The Londonist flag is flying at a respectful half mast today: London’s oldest columnist has gone to the great printing press in the sky at the age of 101. Croydon gets less des res by the day: there’s been another stabbing at a school there. Laid-back London listens to a listless 90 bpm*: it’s northerners who top the toe-tapping leagues of Britain with the Scots on 160bpm. It’s probably just to keep warm. The......

Dusting off the snow from last year, every day this month the Londonist team will be pointing you in the direction of a Christmas present that (with a bit of luck) you won't already have on your list. Climb up onto our collective lap and we'll see what we can move from our sack to your stockings... The Londonist team is full of interesting people doing exciting things but one in particular has been......

The Holiday season is in full swing in NYC, with holiday lights in Brooklyn, a giant snow globe in Bryan Park and Chanukah specials for ham. One citizen decided to go vigilante on annoying car alarms, a murder suspect used a fake Asian accent on the stand and a video of a man being beaten up by teenage girls on a subway shocked the city. And we interviewed soon-to-be-leaving-Gawker editor Choire Sicha, who said,......

The Londonist Music Minions have had a night off from their hectic gigging schedule tonight, and we hope that you have done the same. The party season is rapidly approaching, and you need at least one laid-back evening to conserve your energy for the rest of the week… If you can, start things off gently tomorrow (Tuesday) with one-time Zero 7 vocalist Sia at King’s College Student Union (tickets are officially sold out, but......

Huge hangover? Spent all of your money? Yep, us too. So we can't go and watch Barbara Streisand (though we don't think we'll ever be that rich) and we can't go and see Elling. But, here's a few things you can do this week to make things a little easier on your pocket. Monday: Been a while since you've seen a good film? Then the Canary Wharf Summer Series at Canada Square park should......

There are a million things to do in London this week, but if you fancy a night in, here are a few things to keep you occupied. On TV, Londonist likes: Monday, 2 July - Friday, 6 July Wimbledon Today (BBC2, 20:00-21:00) Chances are, your workplace won’t let you watch Wimbledon during the day, so here’s your chance to catch up all week. Watch and see how many ways they can come up with......

We like it when new bands send us gifts in order to make us love them. Our favourite ever was the oyster card Dragonette were handing out. And now another band is following suite - Grace. Sadly this isn't the 1990s dance act involving Paul Oakenfold returning, but instead a Shepherd's Bush based band who've just released their debut album "Detours". And to celebrate, yup you guessed it - they've made some oyster cards! Woo......

Call for new writers. Londonist is a collaborative blog, which means we're always seeking out new additions to our team. Unfortunately we can't pay our contributors because any money we do make from advertising etc generally gets ploughed right back into the site. However, there are a number of benefits to writing for Londonist, so here are a few of the obvious ones: It's good experience and good exposure. After all, thousands of people will......

The Beast of Bexley has been spotted again… … this time carrying off a bloodied, wailing infant in its foul, be-slavered jaws. Not really. But that would be really cool, wouldn't it? Or rather, no, that would be terrible and tragic and cause for sorrow. Is "be-slavered" a real word? No one can say for sure who or what the Beast of Bexley is, but two facts are undisputed: 1.) it has been seen......

Well, that mostly wraps things up for Londonist in '06. From Friday until something like the 3rd January, we'll be on our seasonal hols, relaxing, drinking lots of whisky and not thinking about the quirks of London life in any way. Whatsoever. Oh, who are we trying to kid? We never actually sleep here at Londonist, which is kind of how we manage to run the whole thing whilst juggling our day jobs. It's......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Tonight It isn't Christmas without a Dickensian orphan boy made good, and here we have a discussion about the two greatest; Oliver Twist (did anyone see the Polanski film [pictured]?) and Pip from Great Expectations. 6.30 - 8pm, £6/£4, the British Library, Conference Centre, St Pancras. Celebrate the launch of Strange Attractor Journal Three......

Every day this month the Londonist team will be pointing you in the direction of a Christmas present that (with a bit of luck) you won't already have on your list. Climb up onto our collective lap and we'll see what we can move from our sack to your stockings... The Londonist Chinatown Christmas Hamper is the alternative collection of foodstuffs that appear this time of year. Though far from original as department stores......

The Londonist Literary List appears (almost) every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Wednesday London Liming is a night of readings and performances by UK and international writers, plus DJ sets. From 8pm, £6/£5, GE Club, The Great Eastern Hotel, EC2M 7QN. Thursday Jancis Robinson will be doing a wine-tasting and signing copies of the new edition of her Oxford Companion to Wine tonight, but probably......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. If you haven't seen the blog, or spotted them in the Guardian, Post Secret's conceit is simple - send a postcard airing a single piece of your dirty laundry. Now there's a book and an accompanying exhibition at Foyles till December the 10th. The new Smoke - a London Peculiar is out too. Here's......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. A quick note to say The Godot Company is performing Marguerite Duras' La Musica at Bookshop Theatre, 51 The Cut, SE1 8LF, (opposite the Young Vic), Monday - Saturday (not Thursday) at 7.30 pm, till December the 9th, £7/£5 - well worth a look. Wednesday We kick off this week with the Rough Guide......

