If you visit the Wellcome Collection‘s latest exhibition, Brains: The Mind as Matter, you will surely want to lay eyes on one of their most heavily-promoted highlights, a piece of Albert Einstein’s (1879 – 1955) brain. The sliver of cortex on display is not particularly illuminating, and far from the most interesting thing in the gallery space.… [Read more…]
March 27, 2012
The new concourse at Kings Cross St Pancras, designed by John McAslan and Partners, was recently unveiled and has been grabbing lots of attention from media and architecture enthusiasts alike. On the day we visited, there seemed to be as many people photographing the steel roof as there were scurrying to catch trains. It certainly is striking… [Read more…]
March 15, 2012
I thought I’d have to go all the way to the USA to see abortion clinics being targeted by religious protesters, but no – it’s happening right here in Bloomsbury. Spurred on by Ben Goldacre‘s recent tweets about an ongoing protest in Bedford Square, I wandered down to see what the fuss was about. Police were… [Read more…]
March 2, 2012
Is it really springtime in London? The British Library says so, and has a fashion & creativity-themed Spring Festival, running from 1 – 5 March 2012, to prove it. Today, the library forecourt hosted a pop-up craft market, made up of a dozen competition winners including Cole of London, Ketchup on Everything, Phoebe Richardson, Ruby Red and Squid… [Read more…]
February 6, 2012
After a reasonably mild winter, London has at last had its first (and possibly only) snowfall of the season. Here is the British Library‘s forecourt, with Eduardo Paolozzi‘s (1924 – 2005) Newton sculpture covered in a few centimeters of snow. The 1995 bronze sculpture is a representation of the scientist Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727), after a famous illustration of the same by William Blake (1757… [Read more…]
January 23, 2012
This bulbous, organic sculpture by John Isaacs, I Can Not Help the Way I Feel (2003), is just one of many features of the Wellcome Collection’s permanent gallery, Medicine Now. The life-like construction of polystyrene, steel, foam, wax and paint simply demands attention. Every time I see it, I can not help feeling that I shouldn’t have eaten that… [Read more…]
January 11, 2012
Sadly, this lovely space is now permanently closed as a reading room and used entirely for visiting exhibitions. By sheer coincidence, we stopped by in the last few minutes of the last day that it operated as a library (a few years ago, now), and took some shots of the interior. Read more about the… [Read more…]
January 2, 2012
Only upon posting these photos did I take the trouble to find out who the artist responsible for this work is … and to my complete surprise, it’s Lady Marcelle Quinton, who I encountered several times over the first few years of my London residency. I knew her as a semi-regular visitor to my (then)… [Read more…]
December 20, 2011
It’s not uncommon to find squirrels peeking in our windows, and foxes lounging on our rooftops and in our gardens. This one was a particularly attractive specimen, and very obliging with the impromptu photo session.
December 11, 2011
The Camden Concert Band performing before the Nereid Monument in Room 17 of the British Museum on Friday 9th December 2011.
London Bytes
April 11, 2012
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