Festival season embeds itself in our social life this week and makes a mockery of our diary – it’s all illegible scribblings, strike-throughs, and exclamation points. Whilst we attempt to sort ourselves out, let’s see what sense we can make of the week ahead in literary London for you... Monday: Bebop hep-cats (that’s right, hep-cats) converge on the Troubadour tonight to celebrate the 1950s poetry scene (8pm, £6/£5 concessions); biographers Anne Sebba and Andrew......

A group of masked protesters will gather outside the Church of Scientology's centres in London on Sunday morning at 11am, starting at the centre on Queen Victoria St before moving on to the Goodge St location. But what has prompted this IRL display of anger? The protests - which will take place in various other countries on the same day - are the latest and strangest episode in an all-out war between the famously......

Or is it? Samina Malik, self-described “lyrical terrorist”, yesterday became the first women sentenced under the Terrorism Act. Found guilty last month of collecting materials “useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”, including original poetry with titles such as How to Behead and The Living Martyrs, the 23-year-old West Londoner was given a suspended jail sentence, during which time she will be required to undertake supervised community service for 18......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 30th July 1966: England defeat West Germany in the FIFA World Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, claiming the Jules Rimet Trophy (and, of course, the status of Football World Champions for the next four years). Tuesday – 31st July 1962: Violence erupts at a rally of the Union Movement (formerly known as the British Union of Fascists) in Dalston, East London. Sir Oswald Mosely, leader of the......

The kind of record-breaking attempt where you balance an egg on your head while performing La Traviata backwards in a vat of custard - Londonist thinks those are pretty lame, on the whole. The kind of record-breaking attempt where you stand up for free speech in the UK while pointing out the ridiculousness of the paranoid laws introduced by the government which curb the right to protest, however - those are the kind of......

Just out the Van: Lights, Music, Words, Action - It’s Book Slam time again with Guatam Malkani, author of the Londonstani, Salena Godden, writer, singer, and raconteur, and Iman, winner of the National Music Award. This Thursday at Neighbourhood, 6.30pm till late, 12 Aclam Road, W10 5QZ, £5 in advance or £6 on the door. Fresh Next Week: Michael Palin leads a reading from Another Sky, a new collection of work by writers whose lives......

With the sun out, the temperatures high, one can only think of one thing-- what's going on in the World of the -ist's? Bostonist dug deep to uncover Barack Obama's unpaid parking tickets, their Governor's latest ethical lapse, and a plagarizing sports writer. Chicagoist had everything in twos: two views on having the Olympics, losing two members of their Super Bowl team, and two music festivals. DCist put their noses in legal books as......

Do you know your Sexual Orientation Regulations? Sounds like they should involve a spinning bottle and a Twister mat, but it turns out they simply ensure that gay people get the same rights as everyone else. Opposition to them was quashed despite yesterday's protest: New rules outlawing businesses from discriminating against homosexuals have been upheld in the House of Lords. A challenge led by Lord Morrow of the Democratic Unionist Party failed by a......

A tribute to the capital’s alleys, ginnels and snickleways 16. Lamb's Conduit Passage Where? North-east corner of Red Lion Square, connecting through to Theobald's Road. What? Pleasant diagonal, taking in quaint eateries and not-so-quaint pink flats built on heavily war-damaged land. Formerly called Little Conduit Street, the passage takes its name from a water channel built by the philanthropic William Lamb in the 16th century. Originally, similar alleys existed at all four corners of the......

The time has come. The waiting is over. Desperate Housewives (Wed 10pm C4) is back, and are we ever excited. We'll trot out the tired old cliché about how its acid-bright façade hides a surprisingly black heart because, hell, it's true; something is rotten in the state of Stepford ... even if we all know that the show doesn't quite have the courage of its convictions and there's occasionally a touch of the hugging-and-learning......

If you're stuck for something to do this Friday afternoon then you should maybe think about getting down to St James' Square for a bit of free speech and a picnic. It doesn't get any more British than that does it? New Speakers' Corner comes courtesy of the ICA and Hames Levack ('the art gallery without a fixed venue') who had the idea of giving Joe Public the chance to get on their soapbox......