In place of our daily event listings, we're compiling the latest coronavirus news, views and resources for Londoners — as well as things you can do, and the ways you can enjoy this great city — without the usual access you have to it.
We also want to flag up all the positive ways that Londoners are finding to deal with the crisis, from good deeds to witty photographs. Please email [email protected] with any contributions.
Ideas to help, and reasons to be cheerful
- How to help: Keep donating blood! Yes, you can still do it, and it's hugely important right now, as donations are down 15%.
- Online learning: Online cookery classes, courtesy of Borough Market, courtesy of some top chefs. Now's the time to learn how to cook.
- Watch this: Free online screening of Royal Opera House shows, and (paid for) Shakespeare from the Globe. Have a night off Netflix.
- Online fun: Tomorrow (Tuesday), take part in a 'mega virtual pub quiz' via YouTube. It's free, so no need to hand your pound coins over.
- Reading tips: Our pick of London-set novels and London-themed non-fiction to read during quarantine. By the end of all this, you'll be an expert.
- Online learning: Senate House has moved its exhibition of Childhood in Dickensian London online.
- Kids: Online children's birthday parties are quickly becoming a thing, as shown in this cute video.
- Fitness: Working from home isn't an excuse to become a couch potato. Try these pay what you can online yoga classes.
- Pay it forward: Comedy venue 2NorthDown is offering double-your-money vouchers. Buy a voucher now, and they'll double its value, to be redeemed at a later date for a show or in the bar.
- Fundraising: LGBT+ support charity Opening Doors London is looking for donations to help transition to new ways of supporting people in the time of coronavirus.
- So mad it might work: Print your own London-themed toilet paper. (Or are we taking the p*ss?)
Latest London coronavirus news
- Hospitals in London are already struggling to cope with patient numbers.
- The Big Issue is no longer being vended on the streets. You can still buy online, subscribe or make a donation to keep their cause alive.
- The National Trust has reversed its decision to keep parks and gardens open, after they got too crowded. Kew Gardens has also now closed. The Royal Parks remain open, but are imposing restrictions and look likely to shut soon.
- London Pride has been cancelled, though will hopefully still take place sometime in 2020.
- Primark, Costa, Timpson and Waterstones are the latest big chains to announce closure.
- Rail franchises suspended, and moved to an Overground-style licence system.
- Columbia Road flower market was way too crowded on Sunday.
- ExCel exhibition centre could become a hospital.
- Gin distiller turns to making hand sanitiser.
- London's rough sleepers have been offered hotel rooms to help with self-isolation.
- Hackney council has a map of local voluntary and support services.
- A couple got married in St Pancras station after their original venue got closed.
- Vice: "Coronavirus unmasks the lie that you have to work in London to succeed".
And in other news
- An excellent long-read about the man who built himself a secret bunker beneath Hampstead Heath.
- Inside Peckham's 'skinny house'.
Fact of the Day
We included Mrs Dalloway by Virgina Woolf among our pick of London books to read during quarantine. If you like Woolf's novels, take a look at our map, which shows every location listed in every book (yes, it did take a bit of work). Although Woolf is so intimately associated with Bloomsbury, only four of her 10 novels visit the area. She's more often concerned with Marylebone or Mayfair. Meanwhile, the East End gets broached on only four occasions, three of which relate to crime or sordid living conditions.
