent advice on staying cool, which has included ‘Get a fan and shut curtains’ and even ‘stick to the shade – of a tree if you can’ which is both a horrible piece of syntax and the most obvious advice you could conceive of. And there are plenty of such obvious things we know you already do as you navigate the capital in the heat. Now is the time to weave in and out of shops with good air conditioning and avoid the Tube, but you knew that.

All the same, the relentless UVs and rising temperatures insist on themselves, and there are, in fact, some genuinely great places to know about as we move into summers of perma-heat.

Crucial for a good drinking experience in this heat is a lack of others, outdoor spaces and clean pissers: Quinns, for example, is a phenomenal drinking establishment but in this weather those toilets are to be avoided. It’s the kind of weather that almost makes you lament the closure of Mayfair’s Below Zero Icebar, a terrible place to be sure, but a drinkery with a temperature set at -5C sounds ideal at the moment. So, where to go?

North Nineteen (unsurprisingly located in N19) has a quite wonderful new terrazza, elevated above the pub and exposed to the cooling airs of Finsbury Park so you can drink and smoke without the glare of the sun roasting you. They have iced margaritas and palomas available for £11 only and a panoply of screens, so it’s best avoided on game day, but it’s for our money the best summer pub in London.

You’ll also be needing good eats that are cold. Any idiot can chill a drink, but if you eat cool too, you’re laughing. And probably your best move is to find your nearest set of cold noodles. We know that may sound a bit odd, but if the Spanish are allowed to get away with gazpacho, why shouldn’t our Asian brethren do the same? Xi’an Impression is a serious winner for us on this front. If you’re in a noodle mood, it’s always wise to stop at Master Wei’s – although it might be one to book given their popularity. They have, in our humble submission, the best smacked cucumber in the capital.

What, once fed and quenched, does one then do with oneself? The ponds in Hampstead have become truly overcrowded, the queues entering meme-levels of absurdity. So if you are wanting to swim, instead make your way to Stokey’s West Reservoir. For those of you east, take advantage of the newly opened Arvo Sauna in Walthamstow offering a heatwave sale of £5 ice baths. And heading back centrally, the British Library has brilliant air con, whether you’re frequenting the reading rooms or visiting the well-curated Welcome Collection – the first dedicated exhibition to artist and campaigner Audrey Amiss opens tomorrow. The ICA is another locale which is a/c approved. Their series of heady classics from ‘Chronicler of Summer’ Jacques Rozier, a staple figure of French New Wave, looks a good ‘un.

A walk or a lounge in a leafy area is always good, and we are fortunately blessed to be in one of the greenest cities in the world. So where’s particularly nice to head to? If you’re quite central, you can do worse than the classic St Dunstan in the East. Its Instagram fame seems to have died down a little of late, restoring it as a nice place to sit and rest. If you can get inside it, the Honourable Artillery Company is a must-see, sunny or no sunny. A true green oasis right in the middle of the City of London that is both an active sports ground and army base. Getting in is indeed the hard part, so now is the time to foster those smart connections, or begin subtly suggesting to your boss that it would be a great place for a corporate venue sometime soon.

Spreading out from the centre, Abney Park Cemetery, one of London’s earliest non-sectarian burial grounds (as well as one of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ Victorian necropolises), is a lovely place for a wander. Particularly dense woodland makes for plenty of shade, and the surrounding overgrown tombs belong to a characterful array of 19th-century BNOCs, including storied dissenters, a lion tamer (complete with a marble lion), and the founders of the Salvation Army.

Outernet, Overnet, Wombling Free

It’s hard to think of a more comically hateable thing in London than Outernet London, whose vast digital screens dominate our vision and subconscious as we exit Tottenham Court Road station and come here to write this fine newsletter (among other things). This morning we waded past hordes of BTS fans, excited by the return of their pop idols from their compulsory military service in South Korea. They wore t-shirts that read ‘what is your arirang?’ and felt the crushing lonely gap of human distance as we looked at them and knew we could not give them their answer.

But all that aside, what you might not know is that far beneath this surface installation, there is a massive, 2,000-capacity music venue which, we hate to say, is sort of quite good. To be frank, it’s a weird place – you have to descend far down into the underbelly of TCR, and its own vibes are not exactly beautiful. But this is not a place to come for a nice friendly dance atmosphere (see G’s two sets of selections for those). No, this is like climbing into the music equivalent of an F1 car, everything non-essential stripped out, the main goals being an immense audio-visual capacity, corners taken at max speed. We had the pleasure of seeing the great Jazz-trained DJ/musician Squarepusher there, and it was unreal. Like being mauled to death by a jaguar whose claws are made of revelation, or some other such nonsense metaphor we heard in the zonked-out smoking area afterwards.

So the next time you recoil in disgust at its surface protrusions, consider checking what’s going on down below. If you see something good, and really preferably something loud, a trip down into the belly of the beast might not be all that misguided.

Dr Bonewave’s Started WW1 Again

Well, it had to happen eventually, our first serious miss at the Royal Court. We weren’t expecting it, Archduke is written by Rajiv Joseph, whose Bengal Tiger At The Baghdad Zoo we have already raved to you about, so we were hopeful. The play is theoretically based on the three men most involved in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand – Gavrilo Princip (Stanley Morgan), Trifko Grabež (Abraham Popoola), Nedeljko Čabrinović (Chris Walley) – but in truth it has nothing whatsoever to do with the history of this matter. The three boys are not as they were, poor but not uneducated, idealistic activists but rather gullible idiots easily controlled with the promise of food and simplistic ideas about glory and meaning. So if it’s not about the assassination of the archduke, what is it about?

The answer, for some reason, is incels. These versions of the assassins are all virgins, variously confused, amazed and then turned against women. There might well be more interesting ground to cover in terms of understanding modern masculinity on the stage but doing so through the lens of turn of the century Austro-Hungarian politics obscures, rather than elucidates the problem. Joseph at his best excels at mixing dark humour, politics and human struggle, but here we don’t feel he’s succeeded – the result is mostly a farce, and with none of the characters feeling particularly real, it’s hard for the play’s more serious messages to find purchase. As ever, this opinion pits us against most of the broadsheets, and we will admit the audience we spent the evening with did seem to enjoy themselves. But try as we might, we could not see what it was our fellow critics found so funny, ‘timely’ and interesting in this one.

