Caitlin Barr

William Blake’s old flat in Mayfair could be turned into a cultural centre – if, that is, campaigners get their way and developers don’t go ahead with plans for luxury flats. You might remember Romantic poet and painter Blake from your English lessons (he wrote The Tyger, which still slaps, as well as Jerusalem, popular at sports matches), and maybe your art lessons too, but fan-club the William Blake Fellowship wants to ensure that his memory lives on beyond recitations and rousing singalongs.  The fellowship hopes that Blake’s old flat on South Molton Street, where he lived for 17 years and wrote aforementioned banger Jerusalem, will be transformed from its current use as office space into a museum and cultural hub. The London Assembly is on board with the campaign, and has called on London Mayor Sadiq Khan to throw his weight behind it. Meanwhile, the William Blake Fellowship has submitted an application for Neighbourhood Community Infrastructure Levy funding and will be meeting Westminster Council to discuss changing 17 South Molton Street’s use from a private residence to a cultural centre.  Visualisation: Kashmira Sonar Mapelli Property developer Grosvenor Group has apparently been eyeing the building for luxury flats as part of its plan to turn the whole street into ‘a new destination of international significance for the West End’, but has since told the Standard that it ‘remain[s] open to the William Blake Fellowship’s proposals and will continue this dialogue’.  C

There’s no better Saturday (in my humble opinion) than strolling to a bookshop, picking up a new read, and settling down with it in a cafe. London boasts dozens of brilliant independents, and 10 of them have been recognised in the British Book Awards’ Independent Bookshop of the Year category.  The award, administered by the Bookseller magazine, recognises bookshops that ‘reach beyond the literary landscape and bring books to the heart of local communities’. 72 shops made the cut nationwide. The Bookseller’s managing director, Tom Tivnan, said: ‘I have been judging this award for a decade and a half and I have never seen such depth of quality and energy in the submissions, from the newcomers to most venerable stores.’ Without further ado, here’s the London list – does your local indie make an appearance?  Pages of Hackney  Nomad Books, Fulham   Brick Lane Bookshop, Shoreditch  Children’s Bookshop, Muswell Hill   Backstory, Balham Goldsboro Books, Covent Garden  Housmans Bookshop, King’s Cross   Queen’s Park Books Bàrd Books, Bow The Gilded Acorn, Holborn Bàrd Books’ inclusion is particularly impressive, as the shop only opened last summer. The shop says it’s ‘so excited’ to have been included, and that the staff drank ‘dregs of all our opened bottles of wine behind the bar in celebration’ after hearing they'd been selected. Brick Lane Bookshop, Goldsboro Books, Backstory, and Children’s Bookshop have all been nominated for the second year in a row.  Tom Rowley, owner of Bac

Enfield Council has confirmed that it’ll be shuttering nearly half of the borough’s libraries in a bid to save over £500,000 per year. The closures follow a city-wide trend. According to creative project All the Libraries in London, which tracks openings and closures, 120 libraries have been axed in the capital in the last 10 years.  Seven libraries will close: Southgate Library, Winchmore Hill Library, , Bowes Library, Bullsmoor Library, Enfield Highway Library, Enfield Island Library, John Jackson Library, Southgate Library and Winchmore Hill Library. The sales of the sites could bring in up to £3.85 million in property sales, and save £4.5 million in maintenance costs over a 10-year period.  A campaign was mounted last summer to save the eight libraries which had been earmarked to shut. A public consultation was also launched, and the response from 2,400 residents influenced councillors to U-turn on their closure plans for Oakwood Library, which will remain open as one of Enfield’s remaining nine libraries. It was by far the most popular of the eight sites that were at risk, with 43,664 visitors in 2023/2024.  Declining usage and budget pressures were cited by the Labour-run council as the reasons for the closures. Council leader Ergin Erbil said: ‘Libraries are the heart of our communities, and we want to make sure they continue to provide a fantastic range of services for our communities. While we have had to make some tough decisions to protect our financial future, I a

