Image by Mike T in the Londonist Flickr pool.

Woolwich attack

• Government defends the security services over criticisms that they missed signs that could have prevented the attack.
• Help for Heroes donations surge.
• How the attack was covered in the world’s press.

Other news

• Plane makes emergency landing at Heathrow, closing both runways for 30 minutes.
• Meanwhile, a plane is diverted to Stansted, where two passengers are arrested for endangering the plane.
• London estate agents target investors rather than people who want to buy a home.
• Two men jailed for life over drive-by shooting of 18 year old.
• Westminster loses battle over sex shop policing.
• Editorial shake up at local newspaper publishers Archant, as newsrooms merge.

Cultural news

• 93 Feet East set to reopen.
• Love & Marriage theme for Gay Pride on 29 June.
• West End Live line-up announced.
• An audit of London’s commercial galleries finds that only 5% present an equal balance of male and female artists.
• A new exhibition about Shakespeare and London opens at London Metropolitan Archives next week.

Geoff Marshall shares his favourite bits of Tube trivia from the District Line. In which ticket hall can you find a swastika? Which station changes name from one platform to the next? Where does the Underground go over the Overground?

You might recognise Geoff from a recent BBC film documenting his attempts to regain the record for visiting all the Tube stations in one day. Feel free to share your own favourite bits of District Line trivia in the comments below.

See also

• The Secrets of the Northern Line
• The Secrets of the Victoria Line

Subscribe to Londonist’s YouTube channel to ensure you don’t miss future videos.

*Note: This week’s show was arranged and recorded before the events in Woolwich on 23 May.*

Welcome to the latest episode of Londonist Out Loud, a podcast about London. You can listen in-browser, or subscribe via iTunes or RSS. We’re also available on Stitcher.

Londonist Out Loud is presented and produced by N Quentin Woolf. This week’s guest is David Bownes of the National Army Museum, who describes the collections of the museum and the history of the British army.

Show notes by Matt Brown.

Continuing our series of images merging different periods in London’s history.

Oxford Street is one of London’s oldest roads, following the same route as an ancient Roman road. Here, Londonist Flickr contributor ‘Roll The Dice’ merges scenes from 1968 with elements from a similar shot taken in 2007. See if you can work out which parts are from which decade.

Roll The Dice’s Flickr stream is endlessly creative, with plenty of old/new shots of London, photos of London film locations, and inventive street photography. Go take a look.

We’re still after further entries in the Time Travel London series. You can make your image with paint, pencils, collage, iPad…whatever you like. The only rule is that your creation should depict some aspect of London’s past alongside something from the modern (or future) city. We’ll arrange an exhibition of the best images. Thinking caps on, and send entries to matt@londonist.com.

Previous entries, for inspiration:

• Old St Paul’s Cathedral rematerialises
• Boudica caught in a Westminster traffic jam
• Crystal Palace never burned down
• Christopher Wren’s London plans realised
• Spitalfields ghosts
• To Anglo-Saxon Brixton
• London Bridge, past, present and future

So, in this dangerously novel atmosphere of peace and (relative) bonhomie, did we find out anything new? We did, kind of. Boris Johnson agreed with Green AM Jenny Jones that if everyone in London was paid at least the London living wage, the benefits bill would be lower. “Taxpayers are subsidising businesses who won’t pay the London living wage,” she said. “I do agree with that,” replied the Mayor. “The answer is to expand the London living wage.” You can see the full exchange in this video (sound isn’t brilliant, sorry), including an idea for living wage ‘zones’ where all businesses would pay decent wages.

Tom Copley raised the problem of London’s private rents that keep rising in double figures year on year. Boris only seems to want to talk about how rent controls wouldn’t work here – the evidence from New York, he says, is not encouraging, and the German model is based on a completely different approach to the market than in the UK. Tom repeatedly made the point that these types of rent control are not the only options, but the Mayor’s thinking (publicly, at least) seems to polarised between rent controls (bad) and building more homes (good).

Boris also acknowledged that it would take at least ten years to build enough homes to take the pressure off our insane housing market (and we think ten years is optimistic). And on that note… Nicky Gavron asked about the approx. 177,000 planned homes in large developments that are currently stalled. The government is allowing renegotiations on the amount of affordable housing (in other words, reduce it) to get those developments going. The Mayor said that when it comes to affordable housing, he’d rather see a percentage of something than nothing at all.

However, Nicky cited a report that found affordable housing wasn’t a barrier; so reducing the amount of affordable housing is just handing developers more profit and not helping Londoners get a home without selling a kidney. She then read something from a large developer, that we presume has been leaked:

“Across the group, we are focusing on maximising value rather than driving volume.”

In translation: rationing supply – landbanking – to artificially drive up prices. Boris described such practices as “pernicious” and said he’s willing to use compulsory purchase orders where there are clear cases of landbanking:

To constrict supply to push up prices is clearly against the economic interests of this city.

Caroline Pidgeon wanted to know if Boris would consider bringing Crossrail under the TfL banner after revealing the company has spent £320k on photography and video, £900k on staff training and £1k on cake. We’re not sure we should quibble over training (though we’d like some of that cake). Boris had a waffle and then said yes, he’d like to see Crossrail brought into TfL.

Jenny Jones questioned the Met police’s plan to buy water cannon, then the costs of storing and training officers to use the things if, as Boris said, the chance of them ever being used is “vanishingly small”. Well, said the Mayor,

I’m in favour of having of having a nuclear deterrent but not of using it!

which is perhaps not the strongest argument with which to convince a Green…

Tony Arbour got an unexpected positive response about his urging for the Met to introduce Track my Crime; and there was something about the future Ultra Low Emission Zone being constructed so the New Bus for London (which runs partly on diesel) would be exempt, which Stephen Knight wasn’t happy about, but that’s where the live webcast started to break up and the archived webcast arbitrarily cuts off before then. Technology, eh?

You can watch the webcast – minus the last half hour of the session – on the GLA website. Find out how to watch MQT in person, which is probably what we should have done.

Photo by {Laura McGregor} from the Londonist Flickr pool

Aerial footage of the City of London at night from JasonHawkes on Vimeo.

Aerial photographer Jason Hawkes has posted this short video, taken during a flight over the Square Mile’s skyscrapers last night. Of note are the nearly topped-out Cheesegrater and Walkie-Talkie towers which, as we saw last month, are now dominant on the skyline.

If that doesn’t sate your desire for birds-eye views of London, see Jason’s aerial shots of other parts of the capital. We also recommend a visit to his website, where you can buy his books.

Jonna Lee and iamamiwhoami

When iamamiwhoami (that’s: i am – am i – who am i) first started chucking bonkers videos upon an otherwise unsuspecting YouTube population in December 2009, nobody – and that includes the Swedish group themselves – imagined they’d become an obsession for an electro-pop generation, racking up nearly 23 million YouTube views for their releases and playing to a standing ovation at London’s Southbank Centre.

Previously operating exclusively online, iamamiwhoami’s debut physical release last year, kin, paved the way for the bundling of their early series of works, bounty, as a tangible commodity. The new-of-sorts album comes out here next month and gives founder, Jonna Lee, and her fellow members of this troupe of audio-visual magnificence an excuse to return to London for a special show at Electric in Brixton. Here we talk to Lee about bounty, her relationship with her fans and performing live in London.

The show at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall last year was your first non-festival gig. You and the band seemed a bit taken aback by the overwhelming response from the audience. What was that experience like for you?
It was quite emotional and, yes, overwhelming, to be honest, being so close to the audience. And, yes, it was different to the other shows we had performed so it was quite amazing and it felt like a rare and unique moment.

