It’s really all about the Olympics this week, and we’ve told you all about what to watch. But if you’re not in a sporting mood, here are a few other things you may want to take a look at. On TV, Londonist likes: Tuesday, 12 August Margaret the Tabloid Princess: Revealed (Five, 20:00-21:00)) Princess Margaret spawned the paparazzi appetite for photos of royals stumbling out of London nightclubs, and this documentary looks at her......

Waterfront London, which opened today, looks at waterside development in London; recently completed, underway or in the pipeline. It considers how our waterfronts are transforming and being embraced as essential public spaces whereas, not long ago, we buried rivers, turned them into sewers or filled in and built on them. The enlightened approach, celebrated here, is to embrace the waterways and exploit their potential as transport routes, leisure facilities and biodiverse environments. The key......

Part 1: Introduction Mods. Rockers. Teds. Punks. Ravers. Swingers. Skinheads. Suedeheads. Hippies. Yuppies. Rudeboys. Indie kids. Emo kids. Beats. Glam kids. Tribes. Subcultures. Neo-tribes. Groups. Bands. Movements. All of the above, and more, have - despite their points of origin - been magnetically attracted to the capital. To attempt to cover all of the ages of London’s youth might seem an exhausting task worthy of Peter Ackroyd who wrote of his biography of London......

As always, there are a million things to do in London this week. If you fancy a night in though, here are a few things to keep you occupied. On TV, Londonist likes: Monday, 16 July Building Britain (BBC1, 19:30-20:00) The first in the series, Peter Ackroyd's back to take us through the changes in London's skyline and how money and power are influencing how our city will look. Olympic Backlash: Tonight (ITV1, 20:00-20:30)......

No clever headline needed. That series of words will make a certain subset of Londoners very excited. Some will even salivate. Peter Ackroyd, author of ‘London the Biography’ and much else, is on the Beeb tonight presenting his ‘unique perspective’ of London’s changing face. He will argue that London’s planning laws should be relaxed, allowing the city’s skyline to evolve according to the whim and fancy of developers. He believes London really could be......

Television's over. Networks are down. The radio is silent. All files erased. Imagine every book, film, play or song is about to be destroyed. What would you save? There's a scene from a film that you watched as a kid, there's a novel you always turn to when you're feeling down, there's a song you play when you think you're in love, there's a play your school put on and you were the lead......

See listings here for today and here for ongoing events. Wednesday Architectural History of the Albert Hall: Pretty self-explanatory. Take a guided tour round the old, red beehive for £7.50. Tours from 11am, requires booking. Pub and Church Crawl: From holy spirits to those of the distilled kind, this tour of Clerkenwell’s historic boozers and churches is led by former RIBA president Maxwell Hutchinson. £7, booking required. Building the Gherkin: Documentary on the construction......

The London Architectural Biennale and Architecture Week kick off proper tomorrow. Don’t be put off by the user-unfriendly names. Most of the events are aimed squarely at us everyday Londoners, and you’ll need no architectural knowledge to enjoy the activities. However, you will need very good organisational skills if you don’t want to miss out. There are such a staggering number and variety of events to consider that you might want to hire a......

OK, OK, we know most of you will be sick of reading about Hawksmoor. But Londonist are completer-finisher types, and after stalking so many lesser London luminaries we feel obliged to tackle the great church-building, conspiracy-generating architect. There must be some readers out there who haven’t read Iain Sinclair’s trademark lucidity-shy ramblings on how Hawksmoor’s six churches align with other sites of dubious significance to form a pretty pattern. Or Peter Ackroyd’s erudite reinterpretation......

We've already told you about the whole Get London Reading thing, but we just wanted to remind you as because even though many of the events have been and gone you can still vote for your favourite London book. Up until March 1st you can visit LondonBooks.co.uk and choose from a shortlist of nine classic London novels: Absolute Beginners - Colin Macinnes End of the Affair - Graham Greene Great Expectations - Charles Dickens......

Oh, top marks, Inwood. A new tome about the capital that (a) doesn’t have London in the title and (b) bears no sign of a foreword by Ackroyd/Sinclair. Something of a novelty. Inwood has tackled the capital before. His masterful 2000 work ‘A History of London’ was largely and sadly overlooked, thanks to the ill-fortune of publishing in the same year as Peter Ackroyd’s more sexy Biography. City of Cities covers the 30 years......

Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Doré London has been home to more double-acts than Great Yarmouth pier. Just off the top of the head, there’s Johnson & Boswell, the Adam Brothers, Holmes and Watson, the Krays, and recent North-London comedy duo Henry and Pires. Add to the mix the little-known Victorian pairing of Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Doré, whose minor classic ‘London A Pilgrimage’ has just been re-released by Anthem Press. Londonist has wanted to......

Let's face it, The Time Traveller's Wife is a bit of 'a tube book'. It's been pretty much unavoidable since it came out and Londonist lost count of the number of times people have pleaded with us to read it. Which doesn't mean it's a bad book, or that we won't actually get round to reading it someday...it's just going to have to wait until we finish Peter Ackroyd's latest tome. Anyway, the reason......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Now that we are inching towards autumn, the book world seems to be emerging from its annual August slumber. And nowhere is this more evident than in the arena of new releases. Anything else happening in Literary London this week will undoubtedly be overshadowed by the windfall of new novels by the biggest names......

Croydon has taken some flak over the years, and Londonist doesn't want to fall into the hackneyed ways of lesser commentators by adding to that already sizeable bucket of mockery. But when objective evidence is uncovered that justifies all the piss-taking… Well, maybe just this once. We will try and get through this article without using the word 'Chav', but no promises. Archaeologists in Croydon, who probably don hard hats long before reaching their......

If Londonist ever had to get itself a 'board of directors' a few names would immediately spring to mind: Iain Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd...and Lee Jackson. Lee is the author of three historical thrillers as well as a huge, illustrated book on Victorian London. He is also the creator of victorianlondon.org, a website he describes as "a resource for anyone interested in how life was lived in Victorian London". So, as you an imagine, we......

If the results of the Time Out 'best loved London books' poll have taught us anything it's that you have to be really specific when asking the public to vote for things. As the Guardian reports today the A-Z Street Atlas took fifth place in the poll, beating the likes of Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, Joseph Conrad, Zadie Smith and Peter Ackroyd. Time Out's books editor John O'Connell is quoted as saying that that......