Much better is something that is on for just two more days so move now, now, now. This is a piece of total madness that has flown in from Japan to Sadler’s Wells. It’s directed by Hideki Noda and has a plot that is completely unsummarisable and bonkers: it involves three time periods, angel bones and Big Pharma. It is very far from straightforward, but we found it a genuine change of pace from the sometimes stodgy world of English Drama. Its characters include: Dr Bonewave, Faust, Assistant Turncoat, Mephisto and President Oolong Deathmask. What else do you people want?

Avoid it if you’re a fan of kitchen sink dramas and pre-chewed food; go if you enjoy sadism, Neon Genesis Evangelion or if you are made of something real. More earnestly, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is genuinely totally unique, and certainly looks better than Matthew Bourne’s upcoming show at the same theatre: a version of Carmen that is genuinely called The Car Man. Dear lord…

Martha Graham in London

Let’s stay at Sadler’s for a moment, or rather, let’s go back in time and then stay there. The most iconic dance school in London, The Place, was founded in 1969 after its director Robin Fox went – supposedly every night – to see Martha Graham and her company perform at Saville Theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue in a critically panned run in 1954. But he liked it anyway and, beset with ‘shock, and then marvel and wonder’, set up a dance school specialising in the Graham-technique-inspired contemporary dance.

By then, she was already 30 years into the extraordinary world of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, which had established a break with classical ballet that, along with George Balanchine and later William Forsythe, completely reimagined dance for the 20th century through contraction-and-release breathing. It’s a bit hard to explain without seeing a video (happily there are lots of examples online). Anyway, it is surprising that Martha Graham rarely performed in London in her lifetime: once in 1999 at the Barbican and a few times in the 1970s. However, she is coming back to England, and at Sadler’s Wells no less. The two-part programme is set over four days in January, and it is time to buy tickets.

Perhaps most exciting is Programme A, which seems as if it will act as a chronicle of the events of 20th-century America. The opening dance will be Appalachian Spring, the set of which was originally by Isamu Noguchi, a long-time collaborator – which is, incidentally, kind of dazzling even to imagine. Because Graham had sort of cult leader energy (her father was an ‘alienist’ and she withdrew in later years, racked by despair at the sight of younger dancers and choreographers taking up the mantle of her legacy), much of her work was filmed and systematically recorded throughout the devising and performance process. You can watch most of the dances that will be performed on YouTube, including a version of Appalachian Spring where Graham plays the protagonist.

What’s most interesting is how narrative, almost musical-theatre-y they are, which is a kind of dance that is very popular now. It makes us think of what the LA(HORDE) at the Marseille National Ballet are up to, as well as BULLYACHE, whose performance at Sadler’s Wells in May included a game-show sequence where dancers playing financiers who had committed crimes in the 2008 crash were ritually tortured – a cheerful thought. Martha Graham might be slightly floatier, but there’s always that bitter edge of despair.

Coffey, Like The Drink

We were very pleased to see all of your great coffee recommendations come flooding into our inbox over the last two weeks. We couldn’t fit them all in, but some of our favourites were Colonna & Smalls, recommended by Norman E, Sonia S’s tip to Maida Hill Cafe Gallery (which also carries the fabled sub £3 flat white) and the nod to the outdoor coffee stall EspressoBase at St George’s in Bloomsbury (Adam C). Solid recs all and thanks to everyone who sent some in, our ears are always keen for pitches and tips, coffee or otherwise. Do let us know on editorial@the-fence.com.

Curiouser and Curiouser

What connects a Kwik Fit tyre centre on the Finchley Road and a housing estate fencing in Bermondsey? They’re both historical curios, of course, but there’s something else we’ll get to.

The first of these places takes us into the world of motoring in the capital, which once inspired some of the best modernist architecture going. Particularly good were the showrooms of Stewart & Ardern, who sold Morris cars exclusively. Some of the most impressive were out in Catford, Ilford and Staines and looking at them reminds one of times when beautiful buildings were called for even in the world of retail. A foolish trip to Battersea Power Station’s uniform black-fronted cubes shows one how far from this we are today. One of their more central locations still remains as the outside of a Kwikfit on the Finchley Road, which, although still car-related, hasn’t quite got the same glorious style.

Making the journey south across the river, a much more modest oddity is present. It’s the kind of thing that you would walk past constantly and be unaware of: fences. Specifically, black metallic ones that, when you stop to look at them, are frankly a bit odd. Another bit of modernist design? No, this is what the kids today call ‘upcycling’.

The council estates in the area were, like much of London, heavily damaged by the Blitz, and one of the things that went first were the fences, many of them made of wood or even cloth. After the War, this created an ideal opportunity, as a lack of fences combined with a sudden surplus in stretchers. The two problems were neatly joined together, and the latter were set into bricks. As design features they get a passing grade at best, but if you think some of them may well have carried bombing victims out of London rubble, they do become a bit more exciting.

What connects them is that, to our horror, we found out that someone has only gone and mapped them. We truly felt we had created London’s Only Map and we were very proud of it too. But no, it turns out someone has been turning out some rather nice little items under the name Curious London. Well played indeed.

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It’s all change for another fortnight then; we thank you for joining us. The future, as ever, remains bright and we can say that we’ve got two longer, exciting jaunts for you next time around. There is also the coming of the new edition of the magazine and, while we generally don’t bother you with that too much here, if you like this mail out, you really will love the full magazine. Anyway, we wish you all the best in the summer sun until then. Don’t do anything we wouldn’t and as ever check the map just below the sign off.

All the best,

TF

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Good afternoon and welcome back to Capital Letter. You may have noticed that it’s been a bit warm over the last couple of days, but that didn’t spare London from being viciously speared with lightning storms three nights ago due to what we believe is called a ‘supercell’.

We’ve been hard at work with Issue 28, which is very almost nearly ready, but this hasn’t stopped us zipping up and down the capital. And it hasn’t stopped you, dear readers, from pitching us and tipping us off, which always makes us happy.

This week we have a dispatch from somewhere recommended to us by one Bori M (many thanks) as well as a trip down the Kingsland Road and some deep Clerkenwell lore. So, shall we brave the storm?

Cheeky Bastards

Asha Birdi investigates a reader’s tip.