Were you surprised by the standing ovation you got?
Yes but also relieved because we have never played to a sitting-down audience before.

And were you aware that the venue would be a seated one?
We wanted to try and do that because it is always interesting to challenge yourself with different venues and I hadn’t really thought too much about it becoming a big change and it was only once I stood there that I realised: yeah, this is something else.

Similarly, while your other European dates are festival shows this summer, we’re getting a headlining performance here. Do you feel that you have a particular connection with the London audience which warrants this special treatment?
[laughs] We have roots in England. There is a sense of home about London, to me. You folks are a lot like us so I guess, yeah, that’s why we are coming back. I enjoyed our performance there.

You previously said that kin was inspired by your first encounter with your audience at iamamiwhoami’s Way Out West festival appearance in 2011. Have subsequent live experiences such as your Queen Elizabeth Hall gig had any effect on your current songwriting?
Well, I don’t know yet because I haven’t come to the process of letting all of that go and working on new material, because we are doing the bounty delivery, the release of it. So I’m sure it definitely will have an effect on me because this whole release has been a big difference, for me and for the project. You know, playing concerts and being so close to… seeing the reactions of people, not having that distance. So it will definitely show.

For your first London gig you opened the set by inviting one of your most prominent YouTube tribute artists, Unplugged70,  to perform. There’s always been a strong link between iamamiwhoami and its fans. Have you considered involving fans in some way in any of the forthcoming gigs?
I have not thought… well, how to say it… there must be a purpose for everything, as I always say in interviews manically [laughs]. There was… it felt so natural having him there because he’s English, first of all. Or, Scottish. And I just wanted him to open it. I couldn’t see it any other way. What will happen at this show I can’t say at this point [after our interview it transpires that Rex The Dog will be opening for the band at Electric]. But fans will always be involved in one way or another. And I like seeing them in real life.

How did you approach plotting the live shows for the bounty release era?
Well, when we started the tour preparations for kin we had this in mind already because I had already decided that I wanted to release bounty the way that we are now doing so it’s been in the works for some time, to be honest. So, yes, it’s prepared for. They belong together, both of them. bounty has existed prior to kin and it’s our history and right from the start it was clear to me how to perform these songs.

With the emergence of bounty on CD/DVD format three years after its individual ‘chapters’ first came out, does it feel strange revisiting what was, essentially, the inception of iamamiwhoami?
It feels good to give bounty the weight and attention that kin got because they are equally important to us. So, it feels natural in a way. It’s also good to focus on it in the physical world. It was different working on it when it first came to life because the songs were all created in real time and everything went very fast in the beginning, to be honest. And now everything has sunk in a bit more and I am really enjoying playing these songs now.

We think we can guess what the answer to this question is going to be but… when you first started working on this project in 2009, did you imagine that four years down the line you’ll be, effectively, releasing your second album and touring extensively as a group?
No… ummm… no. I didn’t expect any of it. But it’s all been a blessing in that sense because I was prepared for a change and, obviously, I wouldn’t have started this otherwise. It was a leap [laughs] – a giant leap. But I didn’t have any thoughts of where it was going. I tried to stay in ‘the now’. I’m still trying to do that. Yeah, it’s the way to go forward, really, to just keep in the moment.

You’ve chosen ‘y‘ as the single to promote the release of bounty. Why this particular song?
It’s a good representation of the bounty series and what the project stands for, for me. And as iamamiwhoami has sprung from necessity and all of the parts of what it has become today have come from that, so that song fits that in a good way.

Before the individual songs from bounty first started coming out in March 2010, iamamiwhoami released prelude tracks that built up towards the series itself. They each contributed hints in terms of the storyline behind the series and its eventual name. Why are they not being included on the physical release?
For me, the start of that series [of preludes] before bounty came to life is its own chapter. And it does not belong in bounty because bounty started with ‘b‘ and it was different from that. That’s a chapter and a source of inspiration from where we started and I want to keep that untouched. Not everything needs to be categorised or… no, that’s not the right word. Let me see… sometimes I need to think a little bit longer about English. Well, I guess, the short of it is that it is its own thing and it belongs where it is right now and who knows what might happen in the future. But it’s not a part of bounty.

How did your remixes of the Moby and The Irrepressibles tracks come about?
We share the same management with Moby and we have the same publisher as The Irrepressibles. The songs… they were requests for remixes and we listened and where there is room for creating something interesting and artistic it’s always fun to experiment. With both those songs there was room for it. And they are very different and the artists are completely different from each other. But we love creating like this.

What do you make of the various remixes of your own songs?
I like hearing other people’s versions of our songs. bounty had a remix for each song while it was being released at first, digitally, and the remixes we did then were more like alternate versions rather than remixes. I think you’ll see more and more remixes of our songs in the future. [A few days after our interview a Moby remix as well as a Joe Goddard remix of 'y' were unveiled].

Do you have any plans to release music and footage from past and/or future live concerts?
No. [pause] But I won’t say no to anything because anything is possible but a concert, for me, is this very rare particular moment that I want the audience to be able to keep and not revisit because also for us it’s something that just happens then and there and that’s magical so… who knows. But I am not planning on doing so.

And what about doing another online gig like the one you streamed back in 2010?
I think having that time to just experiment and invent and communicate with the audience… as soon as the time comes about then it’s always happening in some form. That concert took about six months to do, I mean to prepare for. And I’m sure that equal events to that will happen in the future. As long as there is a want and an urge for creating. As of now, there is.

Speaking of that online concert, you ended it with an unreleased song titled ‘.’ which we, your Queen Elizabeth Hall audience, caught a studio version of playing innocently in the auditorium just before you came on stage last year. Are you likely to ever release it?
Yes, you noticed that… well, that song, it was the start of this whole project for me and for Claes [Bjorklund, fellow iamamiwhoami creative] and also for our visual collaborators. That was the first song that then became this project. It keeps coming back to us, it’s a good description of the project. And I don’t know if I will be releasing it – there are plenty of versions of it both in my head and in reality. But… you know, working in real time as we do is a specific way of recording and writing – everything has its time and when you’ve written something and it’s there you know if you want to release it. And if you don’t want to at that point then the time passes and the moment might be gone… but it might come again, as well.

Is there a possibility that you might play it live?
I might do it, yes.

What about shows outside of Europe? Is that part of your plan?
Yes! As soon as possible, I really want to meet the audience in other territories. We have sort of left that out but touring is a big production and we are still quite new in the concerts arena so it’s not the easiest thing to travel with the whole production. That has been the reason why there haven’t been concerts outside of Europe, yet.

Finally, what – to you – is the most enjoyable element of touring?
Well, hearing the music and feeling it come to life – it’s so different from creating it. It is an equal love, both, but doing it live is just such a grand experience. And also meeting with the audience is equally overwhelming each time and that’s the biggest thing, definitely, seeing the response coming to you once it’s actually happening. It’s amazing.

iamamiwhoami play Electric in Brixton on Thursday 30 May. Tickets are available online. bounty is released on 3 June on To Whom It May Concern via Cooperative Music.

St Paul's and a derelict, by M@.

• Man in court over the 1982 Hyde Park bombing.
• New free schools announced, including some in London.
• Protest over legal aid cuts outside Parliament.
• The revamped Shell Centre plans are approved by Lambeth Council.
• Downing Street road sign tops auction sales.
• London’s nature under threat.
• London’s life expectancy gap.
• Greenwich and Docklands International Festival programme announced.
• Deloitte Ignite 2013 to be curated by Stephen Fry.

