501 Places

“England is burning and you’re risking life and limb if you step out on the streets”. That’s what you may be led to believe if you listen to the media coverage of this week’s riots. I had several messages via Facebook and Twitter this week checking if we are ok and advising me to stay […]

Have you ever stood and watched people fixed in a spiritual trance (however you define one) and wondered just who it is who is missing something? Is it they who are feeling something magical about the place you’re visiting, a mysterious power, an energy; and you just haven’t got what it takes to feel it […]

Imagine receiving a notice to say that you must leave your family home within the next month in order to ‘help the national war effort’. Few would have begrudged the cause in the autumn of 1943, but for the villages of Tyneham in Dorset this would still have been a letter that they hoped they […]

The Henry Moore exhibition at Hatfield House opens on April 23rd and will run throughout the summer months. It is the largest exhibition of Moore’s distinctive work ever shown in a private house. I was involved in organising a preview event for the exhibition recently and as a result was invited to attend. A great […]

I have a soft spot for London. I enjoy living a 20 minute train ride away from the city and being able to venture in for a wander through the streets, for a meal or to see one of the daily events that takes place somewhere in its vast sprawl. But it wasn’t always like […]

Making the most of a glorious sunny day, we got off the tube at Hammersmith and started walking towards the river with no fixed plans in mind. A few hours later we had arrived at St Pancras Station, feet aching but having seen a wonderful cross-section of London life across many of its different neighbourhoods. […]

Many places lay claim to the much hyped label ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’. A recent entrant to this list of aspiring wonders is the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandi, better known as the Neasden Temple. This unglamorous corner of London is better known to millions as home to two giant symbols of worship of a […]

I think I know London pretty well these days. I’m in the city most weeks, and a couple of times a month we take a long walk through different neighbourhoods and see what we can find: blue plaques depicting famous residents of the past, surprising remnants of wars or fires that have shaped the city […]

After the Great Fire of London in 1666, Christopher Wren was instructed to design and rebuild 51 churches in the city. He was later knighted and would become the architect who, more than any other, left his mark on the city in a way that has survived more than three centuries. Wren’s most celebrated work […]

Grosvenor Square, in the heart of London’s exclusive Mayfair, has been home to the American Embassy since 1938. It has maintained a very significant and increasingly fortified presence in the square through some turbulent times, both for London and for the United States. Given that this square is the spiritual home of Americans in the […]