IN 2015 The Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs introduced a 5p charge for plastic bags at shops that employed more than 250 people. This was Britain’s first step towards tackling a global plastic crisis that has seen oceans and waterways littered with waste, which will take 500 years to decompose. Like many environmental […]
KEW GARDENS was originally the private woodlands and riding grounds surrounding Kew Palace, King George III’s convalescence home, and the red-bricked state residence is still on the land despite being sold off by Queen Victoria. Today Kew is in the news because of the £18 million restoration of Temperate House which was recently reopened by […]
The National Portrait Gallery is celebrating the golden career of the first and only England captain to lift the World Cup. Former West Ham captain, Robert Frederick Chelsea Moore was born in Barking and signed professional for West Ham, his local club, in 1956 and went on to make 647 appearances for them in the […]
It may not seem the weather for it but canalside dining is the perfect antidote for a British winter. Add Venezuelan cuisine into the mix and that’s sunshine South America by way of Haggerston, East London. Certainly, as soon as you enter, the huge welcome message of ‘Bienvenidos’ above the rainbow-coloured counter will lighten up […]
LITTLE VENICE is a pretty suitable description for this tranquil canal area which is on everyone’s list of the capital’s most romantic and picturesque places to visit. We can thank 19th-century poet Robert Browning for naming it after Italy’s more famous city of waterways. But there are no gondolas here, although, swans and ducks are […]
THE EAST END of London has had its fair number of cockney rockers and crooners. The London Borough of Newham is notable among East London districts for producing an Iron Maiden guitarist who turned down the chance to play professional soccer for West Ham as well as a rock guitar-playing West Ham manager who turned […]
TODAY is National Wordsmith Day. Not convinced? Well with good reason, because it’s also National Paranormal Day, National Chocolate Custard Day, National Lumpy Rug Day and National Two Different Coloured Shoes Day (these are all actual national days, by the way). Let’s give the chocolate custard and lumpy rugs a miss and have a look […]
Droids, jedis and stormtroopers took to the streets of Stratford, East London on the opening day of Sci-Fi London a film festival which screens the best of shorts and features in the genre. The festival opened with Chimera, a thriller about a disturbed scientist in a race against time to save his dying children. Star […]
In the 1970s and 80s, comic book fans could buy official Marvel Superhero Trump Cards which sought to answer the question ‘who is the most powerful superhero of all?’ This movie answers that question in emphatic fashion and has little respect for the traditional card game rules. Comic book fans dismayed by how cinema has […]
WIDESPREAD use of the internet and the social media revolution has led to wholesale changes in the way music is delivered, performed and viewed. The hard-edged twenty-something rap star that emerged in the eighties, nineties and early 2000s after paying their street dues has been replaced by the baby-faced teen rapper who blew up big […]
Hillary Clinton Graffiti/Painting Shoreditch By Street Artist Pegasus
