It is a quintessentially London sight, framed by tourists snapping away on cameras and blocking the pavement, rivalling only the Beefeater in grandeur and comforting, outdated archaism. The eighteen-inch bearskin hats worn by the guards at Buckingham Palace, although pretty groovy, are unfortunately lacking in the ethical stakes, and could be set for replacement with a design more fitting for the 21st century. The MoD are responsible for the final say on the design,......

London's cultural scene steams into August with an eclectic range of arty goings on. Those of you with art collections to refresh are in luck this week. Contemporary Arts Project's "Start You Collection" are offering a whole load of "highly collectible" art for under £200 from Friday, asking, "Without our art collections, how would we understand our cultural roots and trace its development to the present?" Indeed. And let's face it, if you can't......

Long summer days conjure up memories of the carefree days of our youth. And then we read this: 10-year-old boys attack a woman after she denies them a cigarette. Shouldn’t they be bumming candy or, we don’t know, splashing around in a lido instead? By now, you’ve no doubt heard about the emergency landing of Qantas Flight QF-30 from London to Melbourne. Causes unknown, but the theorising has begun. Plans for a new Holland......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 7th July 2005: Four suicide bombers detonate bombs on London’s public transport system, resulting in the death of 52 commuters and injury to some 700 others. Tuesday – 8th July 1965: Ronnie Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the notorious ‘Great Train Robbery’ a couple of years earlier, escapes from Wandsworth Prison. He would remain un-incarcerated until 2001. Wednesday – 9th July 1981: An......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 18th February 1996: An IRA bomb explodes on a double-decker bus on Aldwych, killing the bomber and injuring eight members of the public. Tuesday – 19th February 1960: Prince Andrew is born in the Belgian Suite of Buckingham Palace. Wednesday – 20th February 1913: Two suffragettes set fire to the tea pavilion at Kew Gardens at around 3am, destroying it completely. Thursday – 21st February 1946: Alan......

32. The Spirit Of Christmas Christmas ghost stories told by a crackling fire are a rare occurrence in the modern age, so let me chill your spine with a few yarns relating to festive phantoms of the wintry city. The first haunting is said to occur on Christmas Day at the Cadogan Hotel, Sloane Street, and concerns the ghost of actress Lillie Langtry, once a mistress of Edward VII. The spook is not a......

Fed up of the froth, mirth and sentimentality of the Yuletide muzak yet? To bring you an antidote and alternative soundtrack for your Christmas holidays we caught up with the utterly charming Roi Robertson of Mechanical Cabaret over a sorbet and peppermint tea and ruminated on the band's latest single, pastoral London views and the fact that we've never seen him and Noel Fielding in the same room together... Who's in the band? I......

The queues are already forming outside Buckingham Palace to see what lurks behind door number 21. Will it be the Star of Bethlehem? Or Michael Fagin? We'll be running a seasonal Touch-up every day until Christmas, so please send entries to londonist - at - gmail dot com. Source image from koltregask's Flickr photostream.......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 17th December 1983: An IRA car bomb explodes near Harrods in Knightsbridge, killing six people (including three police officers) and injuring a further 85 Christmas shoppers. Tuesday – 18th December 1890: The world’s first ‘deep-level’ electric tube line opens, connecting Stockwell and King William Street. As we mentioned last year, the City & South London Railway would later become a part of the Northern Line as we......

Londonist was privileged enough to be able to sneak a quick interview with Gavin Pretor-Pinney in between his cloud-gazing activities and his idling. Actually, that was a very weak attempt at a clever introduction. Let’s try again with a drum roll this time. Meet Gavin Pretor-Pinhey, the iconic founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, and the co-founder of The Idler. Oh, and proud London resident. Gavin, Londonist can easily understand idling (what is blogging except......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 8th October 1965: The Post Office Tower (now known as the BT Tower) in Fitzrovia becomes operational as a major hub for national microwave telecommunications. Today it is the only building in the UK that is legally allowed to be evacuated using its lifts. Tuesday – 9th October 1975: An IRA bomb explodes at a bus stop near Green Park tube station, killing one person and injuring......

This chesty old hoare-nut comes round time and again. What's the most emblematic edifice in the capital? To end all debate, Londonist went in for a more scientific approach than petty arguing on a forum. We visited all the London web sites we could think of. In each case, we noted down which structures the site features in its logo or banner. The one chosen by the most websites wins. So was it Tower......

FTSE in bad way. LHR not AOK. Mum 2 MJ's kids? No. Brick Lane in Toronto. Llelvis in town. Image of Tim, the minimalist lion at Buckingham Palace courtesy of James Michael Hill on Flickr.......

If you’re looking for a new place to live, and want to live more greenly at the same time, Londonist has discovered the perfect tool to help you: Walk Score. A cunning twist on Google Maps, give it a postcode and it’ll calculate how many useful things, such as shops, restaurants, cinemas, schools and parks, are within a mile of your house. Meaning you can use your car less, get fitter, save money and......

As soon as the sun came out, half of you probably rushed to the nearest beach. Or the nearest pub. Or the nearest airport. Now you're back in the real world and you've spent all your money. It means that we can't go and see the Summer exhibition at Buckingham Palace (we love an excuse to be nosy!) and we can't go and see Orlando Bloom in 'In Celebration' (apparently it's not very good......