When The Fence asked if I would head to a buzzy no-phones club in Brixton, I had high expectations. Not least because of the £16 (first release!) tickets or the rave reviews from a Capital Letter reader. After braving the ungodly temperatures of the Victoria Line on a Saturday night and dishing out £20 on two doubles, I wanted a return on my investment. And Club Cheek might just have delivered.

The night, curated by dance music puritans Club Collective, unfurled in a single room with a single dancefloor. People moved freely across a smoky, sweaty abyss of red lasers, unencumbered by the self-imposed panopticon of the modern-day dancefloor. Stickers had been placed over our cameras, after all.

The music matched the setting, especially the ever-changing disco electronic of the headlining DJ, Man Power. To his credit, never was there a moment where people stopped dancing.

Outside the exposed brick walls of ‘Studio One’, the uniform of the day became apparent. Every smoking area dweller was armed with some variation of patchwork tattoos a bum bag and a packet of Vogues (myself included).

But people chatted freely and openly – it was hardly a pretentious affair. Sliding down onto the pavement for a smoke, while the dance floor inside was still buzzing at 3am, two young women told me how the night had liberated them.

Going back inside for our final dance, the music was expansive and ambient, backed by heavy bass, always. As Jaye Ward, a veteran of the capital’s club scene, ended off the soundtrack for the night, there was a sense that Club Cheek had managed to bottle up something special in a place so small.

You only need one night at Club Cheek to know that – despite what the pundits might say – Londoners are definitely still dancing. If you’re on the hunt for a night that feels immersive and intimate, grab your nearest black tank top and get down to SW9 ASAP.

It’s a Family Affair

If it’s live music you’d prefer, we’ve got you covered again, as the lovely folks whose gig supporting the charity Deptford Reach we recommended back in #25, are back at Hill Station Cafe on the 1st of July with a mix of live music ending with LA Family Experience – ‘a dynamic Caribbean fusion band blending vibrant rhythms of reggae, soca, dancehall and calypso with jazz…expect a high energy, genre-defining performance’. Sounds good to us.

Bring the Heat

Interesting little list put together by the National Restaurant Awards, numbered here from 1-100. We’re a little puzzled to see Kiln at 21. The food is pretty unexciting, and all the fire and spice and tattooed public-school-boy chefs playing Biggie albums from start to finish (at ear-splitting volume) feel a little bit last decade. But Mountain (paradoxically by the same restaurant group) is very well-placed at number seven. The best restaurant in Soho, in our view.

Welcome to the Haus of Fun

Is the Kingsland Road the most cocktail-bar-laden place in London? Wandering along its bolt-straight length from Dalston down to Haggerston it was almost terrifying to see the quantity of them, well, over 20 by a rough count. So why choose one from any other? Well, by visuals at least. A Bar With Shapes For A Name makes a bid for your attention with its wordless shop frontage – is it any good inside?

We started with two cocktails, which were top-notch – their version of the classic Boulevardier and their Toreador, a margarita-adjacent affair with tequila, apricot, agave and recomposed lime. The snacks kept up the good vibes – Padron peppers with labneh were a highlight, as were the anchovies and some nice saucisson.

The cracks only appeared in our second round of drinks, particularly with their バター割り (batā-wari), which is a lightly slightly sweet beverage infused with carbonated butter. Yeah, no, it doesn’t work. Their Pastel which we got with it was better, though not a stunner, despite being given cocktail of the year at 2026’s CLASS Bar Awards.

But does any of this make it truly worth the visit? For our money, the best thing about the bar is that it is open very late (till 4am every night) and has some exceptionally nice staff. It also won’t demolish your bank account with most cocktails hovering around the mid-teens in price point (perhaps due to their ‘Bauhaus-inspired’ practice of making the cocktails pre-bottled).

Overall, it’s worth a visit, although we do prefer Latino Hits for liveliness and raw cheapness and The Roses of Elagabalus for quality – presuming you are a welcome customer there. All the same, do head along, just make sure not to sit on their sofa seats whose high, circular tables are far from comfortable.

Private Punkahs

We are troubled by the tendency we’ve noticed this week for young commercial galleries to close up shop when the mercury reaches 30 degrees. On warm days, dealers should be all the more willing to invite the sweating masses into their temperature-controlled, artificially lit spaces.

At the time of writing, veteran dealer Sadie Coles has not made an event of the temperature and, in her cavernous Kingly Street gallery, Yu Nishimura’s exhibition Dislocation provides visions of a hallucinatory outside world that many of us feel too hot to fully inhabit. Climbing the stairs to the warehouse-sized first floor gallery, you hear the low whirring of industrial air conditioning before seeing Nishimura’s paintings.

The Japanese artist, known for his reductive, motion-blurred renderings of blank faces, has become a market star in recent years. This exhibition is sparsely populated with his more ambitious large-scale canvases, which rather than immersing the viewer, tend to hold us at arm’s length.

Nishimura layers multiple images on top of each other to bring about a feeling of peaceful dissociation. In two paintings, rudimentary giant figures sprawl just visible in front of dusky landscapes. In another, an impassive-looking man in a high-collared shirt is painted, in just a few black lines, over an image of a boy playing with a slingshot on a patch of dirt. Both sport neatly-cropped hairstyles, parted in the middle. Alone, it might be read as a man remembering boyhood, but within this exhibition, it collapses into a more generalised, slightly melancholic reverie.

Nishimura makes life look unfamiliar and beautiful. Many recent tributes to David Hockney pointed out the gusto with which he executed his work: he painted a world that he felt lucky to be seeing. There are glimpses of a similar joy in some of Nishimura’s paintings: a tangled bouquet of flowers, a flash of a bird on branch. His world is not a morose one, but it is steeped in confusion and slippage.

Exiting the gallery to join the heatstruck crowds of Carnaby Street, you’ll find yourself acutely aware of the visual strangeness of daily life; the world as a confounding but ultimately pleasing curio.

Blood From a Stone

We write a good deal about theatre here because it is something that London beats every other major world city at. But people are understandably reticent about getting their joy from the stage; unsure of how to be in London at the theatre right now. So, here are our thoughts.

First, select a good show to go to. You are never guaranteed a great show, but you can give yourself the best possible chance with a few rules. If you see a classic play that’s being done in a ‘new version’, avoid it at all costs. Likewise with one-person shows, anything describing itself as ‘timely’ and anything written by or starring someone who’s only famous in TV or film.