Wembley takes on a Teutonic hue on Saturday as Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund contest the Champions League final. The headquarters of English football has hosted Europe’s biggest club match a number of times over the years and here we take a look at the history of the tournament’s London branch.

Continental club football first came to London in 1963, three years before the city witnessed England’s glorious World Cup triumph. Wembley’s first experience of Europe’s biggest club competition also marked the emergence of AC Milan as a force in football, when they took their first European Cup 2-1 over a Benfica side that included the legendary Eusebio, who scored the Portuguese side’s consolation goal.

In 1968, Eusebio and Benfica were back in London, but their luck was no better as they faced a powerful Manchester United side containing Bobby Charlton and George Best, both of whom scored in extra time to make United the first English side to win the European Cup. Six years later United would be relegated. Funny old game, as they say.

London only had to wait three years for another European Cup final as the mighty Ajax put paid to the unlikely challenge of Panathinaikos of Greece. The Dutch side included their talisman, Johan Cruyff, who would score twice to win the same trophy again for Ajax the following year before securing a hat-trick of European Cups in 1973.

Further English success followed in 1978, as 92,000 fans watched Liverpool grind out a 1-0 win courtesy of Kenny Dalglish’s goal against Belgium’s Club Brugge. Sadly for English football the dark days of hooliganism were just around the corner, and it would not be until Barcelona beat Sampdoria 1-0 in 1992 (in one of the most boring games we can remember) that Wembley would again play host to Europe’s ultimate club match.

As the old Wembley was laid to rest and the new arch hauled into place, changes were also afoot within the game itself, as the European Cup became the Champions League. Not until another Barcelona win, 3-1 against Manchester United two years ago, would Wembley against host the game’s showpiece.

However, just before Wembley’s old twin towers were pensioned off, there was time for London’s own Arsenal to ‘enjoy’ a two-season, six-match residency. The club managed to convince authorities to let them play their Champions League games at Wembley to sell more tickets than they could shift at Highbury. Sadly for the Gunners, both seasons would be marked by poor football and indiscipline, and capped by feeble 1-0 defeats to dump them out of the competition (in both 1998-99 and 1999-00) and send them back to N5 with tails between legs.

So it’s perhaps for the best that London will have no representative in the final, as the capital clubs’ European reputation at Wembley rests entirely on West Ham’s 1965 success in the long-gone Cup Winners’ Cup (one of two finals of that competition held here — strangely, not a single UEFA Cup/Europa League final has been played at Wembley). Oh well, with Chelsea and Arsenal having qualified again, there’s always next year (in Portugal).

By Chris Lockie. Image by Pixelthing in the Londonist Flickr pool.

Covent Garden Then & Now by Clive Boursnell must have been a curatorial nightmare for the editor. It seems Bournell has taken so many expressive photos of the market over the past 45 years that condensing them down into 170 pages offered a singular challenge — one that hasn’t always been met here. His historic and modern photographs, often of the same location separated by decades, work best when presented one or two to a page. When the publishers cram up to 12 shots onto a single side, it’s impossible to appreciate the talent. Still, this is a magnificent collection, covering the grime and graft of the working fruit & veg market of the ’60s, and its careworn customers, through to the colourful entertainment hub the space has become today. Those wishing to see Boursnell’s work blown up to a more impressive size can check out an exhibition running throughout the market from 29 May. Published 2 May 2013 by Frances Lincoln.

Camden Lock and the Market by Caitlin Davies is also around 170 pages, but fills them in a very different way. We learn of Camden’s incredible journey from a tiny pop-up market in the early ’70s to one of the UK’s top tourist attractions today. It’s a book full of both character and characters, as Davies interviews important people from the market’s history, including the original founders, stall holders and various celebrities who’ve made the area what it is. There are regular photographic delights, many previously unpublished, including an elephant crossing Chalk Farm Road, the painting of the famous Camden Market bridge sign and the high fashions of the 1980s. If you know the market well, and witnessed much of its short but eventful history, you will savour every sentence, and simply must buy this book. Newcomers looking for a straightforward introduction might find it a little more wordy than it needs to be, but still well worth the cover price. Published 6 June 2013 by Frances Lincoln.

Undercover Spitalfields: Market Stories by Peter Marlow is the most visual of the three books. The photographer was commissioned by market owners Ballymore to celebrate 120 years of the Victorian complex, and he’s done a splendid job of capturing the stalls, architecture, residents, chefs and vendors, with some particularly fine portrait shots. The compilation ranges a little further than the market itself, taking in some of the old weavers’ houses to the east, as well as the occasional foray into Shoreditch. An introduction by architecture critic Jonathan Glancey neatly introduces the historical context, describing the waves of immigration and regeneration that have characterised the wider area. Oddly, though, the photogenic people and places of Brick Lane are almost entirely absent, while further-afield locations such as Boxpark and Village Underground (on the cover) are represented. The controversially doomed Fruit and Wool Exchange is also omitted, as you might expect. Nevertheless, if we consider the book for what’s there, rather than what is not, it’s a fine collection of photography, capturing choice aspects of the market as it is today. Out now from Magnum Editions.

Read more London book reviews.

TRIVIA: I Never Knew That About The River Thames by Christopher Winn

The trivia flows faster and furiouser than Vin Diesel in a log flume, in Winn’s sequel to I Never Knew That About London. From source to sea, the river is facted for all it’s worth. Discover the island where Magna Carter was signed, a London Stone that isn’t that London Stone, the inspiration for Toad Hall, and at least two Thames-side locations that stood in for Vietnam in Full Metal Jacket.

HISTORY: The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys

A delicious medley of 40 short stories, each set during one of the many times the Thames has frozen over in London. Although fictional, most vignettes feature historical events and people. We dip into the frost fairs of the 18th Century, join Tudors hunting hares on the solidified Thames, and tread with fear in the footsteps of someone caught on the melting ice. A surprisingly warm volume for a subject so chilly.

COMPLEXITY: Downriver by Iain Sinclair

The now-famous London author moans his way along the river in a mostly fictional, demisemi-autobiographical and totally unconventional narrative that slips through the fingers like water. Twelve stories of industrial decline, Conradian connections and political parody are presented thicker than an anchor sandwich and as difficult to digest as a bucket of Thames water. You’re not in for an easy read. Instead, let yourself float downriver on Sinclair’s deep and poetic words.

BRIDGES: Cross River Traffic by Chris Roberts

Chris Roberts, sometime Londonist collaborator and founder of One Eye Grey, offers a history of London’s bridges from Hammersmith to Tower. It’s highly readable, with a pleasing mix of traditional history and pop-culture references. Travis Elborough’s recent book about London Bridge’s journey to America is also a splendid pontine read, though less about the Thames.

PHOTOGRAPHY: London’s River by Chris Thurman

You want moody black and white shots of London through the ages? You got ‘em. London’s River is a photo-led study of the Thames over the past 40 years. Thurman captured many facets of the river’s former industry, such as looming cranes along the South Bank and Bankside Power Station in full steam. The NatWest Tower (now Tower 42) is pictured half built, while the Gherkin, Shard and co are not yet even imagined.

SHORT STORIES: Father Thames by Roger Williams

A smashing, splashing collection of short stories about the river, interleaved with episodes from the narrator’s sea voyage from Antwerp back home to London. Each of the tales stands as an independent reflection of the river and its peoples, but each also weaves subtly into the whole, building a collection that tidally explores the themes of journey-making and fatherhood. Exemplary stuff.

