Dear Londoners — welcome to our first Monday briefing. It’s been quite a week, seven days live, two legal letters, no legal charges (yet) and today is Hannah Williams’ first day. She’ll be bringing her writerly expertise to the role, and a touch of stylistic grace — a virtually alien concept to our two current knuckle-dragging staff writers.
Moya Lothian-McLean took stock of London’s dating culture over the weekend, which brought in a swan-shaped, tunnel of love-style boatload of new subs — thanks for joining us. A succinct summary of "what I've been experiencing since the post-pandemic dating clown show," as one reader described it. There’s something for everyone at The Londoner. But don’t worry, for those of you that subscribed off the back of our exposé on Jas Athwal, we promise the next few weeks will still have their fair share of bleak and depressing stories to balance out the fun.
Coming up on Wednesday we’ve worked with The House magazine to dig into how Lambeth’s Labour politics shaped the trajectory of one of the most influential people in the government at the moment — Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney. Then on Thursday, it’s down the tube-nerdery rabbit hole, as Daniel Timms makes the controversial case for scrapping the tube zones (something to read during the upcoming tube strikes – see below). And we’ll wash the whole thing down with Miles Ellingham’s first feature at the weekend — giving the unseen inside story of the chaos and cuts that have caused a civil war at Goldsmiths.
But before all that, today it’s your first Monday briefing. Every week, we’ll endeavour to give you a satisfactory round up of the most important news, events and places to go in this city of nine million people, three and half thousand pubs and billions of foxes — each one stronger than the last.
Your Londoner briefing
🚇 At this point, the announcement of a Tube strike in London doesn’t feel much like news. Most Londoners will be used at this point to the spectre of weeks of apocalyptic threats before last minute negotiations pull things back from the brink. Sources close to the situation The Londoner spoke to were certain that, as per usual, this new round of strikes wouldn’t go ahead. Which made it all the more surprising when TfL seemed to confirm that the strikes would be happening after all. Most if not all Tube lines will be out of action on Thursday, plus Tuesday 12 November.
The strike will cover train drivers who are Aslef members – frustrated at a 3.8% pay rise that, according to the union, would leave them worse off than drivers on the Overground and Elizabeth line. Our sources were right on one thing though – a simultaneous strike planned by the RMT has now been called off thanks to a significantly improved pay offer.
🚨 In more worrying news about the capital's transport network, TfL has reported hundreds more hate crime incidents on the transport network in 2023-2024, compared to the year before. The spike has even forced the network to deploy specialist units to try and crack down on the growing crisis. The BBC spoke to the growing number of people who have experienced homophobic attacks on the network.
🍴We know what you’re thinking. If there’s one thing London doesn’t have enough of, it’s food markets. Well worry not, because just four years after scrapping plans for a giant food market in Waterloo, Time Out has confirmed that it has dusted off the blueprints for a new site at 10 Piccadilly, by Piccadilly Circus. The 28,000sq ft industrial-scale magnet for food influencers is set to open in 2027 – pending approval from Westminster Council.
🚧 We may finally be getting a look into how a newly pedestrianised Oxford Street may look. Eagle-eyed On London editor Dave Hill reported that London's deputy mayor Seb Dance met his counterpart from Barcelona Laia Bonet. After their discussion, Dance confirmed that City Hall were hoping to replicate some of the features of Barcelona's famous pedestrianised La Rambla in their new plans for London's busiest street.
💅 Someone has commissioned The Real Housewives of London. We can’t say we’ve heard of Hayu (an “all-reality” streaming service owned by NBCUniversal) but enough people like it for them to have had a “fan fest” in London recently, where they announced the plans for this new iteration of the format. Apparently casting is currently underway to “find personalities to showcase the glamour of living in London”. Personally, we do not envy whoever has to sit through and judge that audition process.
Our favourite reads
Linguist calls for London’s endangered language communities to be mapped — The Guardian
Ross Perlin is an American academic who is fresh off a project to map the 700 languages spoken in New York’s five boroughs. Now he’s looking to work with British researchers to track the “endangered language communities” of London. According to Perlin, in the capital “some of the language diversity has now been pushed out by the high cost of housing, and this creates other pockets of small language groups in other parts of the country”.