Be careful on what reviewers you trust to help you decide this question. Ignore all reviews in the Guardian, The Times, and small-scale online blogs. Instead, read Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out, The Stage, Susannah Clapp at the Observer and, most importantly, Capital Letter.

It’s also good to know which theatres are in a good run. Currently, our safest bets are made at the Royal Court, The Coronet, Wilton’s Music Hall, the Sam Wanamaker, the Young Vic and The Yard. Conversely, you should avoid The Globe’s main house, Marylebone Theatre, Riverside Studios, @sohoplace and everything in the West End. If you’re going to the National, make sure it’s the Dorfman, rather than the Olivier or the Lyttleton.

Let’s turn to the evening itself. Arrive early, 20 minutes or so and, when possible with one or two other people. Head straight to the bar. Unless you are seeing a fun campy show including lots of audience interaction, drinks are not to be brought into the show. Drink before, at the interval and afterwards. It’s also a no to snacks. You do not need a bag of sweeties.

Across the world, theatre etiquette can vary quite a bit. Given London’s diversity, this is true here too. But no matter the form, the key thing about being in any theatre audience is that it is participatory. It’s on the actors to sell the show, but if you’re not bothering to play the game, it’s never going to work.

So, to that end, do please shut up. There is much chat about the young and going on phones in the stalls, but for our money, this is advice for the oldies who seem to think they are the only people in the room, happy to loudly (they are deaf) discuss the play mid-scene. They are also the most likely to leave their phone on which will inevitably ring and which they will be incapable of turning off.

You have watched a show. If you liked it, clap. If you really liked it, clap loudly. Only if what you have seen has gripped you and moved you beyond belief should you stand and applaud. A standing ovation is the biggest reward you can give the actors. Do not sell it cheaply, you’ll make crap actors think they’re good and then we all suffer in turn.

Top Brew

London is a highly caffeinated city, a fact which has been routinely exploited by coffee shop owners to drive up prices like mad. So it is always a pleasure to find a really good coffee at a genuinely good price point. We love Soho Dairy – run by Berwick Street market legend Robin – and also the Cafe Noir stall outside Highgate Tube, which still offers a £2.80 flat white in this day and age. Bonus mention to any cafe operating out of a church. They usually don’t need to pay rent, so the prices are unreal, as long as you don’t mind the company. Still, we’re always on the hunt for the next cup – do please let us know your best ones on editorial@the-fence.com so we can get that map chokka pronto or drop into the comments below.

Radical Greens

Alice Lindsell celebrates one of our piazzas.

Clerkenwell Green, the leafy and scenery trapezium between the Farringdon and Clerkenwell roads, in its 21st century iteration is populated by self-styled creatives, relocated Aussies, two pubs and London’s oldest Italian delicatessen. Old Sessions House footnotes the space, currently housing a member’s club and a lofty-ceilinged restaurant complete with a stamp-sized rooftop pool. This markedly serene corner of the neighbourhood, moments away from the manifest business of Farringdon station and Smithfield Market, spent a respectable chunk of its history being a thriving hub of political dissent – the evidence still visible if you know where to look.

Built in 1779, Old Sessions House was once one of the largest courthouses in the country, its Parthenon-inspired structure rumoured to be complete with snaking subterranean tunnels connecting to prisons and pubs underneath. Guilty offenders sentenced to ‘Transportation’ – of crimes as minor as stealing sheep or felling trees – would allegedly be marched in chains through the catacombs to Newgate prison where they would be put on boats headed to Australia, their feet not touching solid ground until up to eight months later. One of the tiny holding cells situated in the basement still exists – now used as a linen cupboard – retaining its original reinforced door. The building operated as a court up until 1920, and so eminent was its reputation it is immortalised in Oliver Twist, with Dickens (whose first job was working there as a court reporter) setting the pickpocketing hearing at what was then called Middlesex Sessions House.

Just across the way sits the Crown Tavern where, as lore relates, Lenin, who produced Iskra in a small office at 37a Clerkenwell Green (now the Marx Memorial Library) met Stalin for the first time in 1905. They are rumoured to have sat in a corner table which can be found today under a large, ornate 17th-century clock – helpfully indicated by a framed printout underneath.

The domineering presence of the court factored in the Green’s proclivity to picketing, especially in the Victorian era – the overarching cause being workers’ rights, or the lack of them. These were mostly non-violent, save for a ‘physical force’ Chartist demonstration in 1848, where participants ended up hiding in houses around the Green and chucking things at the police as they were chased from room to room. By the 20th century, activity on the Green died down as the growth of the Labour party provided an alternative space for activism, but the area nevertheless remains a symbolic rallying point – May Day protests this year started outside the Marx Memorial Library before making their way to Trafalgar Square.

Clerkenwell is not the only one of the capital’s Greens to brew political dissidence, a 15-minute cycle north will take you to Newington Green where, opposite the playground, an amorphous bronze sculpture stands as a memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft – one of a few scattered signposts pointing to the area’s rich radical history. A longtime haunt for Dissenters – James Burgh opened his Dissenting Academy here in 1750 – it was Dr Richard Price, the minister of the New Unity Church and eminent libertarian, who put the Green on the map as an epicentre for radical thinking and reform. He lived in no. 54 on the west row of brick terraced houses, the oldest still standing in London, built in 1658. A consummate host, guests to no. 54 included William Pitt, David Hume and Adam Smith – as well as founding fathers John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.

It was Burgh’s widow in 1784 who facilitated early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft’s (mother of Mary Shelley) move to the Green, helping her relocate her fledgling girls’ school and find twenty students to attend it. The NGUC sermons spurred Wollstonecraft’s political awakening, which ultimately led her to write the seminal feminist text, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, in 1792. The activist’s unsurprisingly controversial statue may be on the lower end of our recommendations for the Green, but, with Wollstonecraft’s pew intact, the New Unity Church still stands as well as Price’s house, and perhaps destined to be a more popular tribute to the ‘mother of feminism’, is Nick Bailey’s new venture up the road on Stoke Newington Church Street. The Mary Wollstonecraft Freehouse promises real ales, a sprawling beer garden and, as written on the pub’s newly minted Instagram, that by ‘invoking her name perhaps some of the strange and quaint ideas from the enlightenment age such as truth and reason might become great again’.

