There's something of a Valentine's theme to the Arts of choice taking place in the capital this week. But Londonist knows for every young Juliet embracing the idea of timeless romantic love, there's a Bridget hugging her near-empty vodka bottle, crooning to Chaka Khan. So, in the name of balance, here's a varied, half 'rom', half 'com' round-up for you all. Shows for Swingin' Lovers: Photographer Gregg Stone, has been taking snaps of kissing......

Congratulations – you can read! (Presumably. Unless you just look at Londonist for the pictures.) Literacy is sexy. Hyper-literacy, even sexier. Or so we at Londonist tell ourselves as we don our Coke-bottle glasses and curl up each night with a bottle of wine and a dictionary. But enough about our steamy Valentine’s Day plans. What have you got planned? Now, you may have inferred that we’re a jaded lot over here at Londonist.......

You’d be forgiven if upon watching Doris Lessing settle into her armchair and begin reading to the audience at the Southbank Centre Tuesday night, you were reminded of your grandmother tucking you in with a bedtime story. If, that is, your grandmother was the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. And the story she was telling you effectively imagined away your existence. But incongruity seemed the theme for the evening. And so......

….you’re just pootling along the high street, minding your (or everybody else’s, if you’re a Londonist) business, when what do you espy? A piano. Just perched there on the pavement. You rub your eyes, and make a vow to cut back a bit on the old Lambrusco/JD/what you will. It cannot be. Ah, you think, it’s a practical joke: there’s a hidden camera somewhere…. Well, this slightly Python-esque scene is likely to be played......

Anyone who has ever surfed the internet in a quest for enlightenment about British theatre will undoubtedly have come across the West End Whingers’ blog. By now, Andrew and Phil have become internet blogging stars, doing for theatre what Belle de Jour did for prostitution with only slightly less lubricant. Andrew and Phil have ranted against ticket prices, bar prices, fringe theatre and the general state of affairs since 2006, accumulating a huge fan......

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......

Bloomsbury might become the place to relax after a heavy shopping session in town, if new proposals go ahead. Plans are being put forward to Camden Council to pedestrianise the Bloomsbury area and evoke its old free-roaming Bohemian spirit. The constant sound of drilling, and building works isn't conducive to a gentle autumnal ramble and academic chatter. And for most non-student Londoners who are coming into the West End on a bus, the area......

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......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. While this week is a bit slow where literary events are concerned, there's a new series coming up that we think is just what London needs more of. A whole slew of local lit-lovers are joining forces to present Through the Glass Darkly. The first reading takes place on April 13th. We'll have more......

We've already told you about the whole Get London Reading thing, but we just wanted to remind you as because even though many of the events have been and gone you can still vote for your favourite London book. Up until March 1st you can visit LondonBooks.co.uk and choose from a shortlist of nine classic London novels: Absolute Beginners - Colin Macinnes End of the Affair - Graham Greene Great Expectations - Charles Dickens......

There've been a few changes to the plans for the Olympic Park, in order to save on so many jobs and premises being relocated. Wembley now has a 70% chance of being completed in time for the FA Cup. The Heathrow Terminal 5 workers will start a 3 day strike today. Kate Moss has decided to come home, she'll be back at end of this week to make a 'full and frank' confession apparently (meanwhile,......

And, by God, did he get around. Stalking Paolozzi was a piece of cake in comparison. The map above is our stab at showing all Dickens’ London addresses. But sources conflict, and there’s bound to be a few missing. During his childhood, Dickens hopped from home to home as his father tried to dodge the debt collectors. Following in his footsteps, we similarly hopped from one location to the next, though largely on account......

Kath Turner is on her way back to the West End for the first time since her 'impressive' performance in The Graduate five years ago (was that really five years ago?... wow, now we feel old!). Turner is all set to come to London as Martha in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? in the new year. The show is currently playing on Broadway, and according to the Daily Mail (we know, we know, but......

It's not every day you pick up the venerable Times to find an article evangelising about the "the Alpine meadows of the thigh region" or the "the exposed belly-button, plus its mandatory side-platter of belly, hip, rib and buttock crevice"! But today it seems Richard Morrison cannot help but pen an ode to "the eternal glories of the female body". You see, it's summer, and there's "so much female leg, tit, tum and butt"......

If the results of the Time Out 'best loved London books' poll have taught us anything it's that you have to be really specific when asking the public to vote for things. As the Guardian reports today the A-Z Street Atlas took fifth place in the poll, beating the likes of Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, Joseph Conrad, Zadie Smith and Peter Ackroyd. Time Out's books editor John O'Connell is quoted as saying that that......

The news that Hollywood is planning to turn The Producers into a film (again) seems to have been the first in a rash of stories regarding West End productions making their way over to other mediums. First up is Bat Boy: the musical. Currently showing at the Shaftsbury Theatre, Bat Boy tells the story of a half boy/half bat discovered in the caves of West Virginia. The show recently held it's one hundredth performance,......