You may know Scarborough as a blueprint seaside town, replete with donkey rides, amusement arcades and an aquarium. But it’s not all rock and ice cream shops. Scarbados (as it is affectionately known) is a haven for marine life, and one of the best places to view dolphins and porpoises in England.  Aiming to celebrate the region’s wildlife, and raise awareness of the need to protect it, Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller has created a marine life-inspired mosaic spanning the floor of a new seawatching station on Marine Drive. It’s all part of the local Wild Eye coastal art and nature trail, celebrating biodiversity in Scarborough and nearby Whitby.  Five other pieces by local creatives complete the trail, including sculpture and augmented reality artwork.  ‘Roman Mosaic c 2025’, completed in collaboration with Yorkshire-based sculptor and mosaic-artist Coralie Turpin, features fan favourite Thor the Walrus, who charmed the internet when he pitched up on Scarborough Harbour on New Year’s Eve of 2022, had some fun, and wriggled back into the sea the next day. Also present are the aforementioned easy-to-spot dolphins, alongside seals, birds, crabs, lobsters, octopus, squid, fish and even a Roman wind god.  Photograph: Jeanine Griffin The design is a nod to Scarborough’s Roman history (there was briefly a Roman signal station on the headland), and inspired by mosaics found at Pompeii and Lod.  Speaking about his new wet and wild mosaic, Deller said: ‘Here in Scarborough,

La Goccia and The Petersham have closed their doors after six years of trading in Covent Garden.  The sister restaurants, owned by Petersham Nurseries’ Boglione family, served their last dishes on Sunday (February 16), having gone into administration while trying to secure lower rents from landlords Shaftesbury Estates.  Management told the Telegraph that it blames an ‘inability to recruit people with the right experience and skills’ thanks to Brexit, as well as ‘the looming impact of the recent Budget’ and the ongoing impact of the pandemic.  Lara Boglione, whose parents founded the Petersham brand over 20 years ago, and who now runs uber-successful Petersham Nurseries’ Michelin Green-starred restaurant, told the Standard that the decision to close La Goccia and The Petersham was taken ‘in view of the significant cost challenges they have faced’. Both on Floral Court off Floral Street in Covent Garden, the restaurants were apparently costing a huge £1.2 million per year in rent and service charges. Jo Milner, from liquidators Buchler Phillips, said: ‘This is clearly disappointing for La Goccia and The Petersham. ‘It’s a very difficult landscape: last year almost 3,500 hospitality businesses became insolvent against a background of tight consumer spending and growing staff costs as a result of the Budget.’ You’ve missed your chance to eat out at either of the Covent Garden outposts, but you can still hop on a train (or even a boat) to Petersham’s original location in Richmon

If you went to school any time in the last decade, it’s likely that you spent your school break and lunch times (and particularly unengaging lessons) scrolling through social media. You probably took Snapchats of your friends with dog ears superimposed onto them, and heavily filtered shots of your after-school snacks which you posted directly to your Instagram followers from your smartphone, which rarely left your hand. Nowadays, Gen Alpha is watching day-in-the-life TikToks under desks and, astoundingly, still using Snapchat – but not for long. At least, not for the 63,000 students in Barnet who will be affected by a borough-wide change later this year.  From September 2025, 103 primary schools and 23 secondary schools in the north London borough will bring in measures to limit smartphones’ impact on the school day. Some will completely ban them, while others will adopt measures to curtail their usage.  Smartwatches will also be prohibited, but pupils will be allowed to bring in ‘brick’ phones so they can still be in contact with parents on the way to and from school.  Social media use has risen among children in the last decade, and experts say it’s drastically impacting their mental health as well as their attention span and attainment at school. According to Ofcom, 24 percent of five to seven year olds own a smartphone, and 32 percent access social media without an adult supervising them. Among eight to seventeen year olds, 32 percent have seen something upsetting on soc

Ten years after construction began, and £5 billion later, London’s ‘super sewer’ is finally ready for action.  The Thames Tideway Tunnel, to give it its official but less-fun name, is 25km long, stretching from Acton through the city to Abbey Mills (near Stratford) where it connects with the Lee Tunnel.  The last valve for the new poo pipe was connected on Valentine’s Day (romantic!) and that means that the tunnel can begin the very important job of diverting sewage outflows that have been polluting the already quite unappealing river. Twenty-one valves along the route (including at Putney, Victoria Bridge and Greenwich) can now reroute our yuckiest waste to sewage treatment works for processing, making the Thames far cleaner, if still quite brown.  Photograph: Thames Tideway It’s hoped that the tunnel will stop 95 percent of sewage spills caused by the old, predominantly original Victorian system being blocked up by too much waste from London’s growing population. According to construction firm Tideway, 5.5 million tonnes of sewage were prevented from flowing into the river in a single 24-hour period of heavy rain. Tideway CEO Andy Mitchell is optimistic about the project’s impact: ‘Our mission has always been about creating not just a tunnel, but a healthier, thriving environment for the river and its inhabitants. We look forward to seeing a real impact in the years to come and sharing everything we learn about the positive changes.’ The first four valves were turned on i