*

Well, that’s all for now, we do hope you enjoyed it, and are managing to schlep around the city without too much discomfort. If you’re finding it difficult, consider the Guardian’s (genuine) piece of recent advice: ‘Stick to the shade – or a tree, if you can’. Do please keep pitching us on editorial@the-fence.com, even if it’s just to let us know about something you’d like us to cover. And please do tell your friends about this newsletter, or better still, celebrate us on social media. Nothing makes us happier.

All the best,

TF

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Good evening and welcome back to Capital Letter.

We continue this week with our string of great guest contributors but before we get into that – if you do enjoy this mail out, please keep sharing it around and consider the paid subscription, which is the absolute backbone of this offering. Thank you to everyone who does contribute, it allows…

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Good evening, and welcome back to Capital Letter.

It has been an abominably hot few days in London and we do hope you have been managing to survive alright. We’re offering you a sleek issue this time round – for our much-prized paying customers, true-blue exclusives will be your forthcoming prize. As is the beautiful and still growing map, w…

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Good afternoon, and welcome back to Capital Letter, our fortnightly guide to living large in London. Before June hits and your schedule gets weighed down with Zone 2 BBQs, dirge-like children’s parties and jubilant nights out with old friends, there’s a chance to have some quality, clear-headed communing with the city and its possibilities.

We hate to do it, but we are moving the paywall higher up the spine this time around, so do sign up to get the increasingly exclusive insights we have on offer; there’s only going to be more coming the way of the generous. There is, however, still much to offer those of you who’d rather buy two extra meal deals a month.

Today, we have a rich offering. We got London’s hottest ticket and the insider knowledge behind the production and we anoint London’s most vulgar restaurant, alongside a paean to Christopher Wren and some tips on which police station to get yourself booked into, but first, we’re back in Galleryland.

Wide-eyed & Perceptive

Sometimes, a single painting is all it takes to make an exhibition worth the journey. Ring the art advisor and curator Daniel Malarkey’s bell at 48 Russell Square, climb the flight of stairs to his office-cum-gallery, and you’ll be greeted with one such painting.

Sylvia Sleigh’s The Bridge is a panoramic, just bigger than life-sized, painting of a sleeping nude sitter. Her architecture is mimicked by a supple Queensboro Bridge – a rollercoasteresque structure connecting Manhattan’s Upper East Side with Long Island City – that extends behind her.

Painted in 1963, it is a distinctly New York painting: its subjects are stacked on top of each other; the smoggy atmosphere renders the city’s buildings indistinct; instead of the satiny white that cradles Titian’s Venus, Sleigh has painted her sofa in a grubby chorus of greys and yellows. Nothing is perfect, but it’s all very beautiful. (We can reveal that the Guardian received at least one complaint after Jonathan Jones described this dour and subtle nude in this show as ‘eye-popping’).

Sylvia Sleigh, The Bridge, 1963. Oil on canvas. Photograph Eleonora Agostini ©Estate of Sylvia Sleigh. Courtesy the artist and Daniel Malarkey.

The exhibition’s other paintings serve as accoutrements to The Bridge, many executed with a charming naïveté and tenderness. The willowy pattern of the fabric enrobing her Still Life with Decanter (1949) looks like it was painted with more affection than professional exactitude. Robert Wamsganz (1980) appears to be a toupéed, but undeniably beloved, Ryan Gosling lookalike.

These works look like they were painted not by a fuhgeddaboudit New Yorker but by a wide-eyed and perceptive transplant from the more pastoral climes of, say, North Wales. That’s because Sleigh is exactly that; born in the town of Llandudno, she moved to New York just two years before painting the centrepiece of this exhibition. With work in the MoMA and the Whitney, Malarkey’s show marks an almost-homecoming for Sleigh.

If seeing what Jones slobberingly describes as ‘elegant brunette with enviably long legs’ has whetted your appetite for nudes, Lara Shahnavaz’s exhibition Dust at Ginny on Frederick on Charterhouse Street contains some rather heartbreaking ones. Or there’s always, you know, The National Gallery.

La Grand Bouffe

Has any London restaurant been on quite the same speed run that Otto’s has? Not even a decade ago, the Grey’s Inn swagpad was something of a genuine anomaly, a freaky eccentricity to rank alongside the long-departed LMNT on the Kingsland Road, as red-faced barristers and Channel 4 execs wolfed down the canard á la presse with some perfectly serviceable claret while they watched the tableside theatrics.

These days, Otto is jostling with Nusr-Et for the title of London’s Most Vulgar Restaurant, as stars from Rise of the Footsoldier rub shoulders with bald TikTokkers to chow down on four-figure burgers for the socials. It’s truly repulsive, but it makes you think… was it not always the case? It’s decorated like a Home Counties junk shop, and there are girlie photos galore. The obsequious service is ideal if you don’t like the people you’re dining with, but it makes for handy talking points if you’re struggling for conversation. As for the prices, they’re absurd, but that’s beside the point.

Anyway, which former ‘hidden gem’ has burned through fame and is heading towards ignominy? Let us know in comments or via the usual channels.

Shakedown Street

Suha Kidwai ranks the best places to be in the worst situation

Forget Bacchanalia – the toughest reservation in London is now with the Metropolitan Police. So, with 200,000 strictly invite-only check-ins, it helps to know exactly where to commit your social faux pas if you want the best service from London’s thin blue line.

We begin with my local: Islington Police Station (★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆), where I recently experienced the joy of an overnight stay after a protest-related arrest. Upon entry, I was met with a thorough groping, and any potentially lethal biros were confiscated, so bonus points there. Said points were then lost on the slow tea service (special microplastic brew, served in a polystyrene set).

Moving to the sleeping quarters, I queried the presence of a security camera placed discreetly above the cell toilet, but was assured that said camera was equipped with sophisticated cop-tech, which cuts the recording every time someone makes contact with the fixed metal seat. This seemed rather odd, slightly unlikely and a serious breach in security.

Safeguarding aside, the experience was saved by the Islington clink’s spatial planning. An indisputable flow between the mugshot, DNA and phone call stations gives the interior an authoritarian Feng Shui that almost grants the experience a kind of softened intimacy.

Moving on, should you find yourself processed further south – you’ll likely be directed toward Charing Cross Police Station (★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆). Located a stone’s throw from almost every tourist trap in London, expect chaos in the form of an eternal line consisting of the red-eyed, red-faced and red-knuckled.

