September 2026
everything published that month
24 entries in September 2026, newest first, and every one of them also sits in a subject section — usually the better way in: statues and public art, oddities or strange museums.
The Thames bridges
Below Teddington Lock the Thames is tidal, and it is crossed about thirty times by road, rail and foot before the estuary, the last fixed road crossing being the Dartford tunnels and the Queen… Read the entry
Secret London: a hidden guide to the places the city keeps quiet
Hidden London is not one place but many, and most of them are unmarked: side doors, strange museums, lost palaces and stories below street level. A darker guide to a brighter city. Read the entry
Statues of workers
Most of the figures standing in London commemorate men who commanded something. A much smaller set commemorates the people who did the work, and they are scattered across the City and the fringes of… Read the entry
War memorials
The Victoria Embankment carries more war memorials per hundred metres than anywhere else in Britain, and almost nobody walks it as a sequence. This sheet takes them in order, adds the Hyde Park Corner… Read the entry
Wapping
Wapping is a strip of riverside a mile long and two streets wide, and it kept more of its eighteenth century than almost anywhere else in east London because so little was rebuilt after… Read the entry
Street furniture
Street furniture is the part of London nobody photographs and everybody leans on. It is also unusually well documented, because a surprising amount of it is listed : the bench you are sitting on… Read the entry
Ship ahoy
London was the largest port in the world for most of two centuries, and the city put ships on things. Not in the docks, where you would expect them, but on church spires, over… Read the entry
London pub names
A pub sign was a shop front for people who could not read, so the names are pictures first and words second: an animal, a saint, a trade, a coat of arms. That is… Read the entry
London post boxes
A post box is the most precisely datable object on a British street. The monarch's cipher on the door narrows it to a reign, the shape narrows it further, and a few carry a… Read the entry
Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus is the most photographed junction in London and almost nothing about it is what people assume. The advertising is on one building because the Crown owns the other three. The statue everybody… Read the entry
London oddities: an unusual guide and map to the curiosities people pass
The unusual London oddities in this city are not hidden. They stand in the street, at eye level, on routes thousands of people use every day, and they go unnoticed because nothing explains them:… Read the entry
Lost stations
About forty London Underground stations have closed, and a surprising number are still standing in plain sight. The trick is knowing what to look for: most of the Edwardian ones were built to one… Read the entry
Kensington Gardens, part two
The northern half of Kensington Gardens has the park's best-known statue and its least-known ones. Peter Pan draws a queue; a few hundred metres away an obelisk to the man who found Lake Victoria,… Read the entry
Kensington Gardens
Kensington Gardens holds more public sculpture per acre than any other park in London, and most visitors see two pieces of it: the Albert Memorial and Peter Pan. This page covers the palace end:… Read the entry
Hyde Park
Hyde Park has been a deer chase, a place of execution, a parade ground, a protest ground and an exhibition site, and the objects standing in it record all of that unevenly. A colossal… Read the entry
Horses in London
The horse is the most common animal in London sculpture by a wide margin, because for most of the period in which the city put up statues, a man of consequence was shown on… Read the entry
Horse Guards Parade
Horse Guards Parade was Henry VIII's tiltyard, where jousting was staged for the palace at Whitehall, and it is still a ceremonial ground: Trooping the Colour and Beating Retreat are both held on it.… Read the entry
Heraldry on London buildings
Heraldry is the most widespread sculpture in London and the least looked at. Almost every institutional building of any age carries arms somewhere on its front, and they are readable: a coat of arms… Read the entry
Fountains of London
London is not a fountain city in the way Rome is, and the weather is usually blamed. What it does have is a small group of sculpted fountains, most of them from the 1940s… Read the entry
Statues of fictional characters
It is rare for a city to put up a monument to somebody who never lived, and rarer still to do it five times. London has statues of a consulting detective, a boy who… Read the entry
The Secondary of London
The Central Criminal Court is universally called the Old Bailey and is run, unusually, by a local authority. The City of London Corporation owns the building, maintains it and pays for it, which makes… Read the entry
Bond Street
Bond Street is a shopping street where nobody looks up, which is a pity, because almost everything worth seeing on it is above the shopfronts. A three-thousand-year-old Egyptian goddess sits over a saleroom door.… Read the entry
Bluecoat figures
Small painted figures of children in long coats stand above doorways across London, usually in pairs, a boy and a girl. They marked charity schools, and the colour of the coat was the school's… Read the entry
Animal statues
London has more animals in stone and bronze than it has generals, once you count the ones on buildings. Some are heraldic, some are memorials, and a few are portraits of specific creatures that… Read the entry