Dear Readers,
Good evening and welcome back to another installment of Capital Letter, the fortnightly London guide firmly rooted in time and space. It’s set to be another exciting fortnight in the city, even as the weather grows colder and the wind blows stronger and the coats come out of the wardrobe.
Do please keep sending your ideas in for this ‘vertical’. We loved featuring some excellent guest posts in our last edition, so keep the ideas coming at editorial@the-fence.com. For subscribers, the map has been nicely updated for you, so whenever you find yourself out in the town and in need of a nearby recommendation, help is at hand. This edition is perhaps the best one we’ve ever published recently, and is testament to the number of people paying for ‘CL’, as we refer to it in-house.
This edition contains some tips on where to find the different drinking tribes across the capital, some exciting film offerings and a trip to a church in Soho. To start with, though, we have a dispatch from the Big Top in Regent’s Park.
Hauser’s Worth
Frieze Week is very much like the River Café. They’re both institutions known for their ludicrous prices, and they both offer an unparalleled opportunity for the paying public to gawp at rich people, and pretend to be someone of import, at least for a few hours.
All the real action of the fair is completed by Wednesday afternoon, when the world’s leading collectors descend to peruse the stalls and make purchases. Journalists – unless of the courtier variety – are not permitted to attend.
Spotted inside were Princess Margaret’s son, the Earl of Snowdon, and also Leonardo DiCaprio, who was accompanied by his 27-year-old girlfriend, Victoria Ceretti. Leonardo, we are told, was buying. Elsewhere, Ayo Edibiri and Jeremy Allen White were in the mix, as was Kendrick Lamar. Some real star wattage.
As for the art? There’s some brilliant stuff, as ever, with our highlight being this magnificent sculpture by Alex Margo Arden, which you can find at the Ginny on Frederick stall.
Doigy’s Gaff
Just as there are better (and cheaper) Italian restaurants than the River Café in London, so there is far superior art to be enjoyed away from the circus in Regent’s Park. We recommend heading east to King’s Cross, where two pop-up shows in appropriated spaces will give you much to ponder.
Above the once-beloved, now-shuttered pub McGlynn’s in King’s Cross are two exhibitions shows organised by the legendary itinerant gallery Tramps. Both take place in rooms that were once staff accommodation and have been renovated with an incredibly light touch, if at all. The artwork is displayed in front of shower curtains, above mattressless beds and amidst written notes reminding patrons not to shower for too long and that payment in cash is expected in advance of all stays.
For now, the unspoiled quarters of the first floor are taken up by the enigmatic work of the Iranian painter Behrang Karimi. Though painted in a childlike hand, often within scenes replete with colour, Karimi’s characters remain incredibly somber. Even when they’re smiling, they seem to frown. Such solemnity is redoubled by the kitchen-sink realism of the space. Karimi’s one painting at Frieze, on a painted-yesterday wall under gallery lighting, receives no such atmospheric boost. You’ll trudge onward feeling a mixture of glumness and wonder befitting an October afternoon in London.
On the bright side, it was recently revealed that Tramps’ director Parinaz Mogadassi and her husband, the artist Peter Doig – whose excellent show House of Music is currently on at the Serpentine – have bought the whole building with plans to turn it back into a pub. Whether they will renovate the accommodation remains unknown.
Around the corner at 9 Caledonian Road, a grand building and former sex shop, Clarissa is a collaboration between every cool London gallery that you’ve been too scared to visit, corralled by the editors of émergent and Soft Commodity. It unfolds across three floors with still-wet paintings from some of London’s brightest alongside archival works borrowed from collections and estates around the world. Don’t miss Joel Wycherley’s imposing sculpture within which a used racing kayak stands on end, making full use of the atrium’s double-heightedness, or Michael Dean’s Playboy bunny-shaped greenhouse in the garden.
Both shows run only for this week, ending on Sunday. But, unlike Frieze, you don’t need to pay the brazen £48+ ticket price or be deeply in the fold with the London cultural cognoscenti to get in.
From Dubai to Singapore
Is London’s reign as an art world capital cooling? This year’s opening of the V&A East and the (re)opening of the National Gallery would suggest not. Yet the effects of Brexit and the Labour Party’s legislation around non-dom tax status have had a significant impact on the market, as is well-reported here.
It’s not broadsheet hysteria to observe that wealthy people are leaving the capital, or at least minimising their time spent here. Can London’s creative hubs flourish without the ministrations of the global super-rich? There is, as we have stated before, a sense of palpable excitement in the capital, with risky and worthwhile ventures appearing on a daily basis, yet a sense of grinding anxiety at the state of the economy pervades.
A brief survey: the TV industry is in dire straits, yet there is a boom in major league film production. Hometown fashion houses like Victoria Beckham and Alexander McQueen are showing in Paris, and there’s a dampness to LFW’s spirit. Despite the ululations of the F&B industry, there have been more restaurant openings in the last 12 months than there have been for decades, and it has become increasingly difficult to have a bad meal in town. There have been a number of outstanding theatrical productions put on recently, and there is a new starriness to London’s literary scene, minus the actual breakout writers with brilliant new books. The music industry – deservedly terrified of AI – has sought governmental assistance.