The food dished up to these folk – mandated by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 – manifested itself in the form of a Quaker Oats instant porridge pot. Whilst I was disappointed in the lack of choice, such a taxpayer-funded luxury (RRP £1.30) must be celebrated as nothing short of a miracle. Unfortunately, the 1984 Act does not cover the provision of cutlery. Instead, I was given a cardboard ‘spoon’, created by folding an approximately 4x1” piece of cereal board in half, which succumbed to the porridge only four mouthfuls in.

The next Charing-Cross disappointment came in their bedding department. Here, bedding is a mere euphemism for an (appropriately) blue mat. Whilst a thin blanket resembling a potato sack can be obtained upon request, pillows are out of the question. As such, should you be invited for an overnight stay, be sure to pack your own three-piece bed set. And a mattress.

The final place on this list is a Station so exclusive, I have not yet received the pleasure of an overnight stay: Lewisham Police Station (★ ★ ★ ★ ☆). Nonetheless, I was able to obtain details from an old friend who had recently experienced the privilege of some 14 hours in custody. He shared that, putting the ‘brutally brutalist architecture’ aside, his time at Lewisham Station was characterised by a slightly more luxurious feel, with the £120 million station boasting not only a far wider range of porridge flavours, but a 30-horse stable – the same as Buckingham Palace. The only discernible difference between them, he concluded, was the pervasive smell of horse manure.

So, which station to visit first?

Now Play Classical Gas

You may remember a previous CL let you all in on which pub you could find most of any orchestra in after their performance at the proms. Well, the same valuable source close to The Fence is advising that the upcoming concerts Quatuor Ébène are giving at the Wigmore Hall (16th May, 3rd and 4th July) are do-not-misses. They are, in the words of this anonymous classical musician, ‘the best string quartet in the world’. And they are not playing any of that woke nonsense either, it’s Beethoven the whole way. We’d recommend getting a ticket pronto.

A Believable Old Curmudgeon

We managed to get a very hot ticket at the start of the week to see Sir Gary ‘Gazza’ ‘Gazprom’ ‘G-dog’ Oldman in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. So, how was the starry affair?

The show starts with a ‘curtain raiser’ – an opening act in the form of Leo Simpe-Asante’s play Godot’s To-Do List. It is bright and funny, and offers a strong performance by Shakeel Haakim as Godot, finally appearing on stage and trapped by an endless to-do list imposed by a bodyless Siri-esque voice. It’s a great decision by artistic director David Byrne, maintaining the Court’s commitment to new writing – Simpe-Asante is their 19-year-old young playwright winner – while honouring tradition: when Beckett’s Endgame played on the same stage years ago, it also premiered with a Beckett-penned opener.

We also understand that the Theatre Royal York, where this production started, is receiving box office from the London transfer, which is more than a nice gesture. It is positively lifesaving for a regional theatre at a time when such venues are disappearing. Whatever we make of the production, this use of star power deserves praise. Oldman made his debut at Theatre Royal York, and companies like Complicité owe their early freedom to the backbone of regional theatre.

Then the lights go down. We hear some music. Big Garibaldi is ready.

For our money, Krapp’s Last Tape is a brilliant, haunting piece of writing, finding a genius solution to the challenge of revealing a character’s internal world without simply stating it outright. It is also a play that contains one of the funniest and stupidest gags in theatre history (three bananas) for people who think Beckett is pure misery.

And Oldman is an experienced actor. His vocal control in contrasting the younger and older Krapp is interesting, his physical timing is strong, and he crafts a believable old curmudgeon. There is also a brilliant lighting design by Malcolm Rippeth which nails the ending: an unbearably slow fade prolonged by the glow of Krapp’s reel-to-reel tape recorder, the light draining from Oldman’s eyes.

So there is, unsurprisingly, a great deal of quality on offer. But by God, do we wish there was a director and a designer involved. Instead, Gazprom does both. The set apparently began as a tiny scale model built by Gazza himself. A number of venerable designers were then brought in to improve it, but their ideas were not fully taken on board. The final product is full of meaningless visual clobber, which feels distracting and overly realistic for a writer who operated with a purposefully elevated style. And this confusion bleeds into the self-directed performance. Oldman nails some sections, but as one acting grandee put it to us, ‘there was no real tension in it at all.’ The result is an affecting story of an old man whose life is slipping away, but Krapp is deeper than a vignette of a lonely grump.

Indeed, the text we are served up is shortened, with several notable cuts. One among many is the original playtext’s calls for Krapp to leave the room on several occasions, both to get a bottle of Champagne (it’s his birthday) and to go for a piss (funny). It is frankly amazing they managed to get away with these cuts given the scrupulous reputation of the Beckett estate. Beckett was fanatical about these movements for a reason – every exit, entrance, walk, stop and gesture tells the story. With their removal, the text feels poorer.

With these shortcomings in mind, it is hard not to think back to Stephen Rea’s performance at the Barbican last year. Rea’s set was unbelievably sparse, emphasising his isolated table and the darkness around him with just a thin, ghostly corridor connecting him to the outside world. His Krapp was also far more absurd and archetypal, reaching deeper into the play’s larger themes.

Fundamentally, this remains a good night of theatre and a brilliant piece of programming, the kind which has reinvented the Royal Court after a few years of relative irrelevance. If you can get yourself one of their £15 Monday tickets (the run is, of course, sold out) we would recommend it.

Staying Sharp

Even as the weather gets warmer, we’re big fans of incorporating a healthy amount of classic tailoring into your wardrobe. Whether you don the full suit or break apart the elements to take up a position in that fashion nebula known as ‘smart-casual’, something that’s well fitted, full in profile and even with a pleat or two just looks so good. But it can be a slightly intimidating and pricey world to get into. We have a few regular hunting grounds.

First is Soho’s Reign Vintage. A classic of a vintage shop, its stock in some areas leaves a bit to be desired. But its suit racks (immediately on your right as you enter or downstairs at the back) are often populated with gems. In-office purchases have included a vintage Versace two-piece with a long-cut jacket and beautifully detailed buttons, a black velvet YSL number and a double-breasted pinstripe from Savile Row. What makes this a good place to start is the variety on offer as well as some much more moderate price tags as far as suits go. You can easily walk out with a brand new whistle for as little as £80.