The Londonist weekly Culture Crawl is crawling with things to see, do and enjoy: this week, we have dogs, more fireworks (but not dogs AND fireworks combined because that would be unpleasant) and the first mention of Christmas shopping. Let's start with some wagging tails... Saturday and Sunday Described by the Kennel Club as "best fun dog event this year," Discover Dogs is a two-day event at Earls Court for dog lovers, dog owners,......

The Londonist Literary List appears (almost) every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. STOP THE PRESS: We have a late edition to the list, "Golden Handcuffs - Scandals, Drugs & Lies" by Polly Courtney is being launched on Thursday 12 - 2pm and promises "A cynical, gritty look at what it really means to sell your soul to the city." D202, St. Clements Building, London School......

The Londonist lab is still waiting on the results so we're still not sure whether you have to be a moron to buy a 4x4 in the first place or if there's something in the upholstery that impedes oxygen to the brain thereby slowly turning you into a prick. Or prickess in this case: A heavily pregnant woman was pinned against a post by a 4x4 and racially abused in a road rage incident,......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Those of us with an addiction to lists may have looked on folornly at this recent compilation of no less than 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die - but it did make us think of a drinking game to play. It includes a shot glass, a bottle of cheap vodka, three pairs......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Wednesday The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghoutir has fourteen books under his belt and has been described by Edward Said as “one of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement we now have”. Tonight Barghouti will give a talk on the nature of exile, read his poetry (in English) and a short extract from I......

If you build it they will come. And if you convert a disused Bethnal Green warehouse into an art and performance venue, and fund it yourself (so you can stick it to "the man") they'll bang down your door. The Londonist talks to Marlon Brown, "the man" behind The Empire, about bank loans, broken wrists and the Buy It generation. First things first, how did you come about acquiring the Empire? I knew some......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Tonight Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award way back in 2003, discusses his writing and latest book A Spot of Bother. £8.50 at the Royal Festival Hall, 7:45 pm in the Purcell Room, find out more. Kevin McCloud......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Wednesday Based on his columns for McSweeny's, Nick Hornby's The Complete Polysyllabic Spree seems rather a lazy excuse for a "meta" book. Hornby (pictured) explores books - what he buys, what he reads and what he doesn't. Oh well, the man's gotta eat - join the polysyllabic discussion tonight as he continues to wax......

The Londonist Culture Crawl. Basically - don't sleep. Friday 15 September Starting today and continuing until 30 September, the London Design Festival takes over the Truman Breweries in Hoxton and infiltrates other parts of design-friendly London. London Design Festival, 15 - 30 September, details available here. Some books are so full of wackiness, the eccentric characters, surreal situations and mind-bending twists and turns of the tale overflow from the page and onto the silver......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. It's a busy old week, so let's get on: Tonight May Contain Graphic Content poses the question "Are graphic novels a complex and creative new literary form – or just glorified comic strips?" and they have some interesting speakers to debate the topic including Dan Franklin of Jonathan Cape, publisher of Ghost World, Jimmy......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Wednesday To eat or not to eat? Professor of Ethics Peter Singer, author of “Animal Liberation” and “How Are We to Live?: Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest” gives us food for thought in his new book Eating, in which he discusses the effects of the diet choices we make (to ourselves and the......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Thursday Thank goodness for this month's Bookslam is all we can say. Following on from the success of Zadie Smith as last month's super secret guest, August's slam is keeping it real with Ekow Eshun (pictured), creative director of the ICA and author of the 'Black Gold Of The Sun', up with Mr Hudson......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Wednesday Colm Tóibín's first collection of short stories, Mothers and Sons, is a meditation on the dramas surrounding that most elemental of relationships (read an interview with him). Each of the nine stories focuses on a moment in which an unspoken balance shifts; in which a mother or son does battle, or experiences a......

If our coverage of the latest terror-alertage has seemed a little light the reasons are two-fold. 1) We got the nod from Downing Street early last week that this would be a good time to get out of the country so a small percentage of Londonists missed all the kafuffle by braving the dangerous skies just prior to the balloon going up or by relaxing on Eurostar with more hand luggage, reading material and......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you'd like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Is it Booker Longlist season again? Drum roll please... Peter Carey Theft: A Love Story Kiran Desai The Inheritance of Loss Robert Edric Gathering the Water Nadine Gordimer Get a Life Kate Grenville The Secret River MJ Hyland Carry Me Down Howard Jacobson Kalooki Nights James Lasdun Seven Lies Mary Lawson The Other Side......