London Things to Do Tips by KennetRose

Lively, throbbing market, especially on Sundays. Camden Lock Market is around Hampstead Road lock on the Regents Canal. Nearby Camden Market is strung out along Camden High Street.

This is a young persons place, mainly selling 'alternative' clothing including lots of leather. But a wrinkly like me can still get a buzz from the atmosphere. There are lots of associated bars and cafes of the type that would attract the sort of people attracted to the market. The area round Hampstead Road lock is a rather special place.

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Address: Camden High Street and Regents Canal, NW1
Directions: Chalk Farm or Camden Town tubes (Camden Town is exit only Sunday afternoons)

If you spend any time in London, sooner or later you'll need an umbrella. And this is absolutely the best place to get it. As well as your shooting stick (a kind of portable seat), swordstick, 'life preserver' and an extensive choice of silver-tipped ebony canes. You just have to buy something here because it's so splendid! (I have an ebony cane from here, actually a British Army officer's swagger-stick). My favourite shopfront in London or anywhere else for that matter. A Victorian masterpiece! Have a look at

http://www.publiclettering.org.uk/Smithsumbrellas.php

to see how it's done.

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Address: 53 New Oxford Street WC2
Directions: Tottenham Court Road tube.

One of the hidden treasures of London. A private subscription Library, founded by Thomas Carlyle in 1841 when he was fed up with the poor service in the British Museum Library. One of the finest humanities collections in the world. Instead of asking a librarian to bring your books to your table, you can wander round the stacks at will, and you never know which literary luminary is round the next corner. The suggestions book alone is a work of art. Unfortunately, the days when you could walk purposefully past the desk and up the stairs to the reading room are over, you have to be a member. Annual membership is GBP 150. If you love books and are here for a while, it's worth every penny. The best ticket in town.

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Address: 14 St James's Square SW1
Directions: Green Park or St James Park tube

If you only have time to visit one museum, you haven't got time to do the British Museum, so you should come here instead. This was the private house of the architect of the Bank of England, which to spite his wayward sons he left to the nation to display his private collection of art and antiquities. It's a model of compactness. The best things are Hogarth's Rakes Progress, Gin Lane (see picture) and Beer Street. In the latter pair, Hogarth does a marketing job for the the delights of beer over the hazards of the then-prevalent gin, in the days of 'Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence'.

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Address: 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2
Directions: Holborn or Chancery Lane tube

If you can do *two* museums, then see the Wallace Collection. Another eclectic private collection, with a slant towards the French. Fragonard's erotic masterpiece 'The Swing' is here, and you won't fail to recognise Franz Hals's Laughing Cavalier.

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Address: Hertford House, Manchester Square W1
Directions: Bond Street Tube. Tucked away in the streets behind Selfridges

The London home of Frederick Leighton, Victorian artist and friend of the Pre-Raphaelites (though he wasn't one of the Brotherhood himself).

There's a display of Leighton's paintings, along with some by his friends Edward Burne-Jones and J W Waterhouse. That alone certainly wouldn't make me rush to visit.

What makes a visit to Leighton House really worthwhile, however, is the Arab Hall, a stunning room designed by Victorian architect George Aitchison in the best traditions of Islamic art, with walls of Damascus tile, mosaics on the floor and Persian carpets. Easily the best interior in London - one to take the breath away!

Leighton, not to my mind in the first rank of 19th century painters, is probably best known for "Flaming June", much reproduced on posters and unfortunately not here but in a gallery in Puerto Rico.

Open daily, except Tuesdays, 11.00 to 17:30, admission free. Photography is not permitted, which is why the picture is a postcard.

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Phone: 0 20 7602 3316
Address: 12 Holland Park Road, W14
Directions: High St Kensington or Olympia tubes.
Website: http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/leightonhousemuseum

It looks just like all the others in its row of stucco town houses behind Kensington High Street. Behind the front door, however, is perhaps London's least known, most likeable and quirkiest museums. It was the London home of 19th century political cartoonist and illustrator Edward Linley Sambourne. Now it is a perfectly preserved Victorian town house, left just the way it was when Sambourne died with all its furniture and fittings intact.

The museum is extremely delicate and opening times are limited. Call Leighton House (number below) for details.

The house is currently closed for renovation and will reopen in January 2003.

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Phone: 0 20 7602 3316
Address: 18 Stafford Terrace, W8
Directions: High Street Kensington tube.
Website: http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/linleysambournehouse

A quiet road of distinctive houses, built to their own designs by a group of artists in the 19th century.

The Tower House is currently the London residence of Jimmy Page, once of Led Zeppelin ("who?", I hear younger readers ask!)

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Address: Melbury Road, W14
Directions: Olympia tube

Another of London's best-kept secrets. These gardens were established in the 17th century by the Society of Apothecaries and still concentrate on medicinal plants and herbs.
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The garden is open Wednesday and Sunday afternoons.

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Phone: 0 20 7352 5646
Address: 66 Royal Hospital Road, SW3
Directions: Sloane Square tube

548 of them at the last count, scattered all over Greater London (and many imitators elsewhere in the UK).

They commemorate the places where celebrated people lived, worked or died. By no means all are household names - they are erected at the suggestion of members of the public, many of them by specialist and expatriate groups. There are also some glaring omissions - none for Sir Isaac Newton, for example, or J M W Turner the greatest British painter. But tracking them down makes a pleasant treasure hunt round London.

In the early 1980s when the then GLC put one up for Alan Turing (without whose pioneering work on computers we might not be reading VT), one of our esteemed tabloid newspapers had a red-faced rant about blue plaques for "gays". I ask you...

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Directions: All over London