A step up might take you to Blackout II. The stock here is a little pricier, but it is what you might call ‘true vintage’, that is very little of the stock dates past the 70s, and some of it dates so far back that the correct term is actually ‘antique’ rather than vintage. It’s a nice change, because a quick look around the shop and you will realise how much 90s and even early 00s stuff gets passed off as retro to many unsuspecting customers. The quality on offer is also damn good, although do be warned that the staff, while perfectly amicable are, in a rather retro manner, aggressive sellers. Take a friend whose opinion you trust – the shop staff will always tell you it fits perfectly and that you have to buy it.

Finally, if you’ve got a handle on the Blackout II bunch, Chris Ruocco is a damn good tailor operating out of Kentish Town. This should not be your first stop, nor an idle wander in and out. Come here if you know you want to buy a good-quality fitted suit, because Chris is, as they say, ‘a character’. What is indisputable is his skill and that he offers this skill considerably cheaper than many other tailors. The V&A holds seven of his pieces.

Wren in Sydenham

Where is the best place to see Christopher Wren’s genius?

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Good afternoon, and welcome back to Capital Letter.

The weather has been sublime lately, and it is once again time to get out into your favourite parks and let the longer hours linger. We’ve got some warm weather advice for you further down the line.

For now, the most important piece of news to note is that the Official Capital Letter Map has been recently updated and revamped and the link is readily available at the bottom of the newsletter, just below the sign off, for paid subscribers only. We do hope you enjoy and use it, we’ve included some advice on how to get the most out of it in its new form. For those of you who aren’t fully paid up, we do recommend it, as this is just one element of a growing number of exclusive features you will not have access to. If you truly aren’t willing, that’s okay, and don’t fret, there will still be lots of lovely content to enjoy.

With that in mind, we’ve got some recommendations on music and theatre, thoughts on going out for breakfast and London’s most unlikely spa. There’s a trip to the latest boozer-turned-gastropub but we start with two top tips.

Fait du Soleil

As the weather is wonderful right now, the blue skies are set to continue all over the weekend. If you’re heading to the Heath and you want to swerve the crowds with their clanging blue bags of hummus and beers, then we know just the place, in fact, it’s probably the finest prospect in London, far fairer than Primrose Hill or Greenwich Observatory, and considerably more private.

Go past the milling tourists at Kenwood and head up the hill to the Dairy, and continue onto the tree line, and you will find yourself in the West Meadow, 20 minutes from a Tube station and on such a considerable incline that you will find yourself with few others for company, all while you take in the spread of the city before you.

Many north Londoners try to gatekeep the meadow – now, the secret is open to all.

What’s Done Cannot Be Undone

Located in Hoxton, The Macbeth is an old boozer recently reinvented as a gastropub by Jamie Allan, the chef behind The Plimsoll and Tollingtons. Many food-fluencers have been singing its praises, but is it actually any good? This newsletter cannot be swayed by a PR’s flattery, nor does it look fondly on the ‘pub model’ which restauranteurs seem to have embraced with unseemly haste.

We started with the smoked eel, which comes mixed with crunchy shoestring fries and a chopped egg. It’s a nice, light affair, though fans of the underrated ray-finned fish would be better served by the smoked eel sandwich at Quo Vadis. Salt cod fritters came next, which were delicious. The last small plate was the only underwhelming one: a thin, chewy pork steak covered in a thin curry sauce.

From there, we had the prego, a steak sandwich on ciabatta bread served in a rich peppercorn sauce. Phenomenal. The second was its pork cousin, the bifana. We don’t really care for food fascism, but here the cheese was just excessive. In a meal full of salt and rich heavy flavours, it wasn’t really what we wanted.

And my god, the salt. Taken individually, each dish – barring our pork steak – was pretty great. Eating them together became a war. Our tenacity called for pudding in the form of tres leches, a hulking dessert of white cake soaked in condensed milk and covered in vanilla whipped cream. It was the best thing we ate all evening.

So, is this a place we really recommend? Well, we wouldn’t recommend coming here for a complete meal. You absolutely can come in here for drinks alone, as the front section of the room is mostly for the drinkers. But again, there are better boozers to be had. To get the most out of this place, you have to embrace the gastropubiness of it all, and accept neither half of the portmanteau will be fully satisfied. You’ll find a decent pint and some nice morsels at The Macbeth, but you will not find a full, square meal.

Between the River and the Sea

The new show upstairs at the Royal Court is called Between The River and The Sea, and as the deliberately provocative title suggests, it’s about Palestine. It joins an interesting class of shows that have been on in the capital that have tried to contend with the events of the past several years. Palestine: Peace de Resistance, Walking the Tightrope, A Grain of Sand, In Transit, Return to Palestine, Nowhere and A Knock On The Roof which played at the Royal Court last year. Indeed, the Court’s programming on this front is, frankly, quite unusual. All these other shows – barring A Grain of Sand, which had a short run at the Barbican – only played in smaller spaces. You won’t find them making a West End transfer or appearing on NT Live any time soon.

So, is this one worth catching? We reckon so. Fundamentally, this is a simple, one-person show, so if you’re interested in big sets and spectacles, it might not be one for you. Crucially, however, its co-writer and performer, Yousef Sweid, is an excellent performer. Funny and captivating, it is incredibly easy to spend an hour in his company.

His life, on which the story is based, is equally interesting. As a Palestinian-Israeli-Arab-Christian, born in Haifa and living in Berlin, he is a man caught in the middle. Much of the pressure of the story is about the pressure to take a side, and not really knowing who one is when caught in the crossfire. The play works because, although Sweid’s experience is quite specific, that feeling of being unsure what to say, how to say it and how one feels is an increasingly universal one.

The production benefits heavily from Isabella Sedlack’s simple direction. With a microphone, Sweid conjures up his father, his childhood self, his friends, his children, using it as a prop to augment his physicality. And everything is kept light and simple, a fact that makes difficult conversations with his Israeli and Palestinian friends after 7 October all the more impactful.

The show has largely received its deserved plaudits, although some apparently found Sweid switching between characters confusing… we’re not quite sure how. But there is a fair critique to be made: this is not a starkly political show, its ending is open and rather sweet, and some of the more difficult questions are not fully tackled.

