March already? How did that happen? The perils of having our head buried in a book so much of the time, no doubt. If we must emerge this week from our cosy little book-enclosed chrysalis, it’ll likely be to head to the following events. Monday: The RSL-sponsored TS Eliot Memorial meeting brings together award-winning poets Alice Oswald and Kathleen Jamie for an evening of readings from their work. Both have been lauded for the......

We introduced the Gas Organ not long ago and we're extremely pleased to let you know that this extraordinary science-art-music creation is back - and it has made new and wonderful friends. Whether you're meeting the Gas Organ for the first time or intending to see it once more, head to the evocatively named Flame and Flesh event on 22 February at the Corsica Studios in Elephant and Castle for an evening packed with......

We’ve got a right one here – the tale of the wannabe strangler who half choked his chosen victim, immediately felt sorry, and then called 999 to summons an ambulance for her. Young Toby Vane is now quite rightly up in court over his, er, aberration. He claims that he was quite simply pissed off with his (we imagine former) friend after she had verbally tormented him for years. Londonist is impressed. This is clearly......

Double-take caption in the Times today reads: “More whites than Asians stopped by antisuicide bomber police.” According to this article, Scotland Yard released figures yesterday on the ethnic composition of its stop-and-search figures: of the 32,000 people stopped between April and August of this year under the Terrorism Act, 17,348 were white, compared to 6,755 Asians and 4,287 blacks. Of course this evidence does not extricate the Police from the witch hunt charge: given the......

We're adamant that this week we're going to pretend it's still Summer. We're not content with sitting in watching the telly. We want to go out and play. But if we're going to do this every night this week, we're going to have to do it for very few pennies indeed. Here's the free stuff we've found this week: Tuesday: We tried really hard but we can't find you any free theatre for Tuesday.......

>>Stop the Press Book Slam is at The Big Chill House this Sunday 2pm – 11pm. It's free and perfect refuge for those dodging Glastonmuddy… Just out the Van: Literary High Tea launches in the heart of Bloomsbury on Sunday, featuring readings from Toby Litt, Heidi James, Kate Ansell and Jeremy Sheldon accompanied by a menu of tea and scones. 4pm-6.30pm Sunday 24 June, £12.95/£8.95, The Great Russell Suite, The Montague on the Gardens,......

Just out the Van: "Writers write. Actors read. Audiences listen. Everybody wins..." at the Liars' League next Tuesday. Six stories stretch from last century to the end of the earth including work from Kay Sexton, Toby Smith, Andrew Lloyd-Jones, hosted by David Mildon and the mysterious sounding "League". 7pm, £2, Upstairs at The Lamb, 94 Lamb's Conduit Street, WC1N 3LZ. Givin’ ‘em away: As part of the re-opening celebrations for the Royal Festival Hall,......

>>Before we begin, a small non-profit Theatre group is looking for a free rehearsal space one night a week. Email bookgrocer@gmail.com if you can help or know of any good sized rooms (church halls, pub back rooms, community art centres), the more central the betterFresh this Week: Thursday - it’s not quite a weeknight (Casual Fridays opens up new hangover opportunities; wear a wide brimmed hat to work and no-one will notice) however its......

An astonishingly workaday title for a book that features a singing otter, flying dinosaurs and a sheet of electronic tissue paper. Welcome to the madcap world of Paul Ewen, a softly spoken New Zealander with a knack of finding trouble in public houses. It’s a world not unlike that of Michael Hodges, only with less vitriol and more adjectives. The just-published paperback collects together 44 ripping yarns, each set in one of London’s famous......

It’s disheartening to arrive at a gig and find one of your favourite bands selling their own merchandise from the top of a beer-soaked table, chain-smoking to help them endure the electro-schlock being peddled by the support band. Recent warm-up slots with the Raconteurs and The Magic Numbers couldn’t help the Philadelphia 5 piece sell out the relatively tiny Metro club, confirming your worst fears about the music industry’s inability to work out what......

If you're running on a high of cultural experiences having been along to Carnival this weekend, then stay on that high, and spend an evening checking out the final UK date of what sounds like a cool and unusual night out tonight Moana & the Tribe are a Maori collective who bring song, Maori chants and haka together with film. The emphasis is on vocal harmonies and melodies and the mixture of indigenous instruments......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. Tuesdays are all the rage these days in Literary London. And why not? What else is Tuesday good for... Events Around London: Tonight, authors Toby Litt, Hilary Mantel, and Patrick McGrath join forces to discuss the ghosts in their stories, and venture to explain why it is that we are all so fascinated by......

Last Thursday, mod mecca Merc played host to Lucky Soul. It was to be a small intimate affair, to promote the launch of the band's very first single and, considering that there's been little hype about the band, the interest in the gig was impressive. So impressive that it was the biggest turn out ever for a gig at Merc, with those unlucky enough not to get into the store prepared to stand on......

In a previous life, before blogging turned our heads, we actually used to read literature. Studied a few books too. In fact we spent more than one evening working our way line by line through the likes of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, but one novel we always came back to was Laurence Sterne's 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'. We were always bemused by the fact that Sterne managed to out......

(To the tune of Love and Marriage.) Whips and beer. Whips and beer. Go together like a slap and Germaine Greer. OK, it doesn’t quite scan, but nobody’s perfect. Least of all our medieval ancestors, who sported huge beer guts and enjoyed whipping one another. Or at least that’s the ancestral picture we’re painting after reading about a couple of recent archaeological finds in the capital. It’s all well-timed PR by the Museum of......

A lot of the US papers are carrying reviews of Roman Polanski's Oliver today so we thought we'd bring you a bit of a roundup of what they're saying. We'll kick off though with the only UK paper to get in on the act so early: the Standard. Nick Curtis was at the British premier of the film last night and his review is headlined The Best of Twists, so there's no grey areas......

Right, time to catch up on a couple of gigs from last week. The Duke Spirit - The Portland Arms, Cambridge That's right, Cambridge. 45 minutes out of King's Cross lies one of London's quainter suburbs and for this evening at least, home to The Duke Spirit playing to no more than 150 in the back room of the Portland Arms. A tad fewer then than at their Astoria headline show we thinks. Taking......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday on, well, obviously, Londonist. As the Edinburgh International Book Festival continues this week, we Londonists must still concede that the best literary action lies due north of our city. Doris Lessing regrettably cancelled her appearance scheduled for tomorrow (speaking of cancellations, we have noticed that there seem to be an unusually high number of them at this year’s festival), but there are still a number of highly worthwhile......

Today's Independent carries a feature on the (in)famous Groucho club. Subtitled 20 years of schmoozing and boozing, the article attempts to capture the allure of the media set's favourite members club, so we get the ubiquitous ligger Keith Allen reminiscing about Moby playing the piano while Mick Jones sang a Clash song and "Coldplay and New Order did the backing vocals"...we're sorry we missed it. The far more amiable Rolan Rivron recounts painful memories......

It's fair to say that Michael Jackson's life isn't going so well right now, what with the child molestation trial and everything, and it's just taken yet another turn for the worse as London's own Heart Fm has taken the decision to remove him from their playlist. Ok, so not totally remove him, but relegate him to times when "there's less chance of children or parents listening". Now we don't have kids, but when......