Henry Wismayer reports on the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. The worst fire disaster in London since the Blitz during World War II, the blaze claimed 80 lives. To outsiders, London, England may appear to be a “a paragon of functioning multiculturalism,” however the Grenfell fire has become England’s “Katrina moment” — the catastrophic […]
London
Posted inEditor's Pick
Searching London for My Third Place
A personal essay in which Jessica Brown reflects on reading sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s, The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community, and walking the streets of her much gentrified adopted city seeking deeper connection.
Posted inEditor's Pick, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction
Searching London for My ‘Third Place’
Years after agoraphobia kept her housebound, Jessica Brown walks the streets of her adopted city seeking deeper connection.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
Searching London for My ‘Third Place’
Years after agoraphobia kept her housebound, Jessica Brown walks the streets of her adopted city seeking deeper connection.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Will London Fall?
In an increasingly insular Britain, the world’s most cosmopolitan capital is bracing for an uncertain future.
Posted inArts & Culture, Business & Tech, History, Nonfiction, Quotes
‘London Was, But Is No More’
A loving, fascinating, melancholy, rollicking look at how technology and globalization are transforming urban spaces.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Last London
“And now it feels, in the addiction and vertigo of the digital revolution, as if this ancient organism is wheezing, drawing its final breaths. We were never more than an extension of the geology of the Thames Valley.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Happy and Unhappy Messes: On Working as a House Cleaner in London, England
At The Independent, Michele Kirsch reflects on working as a cleaner in London, England, and the fascinating, unspoken social rules that keep the cleaner-cleanee relationship “shipshape and Bristol-fashion.”
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
‘The World Is Full of Obvious Things’: A Sherlock Holmes Reading List
Sherlock Holmes feels uncannily contemporary these days — from his dizzying array of post-hipsterish quirks (Cocaine user! Virtuosic violin player! Exotic tobacco aficionado!) to a social aloofness that feels straight out of a Millennial INTP‘s playbook. (His knack for Twitter-ready aphorisms doesn’t hurt, either.) I’ve been rereading Conan Doyle’s stories for almost 20 years, and the guy has never felt more fresh.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
When the British Museum Reading Room Was Bohemian London’s Most Happening Spot
It’s counterintuitive to think of the British Museum as a happening spot, but for a long time its reading room served as a premier gathering place for London’s brainy bohemians. In the 1880s, these included radicals like George Bernard Shaw, Henry Havelock Ellis, and Eleanor Marx, Karl Marx’s youngest daughter. They worked there, and they talked […]