For our money, though, this isn’t really a bug, and it’s much more a feature. As Sweid opens the show by saying that this is not a story about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s a show about his divorce. As the story ends with a utopian vision of the Middle East his son has written for school, this feels like a genuine claim.

Our only problem came with the final conversation with the divorce lawyer. The analogy between his divorce and the pressure he feels to take sides over Palestine feels uncharacteristically forced. But otherwise, this is the epitome of successful one-person theatre: simple, funny, intimate and well worth a visit.

A Slice of Ham, Two Eggs and Chips

How many of our readers regularly partake of a breakfast meeting? You really should try it, for a new panorama of the city unveils itself in the morning, in the caffs, at Claridges and at restaurants like Maison Francois in St James’s, which at 8 o’clock in the morning is packed to the gills with gileted PE buccaneers tucking into buttermilk pancakes and bacon.

Now, Simpsons-in-the-Strand is making a big play for the company credit card-wielding early risers with a breakfast menu in the wood-panelled Grand Divan room that offers the ‘10 Deadly Sins’: prepare yourself for bubble and squeak, devilled kidneys, fried bread and a lamb chop alongside all the usual suspects, and for only £28.75.

On our visit on a Monday morning, the vaulting room was agreeably empty of customers, with only three tables taken, and a panoply of uniformed staff hovering, making the whole affair feel a bit like a deleted scene from The Shining. Somewhat ironically, this is London’s hottest ticket, and we really do recommend an early visit if you want to drink in the room without worrying about bumping into Piers Morgan or Joan Collins or any of the other famouses celebrating their visit to Jeremy King’s latest triumph on Instagram.

But who will be coming here for a 50-quid-a-head breakfast? We can’t see the Voguettes on John Adam Street wending their way over for a gutbusting repast. The barristers – who are very much local to the place – are WFHing these days. For now, breakfast at Simpsons is a wonderfully surreal affair, and we heartily recommend it to you.

Are We Recommending Cafe OTO? We Are Recommending Cafe OTO

Friday night has a bevvy of nightlife and musical options, but here are a couple you may have overlooked. The first is a night of Sahroui music at Jamboree in Kings Cross, an odd little bar/venue down a side street that’s a rather pleasant visit. The music looks promising with a headline act of Arfoud Brothers & Sisters, a 10-piece band from the Sahara (see the video below), and DJs until 2:30 in the morning. More of a classic party can be found on Commercial Road courtesy of Big Squeeze Soul. This one looks especially exciting thanks to the DJ talent of Charlie Dark MBE, a true legend of the scene. Lastly, if you wanting something more relaxed and arty, there’s the donut jam out in Peckham, a night of jamming where (especially post-midnight) a lot of London’s UK jazz scene congregates to play some pretty exciting stuff, all with live, equally improvised visuals.

On Sunday, the ubiquitous legends of UK dub Channel One Soundsystem are at Village Underground. They are an outfit that definitely attract one or two dub-obsessed wrong ‘uns, but they are truly class operators, and a great night of music is a guarantee. If you are dub-inclined yourself, the week after sees the one-year anniversary of Slick N Bobby’s monthly dub residency in Brixton – a unique affair for their dub sets, which feature a live band, rather than just the DJ’d stuff.

Monday night has an interesting prospect in cm.Peace, who are at Cafe OTO. As with all things at Cafe OTO, it can get quite weird, but often in an interesting way. This time, the pairing of a DJ and a sushi chef that together make up cm.Peace are at the venue for the whole weekend, with a big night of music to round off the bank holiday.

Spa Town

The Kilburn High Road is not one of London’s most relaxing thoroughfares. The most regular comment in the reviews of the Kilburn High Road’s McDonald’s relates to people having fights with the staff. The second most common refers to the number of crack addicts there are in the loos. However, it wasn’t always thus. The Kilburn High Road was once synonymous with rest and relaxation – the go to place for Londoners to relax and take the waters at the natural spa which bubbled up roughly where Kilburn High Road Overground Station stands today.

The natural hot spring was almost certainly known to the small community of nuns who existed at Kilburn Priory between 1130 and 1540. It was definitively rediscovered and commercialised at the end of the 17th century when the owners of the Bell Inn constructed a well and a pleasure garden to enable the public to relax. Other wells – such as those at Clerkenwell and at Sadlers Wells – were available, but Kilburn was thought to excel in its charm and rurality. In 1773, a London magazine called The Public Advertiser described the situation thus:

The waters now are in the utmost perfection: the gardens enlarged and greatly improved; the house and offices re-painted and beautiful in the most elegant manner. The whole is now open for the reception of the public, the great room being particularly adapted to the use and amusement of the politest companies. Fit either for music, dancing or entertainment. This happy spot is equally celebrated for its rural situation, extensive prospects, and the acknowledged efficacy of its water.

Today, the only remnants of what was once London’s premier health resort are the Old Bell, which is a Victorian building on the site of the inn which first capitalised on the natural spring and a plaque, on the other side of the railway bridge, just above the sign for Franco Manca, which alerts the visitor to the existence of the Kilburn Wells. Continue your stroll along the Kilburn High Road and breathe in the relaxing atmosphere of the place.

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Well, that’s everything for this week, unless of course, you are a paid subscriber, in which case, scroll down for your newly updated map and some notes on how to use it. Otherwise, we’ll see you in a fortnight, a bi-weekly schedule that is soon to be shaken up, again for paying subscribers only! There’s never been a better time to go for it.

All the best,

TF

The Official Capital Letter Map

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Now, this newsletter consider…

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Good evening, happy new year, and welcome back to Capital Letter. 100 years ago, London looked both the same and very different, and was witness to the General Strike of 1926. Down on the London Docks, trucks and unarmed soldiers (Churchill wanted them armed, Baldwin didn’t) were used to break the workers’ picket lines. Around 50 years late…

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Good evening, and welcome to Capital Letter, our guide to everything that is exciting in London. It’s our last outing for the year, and what a year it’s been. Just gaze at our map, groaning with the recommendations that we’ve doled out these past 11 months.

Remember, there are some truly astonishing prizes to be won on our Christmas prize dr…

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Good evening and welcome back to Capital Letter. We’re hitting the dark-at-tea-time part of the year, and so it is more vital than ever to know that when you’re venturing out into that gloomy night that you aren’t doing it in vain. We’re here to hold your cold hand through it with our equally frozen mitt.

Now we try and keep things CL-exclus…

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