ADVENTURE: Circle Line: Around London in a Small Boat by Steffan Meyric Hughes

Did you know it’s possible to circumnavigate the capital (or at least north London) by boat? This is Meyric Hughes’ account of piloting a small sail boat along the Thames and canals, along with a chunky dose of wit, wisdom and mishap. Also, he may have found a way to do a loop of London that’s faster than a typical ride on the real Circle Line.

THE FULL PACKAGE: Thames: Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd

A sequel of sorts to Ackroyd’s seminal London: The Biography, this weighty tome tackles the river in thematic chapters such as trade, death and art, rather than tracking it from source to sea. As is his wont, the author wavers between the scholarly and romantic, weaving the mythical and historical into a mighty synthesis. If you ever walk the length of the Thames, read this book first to best acquaint yourself with the multipartite wardrobe of Old Father Thames. Speaking of walking…

WALKING: The Thames Path by David Sharp

You’d think, walking the route of a river, it would be impossible to go the wrong way: just keep the Thames on your left, or on your right. Not so. There are many stretches of the Thames Path that veer away from its namesake, to avoid private property, marshy land or other obstacles, meaning that a guidebook is essential for anyone embarking on this 180 mile National Trail. Sharp does an excellent job of combining directional information and pointing out features of interest.

CLASSIC: Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

If Family Fortunes asked its survey to name a book about the Thames, Three Men in a Boat would surely be the top answer. This slim novel supposedly concerns itself with the Thames adventures of our trio plus dog, boating their way from Kingston to Oxford. In fact, much of the prose comprises flashbacks and tall stories that have little to do with the river. Laboured in places, and perhaps not as comical to the modern reader as it once was, the book still has legions of fans, and it remains an essential read for anyone who would know the cultural history of the Thames.

Londonist is official media partner for the Museum of London Docklands 10th anniversary exhibition, Estuary, which features artistic responses to the downriver Thames. This free exhibition runs until 27 October.

Artist Chris Naylor creates a sugar cube model of London for Museum of London Docklands' 10th birthday.

• Did Bernard Hogan-Howe leak Plebgate details?
• Gunfire outside Fire nightclub in Vauxhall.
• Architect competition for new Met HQ, replacing Scotland Yard.
• Teddington blue plaque for Morecambe and Wise.
• Bloody swimming pool PR stunt event thing sells out.
• ‘Hot summer could turn London into island of death‘.
• Woman kicked off bus for not having enough money on her Oyster card, but her kid was already on board.
• Type poo path into Google Maps and you get the officially unnamed path that is informally known as “dog poo path” to locals in Bowes Park.

This Week In London’s History

• Monday – 20 May 1609: London publisher Thomas Thorpe publishes Shakespeare’s Sonnets for the first time, possibly without The Bard’s permission.
• Tuesday – 21 May 1853: The ‘Aquatic Vivarium’, the world’s first public aquarium, is opened in Regent’s Park.
• Wednesday – 22 May 1897: The Blackwall Tunnel is officially opened by the Prince of Wales, becoming the longest underwater tunnel in the world (at the time). The original tunnel now forms the western (northbound) carriageway – the adjacent tunnel that houses the eastern (southbound) carriageway was opened in 1967.
• Thursday – 23 May 1701: Captain Kidd is hanged in Wapping, following his conviction for piracy and murder.
• Friday – 24 May 1862: The current Westminster Bridge is opened, replacing an earlier stone bridge that was subsiding badly.

Random London Quote Of The Week

John Gilpin was a citizen
Of credit and renown,
A train-band captain eke was he,
Of famous London town.

William Cowper, ‘The Diverting History of John Gilpin’

Photo by Natalie Clarke via the Londonist Flickr Pool.

Every week we select a photo from the Londonist Flickr pool, taken in the last seven days, that illustrates this season or time of year in London.

This week, SabineThoele has captured some casual multitasking on a sunshine-dappled stroll through a cemetery. But which one?

Welcome to the latest episode of Londonist Out Loud, a podcast about London. You can listen in-browser, or subscribe via iTunes or RSS. We’re now also available on Stitcher.

Londonist Out Loud is presented and produced by N Quentin Woolf. This week’s guests are Francis Marshall, Senior Curator of Art, and George Young, Senior Curator of Contemporary History at the Museum of London Docklands. 

The guests take a tour of the museum’s latest exhibition, Estuary, while discussing the landscape, history and influence of this compelling environment.

Estuary opens today at Museum of London Docklands and runs until 27 October 2013. Open daily 10am-6pm, free entry. 

See also:

• The abandoned Estuary sea forts
• Museums of London’s upcoming late event with live entertainment, food, drink and a Londonist-hosted quiz

This week’s show is sponsored by Audible.co.uk and to celebrate we’re offering you a FREE digital audiobook from their expansive catalogue.

Click here to claim your free audiobook today

Choose any title from their online library of over 60,000 digital audiobooks, with a special 30 day free trial of the Audible service. You can listen to your audiobook on all iPods, iPhones, iPads and on compatible phones and MP3 Players – you can even burn to a CD and listen in the car. Your free audiobook is yours to keep, whether you decide to cancel in your trial period or not.

Interested in sponsoring this podcast? Contact us on hello@londonist.com for more details.

Show notes by Ruth Hargreaves.

It’s a splendid clip but no, we don’t know why either. Suggestions in the comments please.

The Boy Who Turned Yellow was the last feature film made by the distinguished duo of Powell and Pressburger. It is one of three films featured on a new volume of Children’s Film Foundation tales, Weird Adventures, released on DVD by the BFI on 17 June 2013.

How do we come up with themes for The Friday Photos, literally none of you have asked? Well, it chiefly stems from what’s crossing our minds at the time. Draw your own psychoanalysis from this week. But before you do, take a look at this video of a knicker chandelier by Pipilotti Rist, filmed by annemmu at the Hayward Gallery a couple of years ago. It’s rather beautiful.

As ever, thanks go to our talented Flickrpoolers: in order – stradders06, Simone.London, sevitz, jaykay72, Marc Fairhurst, owenbooth, roll the dice, Herschell Hershey, robbie ewing and chutney bannister. Your guess as to what’s happening in that final photo is as good as ours.

Not everything on the Underground is as it seems. After telling the world of Ten Illegal Things To Do In London, creative investigator Tom Scott sets off with “Stand-Up Mathematician” Matt Parker to unveil more mysteries. Your Tube journey may never be the same again.

Those curious to know exactly what a “travolator” is can read more here.

Want more insight into your daily commute? We have already shed some light onto the secret bits of the Northern Line and the Victoria Line.

The Joy of Saxe. Albert and Victoria first met at Kensington Palace.

On this day, 250 years ago, a certain James Boswell was enjoying a cuppa at number 6 Russell Street, Covent Garden when in walked Dr Samuel Johnson. This first meeting between two people who would become inextricably associated was not entirely filled with mutual warmth. Boswell, who that night recorded everything in his journal, apologised for being Scottish, with the not unreasonable defence that he “couldn’t help it”. “That I find is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help,” replied the anti-Caledonian quipster. But from those inauspicious beginnings, a friendship blossomed.

As a hub of great minds and talents, it’s no wonder that so many liaisons and partnerships have their genesis in London. To celebrate the anniversary of the Boswell-Johnson introduction, we’ve rounded up a collection of other important first meetings that took place in the capital.

