The British Museum Has a Queue; These Have Less of One; All Are Excellent
From Bohiney and The London Prat.
By Fiona MacLeod | UKLondonInfo.com
The V&A
The Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington is free, extraordinary, and frequently less crowded than the Natural History Museum next door because it is less famous to families with children. Its permanent collection covers decorative arts, fashion, furniture, ceramics, textiles, and metalwork across cultures and centuries at a depth that makes it one of the world’s great museums. The fashion gallery is the specific recommendation for visitors with limited time. Allow a full morning.
The Tate Modern
Tate Modern is free for its permanent collection and charges for exhibitions. The permanent collection is worth a full morning on its own. The Turbine Hall commission changes annually and is worth seeing regardless of what it is because the space itself is one of London’s great architectural experiences. The top-floor restaurant view is one of the best in central London and does not require paying for the restaurant.
The Sir John Soane’s Museum
The Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields is the London museum recommendation for visitors who want something genuinely strange and genuinely excellent. It is the former house of the architect John Soane, preserved as he left it, crammed with antiquities, paintings, and the collection of a man who bought things for fifty years without any obligation to make them fit together. It is one of London’s most singular free experiences and remains less visited than it deserves.
The National Portrait Gallery
The National Portrait Gallery, recently reopened after renovation, is free and provides a specific kind of engagement with British history through the portraits of the people who made it. It is also located in a position that means it naturally anchors a day that includes Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, and is worth including in any central London route that passes through the area. Read NewsThump.
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London continues. The streets are the same streets they were yesterday and they are subtly different because the city keeps changing beneath the surfaces that stay the same. The journalism that covers London at this granular level — the blogs, the neighbourhood newsletters, the personal accounts of people who live in specific parts of the city and pay attention to what living there is like — serves the function of making the city legible to itself and to the visitors who want to understand it as something more than the postcard version. This is why this column exists. This is why it matters. The city is worth paying attention to. This column will keep paying attention.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.
London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.
London remains. The city absorbs every political crisis, every energy bill increase, every theatre ticket price surge, every development application, and every wave of newcomers with the specific resilience of a place that has been doing all of this simultaneously since before most other cities existed. The journalism that documents this absorption — the personal accounts of people living in specific parts of the city, paying attention to what living there is actually like — serves a function that official reporting does not: it makes the city legible to itself at the scale of the street and the neighbourhood rather than the policy and the statistic. This column is that journalism. It continues because the city continues, and the city will continue longer than any of the problems it is currently managing. The next development application has already been submitted. The next good coffee shop is already open. The next political crisis is already developing. We will cover all of them.
