Come spring, come 1st May, come rough music and the Jack-in-the-Green: a leaf wearing London folk custom, with entourage, on a pub crawl. The Jack-in-the-Green evolved in the seventeenth century from milk maids in huge hats and garlands parading the street for money to a man dressed as a giant hedge, the Jack, roaming the street on May Day on the scrounge for beer money. Fowlers Troop revived the Deptford Jack-in-the-Green tradition in the......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 28th April 1801: Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, is born at 24 Grosvenor Square. He would become a noted politician and philanthropist, whose works would be commemorated by the construction of the Shaftesbury Memorial (a.k.a. ‘The Angel of Christian Charity’, a.k.a. ‘Eros’) in Piccadilly Circus. Tuesday – 29th April 1745: Cowper Thornhill, keeper of the Bell Inn in Stilton, Cambridgeshire, rides from the inn to Shoreditch......

Hope springs eternal! Yes, spring has sprung at last, and it couldn’t have possibly come sooner. Sure, it’s supposed to rain all week, but at least it’s warm(ish) rain. Get out there and take advantage of the coming season of rebirth, and don’t forget to indulge in some illicit hugging (see what's on for Sunday). Monday: London writer/filmmaker Daniel Frampton, author of Filmosophy and host of the club of the same name dedicates evenings......

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with......

Bank holidays are great, aren’t they? London is emptying as we write with the motored up masses departing for gridlock on motorways around the country and we're all looking forward to getting to the pub as soon as feasibly possible. Possibly sooner. With the warmest April on record just behind us and the glorious sunny weather this week, records numbers are predicted to pile out of the capital and shack up at the seaside,......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 30th April 1999: “London nailbomber” David Copeland plants his last bomb, in the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho. Three people are killed and dozens are injured. Tuesday – 1st May 2000: The May Day anti-capitalism protests bring mass violence and vandalism to central London. On the same day one year later, police detain thousands of protesters and unwitting bystanders in Oxford Circus for about 6 hours. Wednesday......

Someone has updated the statue of Sir Winston Churchill standing in Parliament Square: A statue of Sir Winston Churchill has been attacked by vandals. Red paint was streaked across the stone plinth on which the statue stands... The Metropolitan Police said the incident, which was reported on Sunday afternoon, was being treated as criminal damage. Well it depends which way you look at it. A splash of colour cheers everyone up and the old......

The US is topping the list of 'rogue states' who have refused to pay the congestion charge over the past six months. London is apparently behind the fact that house prices just rose by 0.6 per cent, the highest monthly increase since May 2004. Summer drought update: although chances of rota cuts in water or tankers in the streets are 'remote', the chances of rationing in London are growing especially (surprise surprise) if this......

It's a struggle but Londonist must occasionally provide the odd Pete Doherty story... Model-mating tabloid-baiting Pete Doherty is reported by the NME to be confirmed for the Love Music Hate Racism gig this Sunday (1st May). According to BabyShambles.net, he's playing an acoustic set sometime between 4pm and 7pm. Ignoring the shallow image the inkies like to portray, Pete Doherty is actually capable of coherent and intelligent thought at times. As he says on......

We can't really say that A View to a Kill was one of our favourite Bond movies, but it did have its moments. Grace Jones as May Day leaping from the Eiffel Tower leaving a past-his-prime Roger Moore to raise an iconic eyebrow after her gliding parachute. Unfortunately Grace's latest escape from Paris was less smooth. It seems that the former Conan the Destroyer star took the Eurostar from Paris to London last night......

Did you, like Londonist, stumble bleary-eyed to your local bus/tube stop this morning only to find that the 'correct change' you had fished out of whatever was left of your Christmas fund just wasn't enough? That's because, as of Sunday, the price of a bus fare went up from £1 to £1.20, and a peak-time zones one and two day travel card soared up 70p to £6. If you were sufficiently aggreived by this......