This Week In London’s History Monday – 10th March 1906: The Baker Street & Waterloo Railway opens, running between Baker Street and Elephant & Castle stations. It would soon become known as the Bakerloo Line. Tuesday – 11th March 1692: The Royal Chelsea Hospital is founded by Charles II. Designed by Christopher Wren, the hospital would also become the model for Greenwich’s Royal Navel Hospital. Wednesday – 12th March 1988: The Bank of England......

After a 2-month hiatus spent reading Finnegans Wake (alright, would you believe rubbish romance novels?), The Book Grocer returns, with a continually evolving format and its diary stuffed full with book-ish events. Here are our picks for the week: Tuesday: Anne Sebba, author of Jennie Churchill, Winston’s American Mother, in conversation with Hugh Whitemore, playwright and writer of the Emmy-award winning Winston Churchill drama The Gathering Storm, at Waterstone’s Notting Hill Gate store, 7pm,......

Although not quite a snowy Sunday night in Prague as depicted in the above photograph by Touch co-founder Jon Wozencroft, last week was a substantially chilly one in South London. Thanks to the Atmospheres Festival, however, we were able to derive much warmth from the ambient music, field recordings and, well, ale present at the events. As we previewed recently, London-based audiovisual label Touch closed their year of 25th anniversary celebrations with a week......

The week ahead holds much excitement for fans of the outer sonic limits as London-based audiovisual label Touch continues celebrating its 25th anniversary with an entire week of gigs, discussions and workshops in South London. Founded in 1981/2 by Jon Wozencroft and Mike Harding, Touch has since grown to become one of the world's most respected sources of experimental electronic music. Through the consistently high-quality sounds it releases and the striking visual aesthetic with......

After a brief hiatus, we’re back with lots of fun things to do this week from the comfort of your own home. Get cozy on the couch with a cup of tea, because there are lots of things to watch this week. On TV, Londonist likes: Tuesday, 16 October Britain's Biggest Storm (ITV1, 21:00-22:30) If your interest was piqued by this week’s Monday Miscellanea, you’ll want to catch this documentary on the 20th anniversary......

This is Londonist's favourite time of year for comedy in London, because from now until the end of July, the capital is awash with big name comedians playing small and intimate venues for super-cheap prices, while they test out ideas for their forthcoming Edinburgh shows. Here's our recommendations for the best shows in the next week. THURSDAY 28th: Head to The 99 Club in Covent Garden to watch the skilled, offbeat Andrew Lawrence in......

The adventurer and motivational speaker Miles Hilton-Barber ended his magnificent 13,000-mile microlight flight to Sydney on Monday. Hilton-Barber, who has been blind for over 25 years, started his journey on March 7 from south London's Biggin Hill airport and flew his microlight Quick GT450 to Sydney in 55 days. On board was also his co-pilot Storm Smith [cool name - Londonist] with whom Hilton-Barber flew the English Channel and who holds the British high-altitude......

Stand easy, Tottenham fans! Irving isn't returning to take over in N17. Instead, rugby league is back for another season at the New River Stadium in Wood Green, a mile and a half to the west along The Lane from the more famous association football venue. The stadium is home to the London Skolars, who this weekend are starting their eleventh year at the New River and their fifth season in the professional National......

Well, the elements gave us a bit of a battering last week, with plenty of damage and several people killed. But lest we get all worked up about global warming and freaky weather, it's worth remembering that the capital is no stranger to the Force 10 fart of Mother Nature. Here's a roundup of, erm, past wind. 1091: Strong winds make their debut on the recorded history of London. On October 23rd that year,......

This Day in London's History Best stay at home today. 16 October seems to be a date of doom and/or gloom for the capital. (And, incidentally, it's also Davina MaCall's birthday.) 1834: Disastrous fire at Westminster. What Guy Fawkes et al. had failed to do 200 years earlier, a bundle of old tally sticks managed in 1834. The outmoded accounting tools were set for disposal. Dickens sums up what happened next: It came to......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. To start us off, 3AM Magazine has an interview with Tom McCarthy whose debut novel, Remainder, has just been published by Alma Books, and whose critical essay, Tintin and the Secret Literature, is reviewed in the Guardian. And sticking with comics, Free New Books provides an eclectic library of downloadable reads, of most interest......

Let's be honest, there's something of a North-of-the-river bias to Londonist (on the rare occasions South London gets mentioned, it tends to be something stupid happening in Croydon), so it's nice to tell you something nice about a neglected (by Londonist) part of London: Elephant and Castle. The reason? Corsica Studios, a brilliant labyrinthian space beneath a railway arch in Elephant & Castle in which to experience art, music, performance and film, have just......

Over on Channel Four right now Jon Snow is discussing yet another top ten list - this one is a little more interesting than most as it's been compiled by one of Britain's leading experts in disaster management to assess the major risks facing this country. Just to get you in the mood for 2006 we thought we'd post the list here... so many interesting ways for us all to go: 1. Gulf Stream......

TheForce.Net are reporting that they have their hands on an anonymous memo a press release stating that a massive Star Wars event will take place in and around Leicester Square on May 16th, three days before the first public showings of Episode III: For the first and last time, anywhere in the world, Lucasfilm have agreed to screen the complete Star Wars Saga in one sitting at UCI Empire. All six movies will be......

Nothing quite says "tragic beauty" like a spot of aggregate, and no colour is quite so regal as "greygreen". Yes folks, the Princess Diana Memorial Storm Sewer is in the headlines again. You may remember the fountain; it's been "troubled", as sub-editors say when asked to euphemise around the word "a relentless disaster". It was criticised from the start by royalists and polo-necked Clerkenwell types alike for being, basically, a circular ditch. However, it......

Londonist trundled past Hamleys on the bus this morning and sneaked a look at the huge, new Star Wars window display which features a genuinely frightening, lifesize Darth Vader (if anyone can snap a picture of that before we do, please send it in). If they're actually trying to get kids to come into the shop they're going the wrong way about it, but we like it. This coming Saturday, if you want to......

It's a long time since we had any global warming panic (not counting the marketing campaign behind The Day After Tomorrow of course). So Londonist was pleased to see this report (PDF File), released today, which claims that "London could face summers as hot as New York and as dry as Israel by the end of this century". The report from the Energy Saving Commission entitled Forecasting The Future warns that "Heat could reach......