Brits Are 'Love Bombing' an Average Restaurant to Keep Tourists Away from Good Ones — Thrillist
Thrillist has been tracking the work of the heroic members of the r/London subReddit who have been writing gushing reviews of Angus Steakhouse in the hope that AI-powered algorithms will take the bait and convince Google-dependent tourists to go to the chain “instead of truly popular and beloved London steakhouses like Hawksmoor and Goodman”.
From dawn till dusk
We all know London can be unbearably huge. So every week we’ll take you through an ideal day across the city using our little black book of the best London venues. We hope it’ll be equal parts glitz and spit and tube dust.
Breakfast: Bar Bruno on Wardour Street. A Soho institution that seems impervious to ‘death by TikTok’ (despite the fact that it’s right next door to the Supreme store). Its ever dependable fry-ups make it one of the best places in an increasingly homogeneous part of central London. Plus, it’s where editor Joshi Hermann and reporter Andrew Kersley spent one grey weekday evening planning out the first steps of our big opening scoop on Jas Athwal.
Lunch: If you’re in the market for some delicious sandwiches, with good ingredients for under £6, look no further than Antonio Delicatessen. This place goes back to 1982, and has since been churning out chatty customer service along with wines and fresh bread. Lewisham isn’t one of the traditional hubs of Italian food in London, so this deli pleasantly bucks the trend.
Drinks: Before writing this, we were recommended this list of the top 50 cocktail bars in the UK. They did all sound nice. But, to be honest, those lists are usually just PR stunts, so we’re going to recommend literally anything else. Let’s start with a pub. How about The Hole in the Wall outside Waterloo, which does some of the cheapest pints in central London. Its smell is hostile at first, but eventually it becomes oddly reassuring. An island of honesty in a city of liars.
Dinner: Master Wei Xi’An near Russell Square. Opening back in 2019, this is one of the only places worth going to for Chinese noodles in central London – we’re keeping the rest to ourselves until we get to know each other a little better. The smacked cucumber is so good we’re told a version of the recipe ended up being taken by Ottolenghi to be used in one of his cookbooks. So you’ve probably made it already. Regardless, you could throw a dart at the menu and probably still end up with something great. Besides, it's right next to our office so there’s every chance you’ll see us there, soaking up a big, tasty, oily bowl of noodles.
Later: It’s past midnight, you’re teetering on the edge of drunken oblivion and you want to while away the early hours listening to some decent live music in North London. If there is any justice in the world, you will end up at The Lexington. The Islington-adjacent pub-cum-venue (that stays open till 2am on weekdays and 4am on weekends) has lasted nearly two decades as a grassroots music venue, a rare bit of longevity in a city where the number of similar late night venues has catastrophically dropped off.
To Do List
This week
When someone says ‘Beck’ do you think ‘Loser’ or do you think ‘Tube map’? If you chose the latter (correct) answer, you may like to know that Map House in Knightsbridge has opened a new exhibit on the iconic designer of the Tube map. Mapping the Tube: 1863-2023 marks the 50th anniversary of designer Harry Beck’s death, collating hand-drawn maps and annotated manuscripts by the man himself and a one-of-a-kind draft copy of the iconic, original Underground map. Beck died in 1972 but his soul lives on every time a chocolate-gorged Dutch family of five travels down the wrong branch of the Northern line on their way back from the M&M store.
As part of their Modern British & Irish Art week, Sotheby’s is hosting what they describe as a “tightly-curated exhibition” celebrating the very best of art and literature by the Bloomsbury group, the original aloof London hipsters. The auction house has partnered with custodians of the Bloomsbury collection, which has loaned some of its most significant (and usually private) pieces, including paintings, furniture and ceramics by the likes of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Virginia Woolf. The exhibition opens on the 9th and runs until 26th November.
Last chance to catch
Between This Body and the World at Harlesden High Street gallery. Harlesden High Street was recently described as “the coolest gallery in London” by The Face. We were as surprised as you that a high culture and fashion magazine like The Face visited Harlesden, but there you go. KV Duong’s debut solo exhibition, which explores “the space where identity, history, and materiality converge” (mostly through the medium of latex!) ends on the 16th and is worth a visit.
And beyond
It’s not often you get to mention ancient Greek playwrights and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the same sentence, but today is a rare exception. Brie Larson, of Captain Marvel fame, is starring in an adaptation of Sophocles’ Elektra at the Duke of York from January 24 and last time we looked there were still a few £25 tickets left.
Editorial note 04/11: This story was amended to update the number of days of strike action on the Tube after changes to the planned industrial action.
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