The Krays meet the Mafia (Park Lane Hilton)

Although usually associated with the East End, the Kray brothers had international ambitions, and cultivated various arrangements with the Mafia. The first meeting supposedly occurred at the Park Lane Hilton in 1962, when the East End gangsters enjoyed a drink with Angelo Bruno, a top player in the Philadelphia crime family. The mobster made a deal with the brothers to help dispose of $2 million in stolen bonds, and offer protection to his London-based clients. It’s one to drop into conversation next time you’re trying to impress someone with a £15 cocktail at the hotel’s Galvin at Windows bar.

Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett (Haymarket)

And it’s hello from me… Perhaps Britain’s most famous double act, the Two Ronnies, first met at the Buckstone Club near Haymarket, where Corbett was serving drinks between acting jobs in 1963. The club was in a basement on Suffolk Street, near the stage door to the Theatre Royal. Barker’s first words to Corbett were reportedly “Same again, please”.

Gilbert and George (St Martin’s)

Gilbert Prousch and George Passmore have worked together for 45 years and remain among the UK’s most famous living artists. Their first encounter, perhaps unsurprisingly, was at St Martin’s School of Art, on 25 September 1967. According to Wikipedia, “they came together because George was the only person who could understand Gilbert’s rather poorly-spoken English”, but they’re also on record as declaring the meeting as love at first sight.

Mary Godwin (Shelley) and Percy Shelley (Somers Town/St Pancras churchyard)

The future author of Frankenstein and the great poet probably first clapped eyes on each other at the Somers Town home of Mary’s father, William Godwin, with whom Percy Shelley had formed an intellectual friendship. That’s only mildly interesting. Far more noteworthy is where Percy and Mary chose to do most of their secretive courting: at the grave of her equally famous mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, in Old St Pancras churchyard. The two declared their undying love for each other here on 26 June 1814 before eloping off to the continent (Shelley leaving behind his pregnant wife).

Dickens and Victoria (Buckingham Palace)

The mid-to-late 19th Century is often described as the Victorian or Dickensian era. But Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens only ever had one conversation. The pair met, on her summons, at Buckingham Palace in March 1870, just three months before Dickens died. After exchanging mutual admiration, Dickens promised to send the Queen a complete set of his works. His gift included the opening chapters of Edwin Drood, and a promise to send her further instalments if she “should ever be sufficiently interested in the tale to desire to know a little more of it in advance of her subjects”. Sadly, the Queen did not reply, and the intended ending of Dickens’ unfinished novel was never revealed.

Victoria and Albert (Kensington Palace)

The Empire’s greatest love story began in the halls of Kensington Palace. Kissin’ cousins Victoria and Albert had long been seen as a potential match by their relatives. Their first meeting was a promising start, with the young princess describing the German prince thus: “He was most amiable, natural, unaffected, and merry; full of interest in everything”. Today, you can stand at the spot on the staircase where Victoria first clapped eyes on her beau, and read the extract from her diary entry of that night. When you look up, there’s a projection of his face on the wall. It’s either London’s most romantic or most nauseous spot, depending on your outlook. Those of bluer curiosity for the joy of Saxe can see (what we childishly think must be) a depiction of Prince Albert’s penis at a nearby pub on Victoria Street/Victoria’s treat.

We’re sure there must be dozens of other examples, and we invite your comments below. 

A follow-on from last year’s fascinating series The Tube (in which we learnt about the meaning of a Code 2 alert) the new doc continues where its predecessors left of, telling the story of the world’s first and most famous subterranean railway through the people who work on it. There will also be footage from some of the network’s many abandoned stations.

The Tube: An Underground History is on at 9pm, BBC2 tonight, and will go on iPlayer after that (if you’re not in the UK, you’re out of luck on both counts). Here’s a clip from showing the remains of a Greathead shield (or ‘grate head shield’ as it’s mistakenly captioned), which was used to build the tunnels for the deep-level lines.

It would be fair to say that lady luck has never had a soft spot for Brentford FC. The club’s ascent in the 1930s peaked with a fifth-placed finish in the top flight before the Luftwaffe decided enough was enough. Had you told a Brentford fan in 1942 that their triumph in the London War Cup would be their only trophy of note over 70 years later, you may well have been accused of talking through your fashionable felt fedora.

The club’s history of falling at the final hurdle actually began a year earlier, as they lost the 1941 London War Cup final to Reading. Not until 1985 did Brentford return to Wembley, losing the Freight Rover Trophy final to Wigan – a competition (now known as the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy) they would again fail to win in both 2001 and 2011.

The play-offs have also been quite disastrous over the years. 1997 saw defeat to Crewe in the third-tier playoff final at Wembley, and five years later the same sorry tale played out against Stoke. Three times the Bees have lost out in the semi-finals, so at least they’ve again gone one better this year.

Not that any Brentford fan wants to be in the play-offs this year. The tragedy of the final game of the regular season, when the Bees were a crossbar’s width from automatic promotion, will have many fans trudging to Wembley with pessimistic hearts on Sunday.

But things are certainly looking up for the club. Manager Uwe Rosler is highly regarded and promotion may well be needed for the Bees to hold onto him. And under owner Matthew Benham, a fervent fan of the club himself, Brentford have secured their financial future and plan to move to a new ground at Kew in time for the 2016-17 season. Fans will be sad to see the back of Griffin Park, which famously is the only ground in the country to have a pub on every corner (as highlighted in this excellent Guardian piece).

No-one, however, will be sad to put an end to the Bees’ dire record in important matches if they can secure the promotion they surely deserve this weekend.

By Chris Lockie

Photo by sidxms from the Londonist Flickr pool.

A couple of months ago a new shop opened in the ground floor unit of Lauderdale Tower, one of the skyscrapers on the Barbican Estate. An unremarkable news item, perhaps, were it not for the fact that businesses on the Barbican aren’t usually very successful.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In his book Barbican: Penthouse Over The City, David Heathcote notes that one early plan called for a number of shops on the estate, but this was rejected as it was felt they would be “alien to the quiet and sense of seclusion which should be characteristic of a residential neighbourhood”. The Barbican’s architects, Chamberlain Bon and Powell, envisioned shops, pubs and restaurants all across the estate, serving the needs of more than 5,000 residents. They also designed Frobisher Crescent, to the north of the Arts Centre, as a miniature shopping mall; this vision was never realised and the units are now offices. According to the website Barbican Living, the firm also predicted that the complex would “need up to 5 public houses”; it now has none, save for City Boot near Moorgate station.

The malaise extends to the St Alphage Highwalk to the southeast of the Barbican estate itself. Two former pubs — the Podium and the Plough — stand here, boarded up and unloved, and the remains of a clothing shop, banks and a Korean restaurant are also extant. Much of it was closed a few years ago to make way for a development that stalled in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. The area is dominated by a skyscraper (unfairly dubbed one of the area’s ugliest) which is also due for demolition.

A new development is set to be built here, one that will retain the highwalk but not much else, but many of the old buildings will be demolished. Take a walk around before it’s gone.

See also:

London’s Lost Department Stores

Image by boro.boro in the Londonist Flickr pool.

• QPR striker arrested on suspicion of rape.
• Report finds that London should be given greater control over taxes, to boost homebuilding.
• 66 people have been arrested in coordinated raids on suspected burglars and drug offenders.
• 11-year-old girl dies on Streatham Hill after being hit by a lorry.
• 90% of charity donations to the arts benefit London institutions.
• Thames Gateway Bridge back on?
• Floods could overwhelm Thames Barrier by end of century.
• Old and new photos from inside the Georgian 37 Spital Square.
• Visit the secret gardens of Greenwich.
• A really clear guide to the Crossrail 2 proposals.