We think everybody who attended Saturday's sun-soaked Tour de France Prologue would agree that, on the whole, it was a well-organised, popular success. However, with the shadow of the Olympics hanging over every large scale sporting happening in London between now and 2012 our experiences at the race lead us to believe that there are still a few important tweaks that could be made for events like this in the lead up to the......

As the buzz surrounding the weekend's Tour de France action in London builds steadily, more and more people are asking where will be the best places to watch, especially during the Prologue individual time trial on Saturday afternoon. Unlike the annual Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, where the best vantage points are well established, there's no obvious form to go on for this one-off cycling spectacular in terms of where to set out your viewing stall......

It's not a bad photo by a hasty tourist - it's a key London landmark in darkness. Finally, someone remembered to turn the lights off before they locked up for the night. Courtesy of the Lights Out London campaign organised by Capital 95.8, Londoners turned off all non-essential lights between 9pm and 10pm in order to show how much energy can be saved and how well we can function without a dozen different lamps......

Capital 95.8 have launched its Lights Out London campaign. Blatantly plagiarising Sydney's 'Earth Hour', the radio station is busily garnering support from celebrities like Kim Wilde for the campaign, which encourages the whole of London to turn off all lights and non-essential appliances between 9 and 10pm on 21 June – the longest day of the year – as a way of promoting awareness of green issues. Al Gore apparently called for a similar......

File this one under 'what the f*ck'. Hello. Please introduce yourselves, and your cause. We're the London Urban Ironing Collective. Our parents were diagnosed with Cancer in December 2006, so we decided to raise money for Cancer Research UK using the medium of ironing. We're asking Londoners to suggest well known locations where they'd like to see us carrying out Textile Crease Management (TCM). They donate money to Cancer Research UK on our website. make......

HM The Queen is on a state visit to the US this week. Buckingham Palace has received another grand old lady in exchange. Or so contributor 'Drakus' would have us believe. Keep sending your images of a distorted capital to londonist - at - gmail - dot - com......

The National Archives might be shut today (for maypole dancing or demonstrating - we just don’t know) but they’re amusing us all through the release of correspondence between Buckingham Palace and the Home Office from 1947 about affairs of grave, national importance. Wedding tat, to be exact. That pivotal moment in history when the good old, tacky ‘n’ tasteless, cheap and cheerful royal wedding souvenir trade emerged straying mutinously far from the acceptable tradition......

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions this week at DCist. Like the rest of country, we were floored by the news of so many dead coming out of Virginia Tech, and with so many of the victims and their relatives from the D.C. area, we felt it important to pay......

How’s everyone getting on with their Flickr geotagging? Not very well, is the verdict from reader Michael Reeve. He’s invented a fun little game for spotting inept geotaggers. Pick a london landmark, e.g. Buckingham Palace, then using the "Explore photos on a map" feature to search for the spread of photographs tagged with that landmark (search for "buckinghampalace") and zoom in on London to see where the silly tourists think it’s actually located. Buckingham......

The super-stacked summer season of stuff to see and do is over... and the even more packed autumn schedule of stuff to see and do has launched without pause for breath. There's no time to stop and stare in London - and why would you want to? Friday 1 September Late at Tate Britain, 6.00pm - 10.00pm, FREE The monthly Late at Tate Britain, held on the first Friday of each month, is tonight......

It's time to dust off that rusty racer - the Tour of Britain comes to London next week as the capital hosts the final stage of the nationwide cycle race. As the Tour of Britain website reports: The 2006 Tour of Britain will consist of six stages starting on Tuesday 29 August in Glasgow. The Tour then takes in new routes in the Northwest, Yorkshire and the West Midlands, before a brand new fifth......

So apparently a five foot high Paddington Bear was wandering around Paddington Station this morning, on his way to visit Buckingham Palace. a 5ft Paddington joined commuters as he strolled along a platform eating one of his favourite marmalade sandwiches. The children's literature garden party, which commemorates the Queen's 80th this year, also coincides with one of Paddington's birthday. He has two like the Queen - his other birthday is on Christmas Day. Dammit,......

There's the rest of today, all of tomorrow and all of Saturday. That's a little over two days to brace yourself and exercise your mental defences. When the clock strikes midnight and it officially becomes Sunday 26th March... that's it. It's going to be Mother's Day. Aren't mums lovely? That special lady who brought you into the world and looked after you, stayed up all night worrying and watching over you when you were......

Two 16-year-old boys were killed over the weekend by the Stansted Express at a foot crossing around half a mile from Angel Station. How many people were at the anti-war rally over the weekend? Police say 10-15,000, organisers say 80-100,000. Whatever, the message was pretty clear. Julian Lloyd Weabber and his wife were arrested recently on suspicion of "beating each other up" at their Notting Hill home. Police arrested them at around 3:30am for ABH......

Here it is, the photograph of Ken Livingstone meeting Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at Buckingham Palace earlier today. Looks cosy doesn't it? According to the reports the meeting was "warm and friendly" and the pair had much to discuss including the strengthening of links between the Brazil and London: "President Lula and I agreed that London and Brazilian cities have much to learn from one another and that stronger links will......