It’s yet another book promising to go off-the-beaten-track to places ‘that don’t get a mention in the usual London guides’. While there are a handful of surprises, the majority of locations will be familiar to Londoners and the more inquisitive tourist. Katrina and pooch might walk on sunshine, but they don’t walk south of the river — just one of the 62 recommendations is across the water, and that’s City Hall.

But none of this is relevant. It’s all about the bitch.

The little wuffster’s expressive poses outside and inside London landmarks are among the finest examples of site-specific canine photography you’re likely to see. Whether she’s draping a curious paw over over the stock of Southbank book market, nursing a shot in the Blind Beggar, or gambolling in the snows of Victoria Park, this poodle has oodles of charm and stage presence.

The perfect gift for London-based dog lovers. Just don’t put it on the shelf next to Bob the Tube cat’s biography.

Peggy Lee Loves London is out now from something called the Metropoodle Press. Get it here.

Read more London book reviews.

Here’s a lovely thing. Three new sculptures of local heroes have appeared near St Mary’s, Paddington. The two-dimensional artworks depict famous nurse Mary Seacole, computer pioneer Alan Turing and Paddington Bear author Michael Bond, clutching his famous creation. All lived (or in Bond’s case, live) nearby.

The three sculptures are part of the Portrait Bench series from transport charity Sustrans. This marvellous initiative installs the likenesses of local heroes, as voted for by residents, along new cycling routes. In this case, the steel trio watch over a new path between St Mary’s Terrace and Paddington Station. They’re made from Corten steel (like the Angel of the North), which will gradually rust to a more organic appearance.

Images by Wynn Abbott, who also happens to be the mastermind behind the London Science Festival.

Tower Bridge as it might have been. See below.

• Public consultation begins for Crossrail 2.
• Westminster street signs up for auction.
• The new HM Prison Thameside, in Thamesmead, comes in for criticism.
• The ink’s barely dry on the Mayor’s plans for a cycling revolution, and already they face cuts.
• Images of Tower Bridge as it might have been.
• Time Out launches a discounts card.
• More on Eddie Izzard’s mayoral ambitions. And more.
• “Early colour footage of London comes to light,” a whole two years after we last showed it.
• The New Bus For London ratchets up its inherent cool by travelling to New York…only to lose it again by carrying David Cameron.
• Is London a luxury resort?
• Could the deep level shelters beneath Camden Town play a role in the station’s redevelopment?
• What are you doing for London Tree Week? How about knitting some woolly banners?

Tim Benzie and his partner Paul Joseph put together this video, in which they act like an informal, hypeactive tourist board. Tim explains:

My niece Emma and her boyfriend Brendan (who live in Australia) are saving for their first trip to Europe together, but told us a month ago that they were considering going on a cruise instead, rather than visiting us in London! We decided to make this campaign video to show them how amazing London is (rather than any cruise!). It’s Got To Be London Emma!!

Their campaign not only takes in 73 of London’s most attractive spots and experiences, but also ropes a handful of celebrities into the cause.

The video is intended for Emma and Brendan, but if you have friends or relatives who stubbornly avoid the capital, perhaps point them towards this.

Inspired by this story, and in preparation for Museums at Night, we asked a few curators to nominate further mystery objects from London’s museums.

Assorted pieces of Yeti

The Hunterian Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields is surely some kind of world leader for unusual and intriguing exhibits. When we got in touch with our ‘mystery’ idea, they initially suggested a number of anatomical curiosities and preparations, but nothing quite fitted the bill.

Then, almost in passing, they suggested we take a look at the ‘yeti’ foot cast. Indeed, the museum has a whole load of yeti bits – teeth, hair, faeces — courtesy of Osman Hill who spent many years checking out ‘evidence’ of the elusive beasts in the Himalayas.

Alas, the museum has little further information about these cryptozoological remains, but here’s the catalogue record for the foot cast.

Stuffed Organ of Criminal 

Looking something like a wasps’ nest, this bulbous artefact from Wellcome Collection is actually human remains. The label reckons it’s a gall bladder, taken from an executed Chinese criminal and stuffed with rice (we’d suggest using Uncle Ben’s, but other gall bladders are available). This ghastly wonton was apparently used to treat severe illnesses, but details on how, why, when, or whether it came with a spicy sauce are sadly missing. Indeed, Wellcome Collection isn’t sure it’s even a genuine traditional Chinese medicine, and wonders if our readers have any information. The label only notes that the specimen is “one of the more intriguing items from Henry Wellcome’s collection”.

Communicative bacteria

The Science Museum is pretty confident of its holdings, with detailed provenance records of most objects. But these unusual glass slides are a real mystery. The curators have no idea where they come from or who made them, but speculate that they are some sort of lantern slide for teaching about bacteria. Any clues?

Battery-operated Opossum

The Grant Museum of Zoology is another treasure trove of the peculiar. But few of its specimens can be as unusual as the opossum pictured above. A couple of years ago, a conservator noticed that the fluid was looking a little discoloured, with a yellow growth near the stomach. After opening the flask, analysis “Could not distinguish fluid type; odour suggests the fluid is not formalin, the fluid was also not registered as alcohol by the fluid density meter.” And then a greater mystery: “Yellow coloured growth from stomach area transpired to be wods of cotton wool (orange tinted) which had been stuffed inside the specimen. On removal, a D-type Duracell battery was removed from the body cavity (organs seem to be removed).” Why on earth would anyone put a battery inside an opossum? As museum manager Jack Ashby notes, “Obviously the mind is led to some experiments in the evolution of the Duracell bunny”.

Strange Geometeries

The Museum of London throws some unusual shapes at us. The object on the left is a prehistoric ‘tribrach’ – a three-pronged flint tool with no known purpose. Was it a throwing weapon, a primitive doll,  a fertility symbol, or maybe a work of art? Who knows…though we’d like to hear your speculations. The intriguing object to the right is a Roman bronze dodecahedron. These are found across the Roman Empire from Britain to Hungary, and vary in size from 4 cm to 11 cm diameter. Nobody knows what they were used for. Possibilities include a surveying instrument, candle holder or a religious ritual object. We think it’s something to do with Doctor Who.

See also

• London’s rudest museum exhibits
• London’s most gruesome museum exhibits

We’d love to hear from curators at other London museums and run a ‘part 2′ of these features soon. Get in touch with matt@londonist.com if you have further examples of mysterious, rude or gruesome exhibits.

On 23 May you can enjoy (or otherwise) Abba-inspired musical rom-com Mama Mia. On 13 June, the tune changes somewhat for a screening of documentary Searching for Sugar Man.

Both events are totally free…just show up anytime from 6pm. The films begin at 8.30pm. You can bring a picnic and listen to the pre-film music, or sample delights from the local bars and cafes, which will stay open late. More details here.

See also: Nomad Cinema 2013

HMS Edinburgh sailing on the Thames, by Andrew Finnegan.

• Stuart Hazell pleads guilty to the murder of Tia Sharp in Croydon last year.
• Huhne & Pryce released from prison, but must wear tags and obey a curfew.
• Lambeth Council launches film ‘to shock’ on fire station cuts.
• A pet shop fire in Fulham kills several animals.
• Boris on the EU, bitches about British workers’ “sloth”.
• Exceptional old photos of London’s docks.
• Free public wifi coming to Camden.
• Shoeworld, Denim World, Bargain World…in search of London’s lost Worlds.
• Register now for the Mudchute Farm Go Kart Grand Prix.

Click image for interactive version

The Financial Times has produced an interactive guide to London’s major new property developments. Click on the image above to see the thing in action.

Naturally, this being the FT, the concern is with the wealthier end of the market: of those listed the cheapest is a studio at Battersea Power Station for £335,000, while the most expensive, one of the ten apartments in the Shard, is likely to go for upward of £50m. Also, if we’re nitpicking, they’ve mistakenly used an illustration of the Heron tower on Bishopsgate in place of its residential namesake beside the Barbican (they clearly didn’t use our Heron-spotting guide).

The prospect of central London encircled by high-end developments largely owned by the wealthy is a depressing one for the many who can’t scrub together enough coin for a deposit. The impending disappearance of the sub-£100k London property further highlights the skewed nature of the market. And our own search for London’s cheapest homes came to some sobering conclusions.

This Week In London’s History

• Monday – 13 May 1515: Mary Tudor, the younger sister of Henry VII, is officially married to Charles Brandon at Greenwich Palace (having previously secretly married in France a couple of months earlier).
• Tuesday – 14 May 1842: The first fully illustrated weekly newspaper, the ‘Illustrated London News’ is launched, costing sixpence. It was still being published weekly as recently as 1971.
• Wednesday – 15 May 1981: Zara Phillips, the daughter of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips, is born in a private wing of St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. She would become a very successful equestrian, and is currently 14th in line to the throne.
• Thursday – 16 May 1968: A gas explosion causes the collapse of an entire corner of a newly constructed high-rise block of flats in Newham, East London, killing five residents. Unsurprisingly the flats are later deemed to be ‘structurally unsound’.
• Friday – 17 May 1984: Prince Charles denounces an early proposed design of an extension to the National Gallery building on Trafalgar Square as “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend”.

Random London Quote Of The Week

It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

Sherlock Holmes (via Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, naturally, in The Copper Beeches)

Photo by M@.

Every week we select a photo from the Londonist Flickr pool, taken in the last seven days, that illustrates this season or time of year in London.

This week, Robin Baumgarten has captured an almost unreal-looking Canary Wharf silhouetted by a hazy sunrise.

Welcome to the latest episode of Londonist Out Loud, a podcast about London. You can listen in-browser, or subscribe via iTunes or RSS. We’re now also available on Stitcher.

Londonist Out Loud is presented and produced by N Quentin Woolf. This week’s guest is Robert Opie, founder of the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising. 

The pair tour the museum, discuss the history of product advertising and to what extent brands reflect contemporary culture and lifestyle.

This week’s show is sponsored by Audible.co.uk and to celebrate we’re offering you a FREE digital audiobook from their expansive catalogue.

Click here to claim your free audiobook today

Choose any title from their online library of over 60,000 digital audiobooks, with a special 30 day free trial of the Audible service. You can listen to your audiobook on all iPods, iPhones, iPads and on compatible phones and MP3 Players – you can even burn to a CD and listen in the car. Your free audiobook is yours to keep, whether you decide to cancel in your trial period or not.

Interested in sponsoring this podcast? Contact us on hello@londonist.com for more details.

Show notes by Ruth Hargreaves.

• Unexploded WW2 bomb found in Charlton.
• Ally Pally gets lottery funding, Southbank Centre and V&A don’t.
• London bus company Arriva paid no corporation tax last year.
• It looks like protesters have left Parliament Square.
• Man charged with murdering James Sweeney in Clapton.
• Mounted police used to move on rough sleepers in the West End.
• Boris Johnson wants more tax raising powers for London.
• A rather harrowing account of being hit by a bus in Oxford Street by Tom Kearney, hit in 2009.
• Thames Water consults on turning sewage water into drinking water.
• London has the world’s most multimillionaires.
• Counting the days til Arrested Development returns? Watch out for the frozen banana stand.

Basketball court being set up in Trafalgar Square for this weekend’s free festival, by F. Camardo Photography™ © 2013 from the Londonist Flickr pool

Our media-savvy mayor is never one to shy away from a photo opportunity, recently sitting on a horse for a few moments and acting all jocund. But he’s not the only leader to play up to the cameras. Russia’s Vladimir Putin is also notorious for putting himself in front of the lens at the choicest moments. Yet the pair have very different styles when it comes to the publicity shot, as our gallery above shows.

Click for larger image.

The latest entry in our series that imagines London past and present in the same image. See below for how to enter.

Liam Roberts has previous form with artistic depictions of Brixton. A couple of years ago, he entered our hand-drawn maps competition with Brixton As A Tree. Now he’s at it again, imagining what the area might have looked like a millennium ago. He explains:

I was trying to imagine how the Brixton vicinity might have looked well over a thousand years ago. Accounts vary a little, but there seems to be agreement about one thing: Brixton takes its name from the Saxon “Beorhtsige’s Stone” (certainly not “Town of Bricks”!).

Beorhtsige was a local Surrey lord who would convene councils of other neighbouring lords at a large stone landmark on his fiefdom — somewhere near contemporary Brixton Hill, though you could imagine that where Acre Lane and the River Effra met would also have been a logical place to meet up).

What no one seems to know for sure is what those councils were for. Was the Stone simply a landmark, where Beorhtsige would solicit the demands of his neighbours in order to draft up petitions to the King? Was it a convenient place to gather to resolve their own disputes — either amicably, or less so? Given the area wouldn’t be settled for centuries, maybe the Stone had a more spiritual than pragmatic significance — was it a kind of altar, or a henge, and Beorhtsige a high priest? If yes, what did they do there?

To make the image, I’ve brought together one photo of contemporary Brixton (facing Lambeth Town Hall from Coldharbour Lane/Brixton High Street), and another photo of Mayburgh Henge (an English Heritage site not far from Penrith). So, perhaps this is slightly cheating…

We’re still looking for further entries in the Time Travel London series. You can use Photoshop, as Liam has here, or you can make your image with paint, pencils, collage…whatever you like. The only rule is that your creation should depict some aspect of London’s past alongside something from the modern (or future) city. We’ll arrange an exhibition of the best images. Thinking caps on, and send entries to matt@londonist.com.

Previous entries, for inspiration:

• Old St Paul’s Cathedral rematerialises
• Boudica caught in a Westminster traffic jam
• Crystal Palace never burned down
• Christopher Wren’s London plans realised
• Spitalfields ghosts

And see also: An Anglo-Saxon map of London

But back to the plot. Author Terry Philpot visits a necrocopia of London burial grounds, digging up the history and excavating some choice facts. The ‘Magnificent Seven‘ (Highgate, Nunhead, Kensal Green etc.) are, of course, all present and correct, as are London’s even larger burial grounds such as the City of London Cemetery and the village-sized acres at Finchley. Perhaps the more interesting interment sites, however, are the smaller, lesser known plots, such as the tiny Moravian Burial Ground in Chelsea, or the neat and uniform Gardens of Peace Muslim Cemetery in Hainault.

Philpot is an efficient guide, giving a well-distilled overview of each space. His occasional gripes about lack of signage or intrusive architecture add a touch of character to what might have otherwise been a prosaic tour of famous burials and grand tombs.

The book is perhaps best browsed while ambling round the cemeteries, and offers tips on nearby attractions and cafes for the mobile reader. You’ll also find a handy appendix revealing the meaning of common grave sculptures and symbols. No maps, though, which would have been a welcome bonus.

London’s cemeteries are among its chief treasures. Peaceful, often picturesque, sometimes poignant spaces where the rush of the city fades away. This is a welcome guide, and a brochure to the future. At least a few people reading these sentences will spend eternity in one of these 31 spaces; you might as well get to know your neighbours in advance.

31 London Cemeteries To Visit Before You Die is out now from Step Beach. Buy it on Amazon or direct from the publisher.

Read more London book reviews.

Image from StreetFest from Global Street Art.

• Tia Sharpe murder trial: jury shown CCTV footage of accused shopping with Tia.
• UCL will not be able to build a campus on the Carpenters Estate, but is still eyeing up Stratford.
• Mare of London: Boris sits on a horse for a bit.
• Met police appeal against a racism claim, as the case gets complex.
• Meanwhile, Boris wins ‘best Twitter politician‘ award from Heat Magazine. We’re much too nice to provide the sneery comment this deserves.
• The big, blue cock of Trafalgar Square wins approval, despite complaints from people who don’t like big, blue cocks.
• Happiness and wellbeing stats for London.
• Photos of new street art from last weekend’s StreetFest.
• Fancy buying a foreign embassy?
• Huge floating carnival planned for Regent’s Canal.
• Bombardier wins the contract to rustle up some new Overground carriages.
• Finsbury Park’s new theatre opens its doors and curtains.

Maxine Peake and fellow Eccentronics

Luigi Russolo’s Manifesto for An Art of Noises is turning 100 and to celebrate a century of electronic music, Noise of Art is about to kick-start 12 months of music and cross-platform art events.

This ambitious programme commences here in London later on this month, with a launch at Village Underground headlined by actress Maxine Peake and her fellow purveyors of oddity, Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer. The trio’s musical outfit, Eccentronic Research Council, will be performing their concept album, 1612 Underture, in its entirety and the evening will also feature an impressive DJ line-up, representing – so we are told – “some of London’s most legendary club nights at the start of the 21st century”. Among this special bunch is DJ and Noise of Art founder Ben Osborne, whose set will make use of some of Russolo’s electronic sounds.

Ahead of their one-off appearance, we interviewed Eccentronic Research Council’s Adrian Flanagan about the threesome’s involvement with Noise of Art, their new cassette-only record label and working with Maxine Peake. As you will see, there was certainly no mincing of any words…

Your headline show at the Noise of Art launch night is one of the few performances the three of you have done together. We’re presuming it’s going to be unique. Give us a clue as to what we can expect…
A bunch of northerners grumbling onstage about beer being £5 a pint whilst pounding your faces with next level pre-digital Sheffield sonics [laughs]. The ERC are the square peg in the asshole of all that’s trendy. If you want something different then we quite possibly could be your favourite new band. If you want to take pictures of yourself with a drink whilst chatting about the lack of organic hummus in the Dalston area then I don’t think we’ll be for you.

Well, to be fair, Londonist should definitely be reporting on any lack of organic hummus in Dalston. It’s within our remit. But while we’re looking into that, can you please explain how you first got involved with Noise of Art?
We’d been turning down London shows for almost six months then Noise of Art made us an offer we couldn’t understand and now we appear to be headlining an event in Shoreditch!

You hail from Sheffield — what, to you, is the main difference between the Sheffield music scene and the London music scene?
I actually hail from Salford but live in Sheffield. The difference is…we invent it, London copies it but then dresses it up like bloody David Bowie and then has a world wide smash with it [laughs].

If that doesn’t get our readership bombarding the ‘COMMENT’ function below, nothing will. Let’s now turn to the vision behind your concept album, 1612 Underture…
1612 Underture is one part political commentary and feminist manifesto and two parts fake-loric sound poem based on the mistreatment of the Pendle Witches via a modern day travelogue to the home of the legendary Lancashire Sisterhood.

Why make the Pendle Witches the focal point of the record?
Ever since we were kids, Maxine and I both had a fascination with the Pendle Witches. We are both from that neck of the woods in Lancashire, you see, and we just got talking about how it would be good to do something together about them. So we went for a day out in the car, driving around the Pendle Hill area with a flask of tea and some custard creams and I went away and wrote about it. We had no idea how it would manifest itself at that point, we certainly didn’t think we’d end up with a critically acclaimed album, doing sell-out shows as a band and going on the Culture Show being deconstructed by a load of smart alecs [laughs]. It’s funny how things turn out.

And how did your collaboration with Maxine initially come about?
I wrote to her asking if she’d be so kind to dress as a giant rabbit and let me chase her with a water pistol for a video for another project I do called The Chanteuse & The Crippled Claw. Thankfully, she said yes. We are both into a lot of the same things, music, films — both a bit quirky. She’s pretty much my favorite person on earth. I’ve so much respect for her as an actor but also as a human being. She really does rock with the best of them.

You’ve set up Desolate Spools, a cassette-only label. That’s a bit esoteric, isn’t it?
Music to a lot of people has become quite worthless, this stuff that just floats about and has no physical presence. We just thought it would be fun to do some super limited runs of ERC music on bespoke cassette and other lost formats. Dean and I are always making music, making imaginary soundtracks to films never made and doing the odd collaboration so we need somewhere to put this stuff. We want to make nice artefacts to house this music in, kind of turn what we do into outsider art pieces. I think kids are getting miffed themselves at spending money on itunes and actually not owning anything for it when they know they can just listen to it for free on Spotify. There’s a whole new generation of kids that are getting into vinyl and cassettes, they want something physical for their pounds, they are sick of pooling their money into the empty vortex that is apple. We are in the process of getting some releases together at the moment.

What sort of releases?
Dean and I have been getting friends from all walks of life such as teachers, scientists, mothers, outsider art gallery owners, actors, documentary film-makers, journalists recording their dreams and nightmares for us and we’ve been soundtracking the audio they’ve been sending us. There’s still loads of people saying they want to do it so we might do a few volumes of these. ‘The Dream Catcher Tapes Volume 1′ should be available quite soon.

Do you remember the first tape you bought?
My mum got me my first ever tape and a little Phillips tape recorder for my 7th birthday. It was a Roller Disco compilation tape. It had stuff like D.I.S.C.O by Ottawan on it and something by BA Robinson. The first tape I bought myself was “The Wonderful & Frightening World of…” by The Fall.

You recently announced that the three of you will be recording a new album this year. Is the next record likely to be inspired by a particular theme again?
It’s a secret. But it won’t be witch-based. Everyone’s doing witch records now, you can’t move for them. Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead can do one for a start!

Would you say that politics play an important part in your writing?
Not in a Billy Bragg sort of way but I think if you’re alive in the UK in 2013, politics pretty much has many a decent person by the throat with a switchblade. It’s affecting people in pretty much the same way as it did in the times of the Pendle Witches, which is why our album is resonating with people. The unemployed, the sick, the working classes are all being marginalised, punished, set upon by the people who are supposed to be on their side. It’s glowingly evident this coalition has nothing in common with human beings. I don’t know what it’s like down there in London but People Up North are really angry and you can understand when you’ve got people in Sheffield expected to pay for your lovely London Olympic village and a funeral for a woman who robbed their fathers of their jobs and self-worth, then they come home from a hard day’s graft to find wheel marks on their couches where a disabled person has climbed through their windows dragging their wheelchairs behind them to steal their TV to sell on in the boozer because their benefits have been stopped. You’ve got to ask yourself: what part of this Britain is Great exactly?

Noise of Art’s 100 Years of Electronic Music is on at Village Underground on 17 May (8.30pm). Tickets, priced £10/ £12.50/ £15, are available here