How this all plays out remains to be seen – if you have any insights into anything we’ve mentioned above, please do get in touch at editorial@the-fence.com.
Brass Necks
A few outings back, we began to note some of the London pubs that make much of their history, pushing creative license into outright embellishment. Amidst all this fakery, however, we thought we’d shine a light on some living pub lore: places where the rituals that might become the marketable history of the future are still playing out.
One of the more inconspicuous might be the Gloucester Arms in Kensington, a mediocre pub favoured by musicians playing at the nearby Royal Albert Hall. We have it on good authority that during Prom season, this is the place to be; every section of the orchestra putting down their bows, mallets and brass to pick up many, many drinks.
A cellist from this year’s programme let us in on their phenomenal touring routine. It begins on the 10am tour bus with a bottle of prosecco each. When they touch down in the relevant town for the evening, they find themselves a spot for lunch which is joined by several pints. Then it’s off to rehearse for four or so hours, which is followed by an apparently crucial nap and then dinner, usually a curry and a bottle of wine. The next drinks are taken during the interval, that merciful gift to a brass player’s perishing thirst. The nearest pub is located and at least two drinks are taken. Consider that if you have ever caught a touring orchestra, by the second half, the brass may well be playing their way through the end of the programme 25 to 30 units deep. When that’s done, they go out for a drink. Incidentally, the Royal Albert Hall will shortly be hosting another set of quite large, highly skilled individuals at the tantalising Grand Sumo Tournament. Prom season is over.
There are many other boozers who have found themselves the haunts of rather particular clienteles. The Buckingham Palace staff can be found at The Cask and Glass on Palace Street, and barristers can be located at the Seven Stars, quite a nice pub when they aren’t there. Perhaps the most curious is the Chelsea Pensioners, whose beloved is the Rose and Crown on Lower Sloane Street. In fact, it is so beloved that they have reportedly had to start instigating a two-pint limit for their red-coated elderly patrons.
Quick Sands
If you’re looking for something a little more off the ol’ beaten track, we have a couple of things for you. Firstly is the Tibet Film Festival, a programme of Tibetan-made films with screenings on 28 October as well as both 1 November and the following day. It was set up to try and keep some public attention on two Tibetans – Dhondup Wangchen and Golog Jigme – who were imprisoned by the Chinese government for making the film Leaving Fear Behind. Both have now been freed, but the festival remains as a much-needed way of shining a light on the ongoing difficulties for Tibetans. The festival’s last screening, Mola – A Tibetan Tale of Love and Loss, is also at one of our favoured movie houses, The Rio in Dalston.
This brings us to our second, more general recommendation, which is the cinema club operating out of Sands Film Studios. They operate out of a grade II-listed building, with a suitably retro website, and almost all of their events are completely free, with the option to make small donations to keep the club going. They also broadcast their screenings live every week, so if you don’t feel like making the journey, but want to watch what they’re watching (and the programming is good) it’s an excellent way to spend your Tuesday night in.
Korma Chameleon
We’ve remarked before that the leafy ‘burbs of Highgate, Crouch End and Muswell Hill are a serious lacuna for anywhere good to eat. Our corrective at the time was French eatery Les Associés, but there is another we must recommend, especially as it has just got itself in line for a ‘Curry Oscar’.
The Taste of Nawab is quiet and unassuming. It sits between an often-empty corner shop and the menacingly vague ‘John’s Pizza’. If you walked past it, you probably wouldn’t go in, which would be a grave mistake. The atmosphere inside could not be more different from its surroundings: calm, tranquil and relaxed. Much of this is down to the service. The owner, Abdul, still frequently treads the boards, and all of his staff have picked up his particular style of customer service: an extremely polite, sotto voce approach.
When ordering, your attention should turn immediately to the page marked ‘Chef’s Recommendations’. These are the specialties, and they are some of the best to be had in London. They’ll arrive on your table still sizzling from the heat of the tandoor oven and are genuinely spectacular. It is delicious and a reasonably priced evening, greatly helped by the fact that it is BYOB, something that isn’t stylish, but is actually perfect for a locals’ Indian restaurant. We strongly recommend it.
Meet Me in the Piazza
Many people want Soho’s streets to be pedestrianised – just as they were in the pandemic – as it feels ‘more European’ (without stipulating which particular European city they’re referring to). We are, of course, strongly opposed to such a venture – it’s tacky and dangerous, and if you want to sit outside with a drink in your hand and the sun in your face, the South Bank is right there for you.
But in the top-right-hand corner of Soho there is a place that is decidedly European in tone, at the great gilded barn that is St Patrick’s Cathedral, where the worshippers from the lunchtime mass spill out onto Soho Square, where media and music workers take a break from their desks, to vape and to scarf a sandwich on a bench, and maybe watch some tramps play table tennis. At the centre of it all is the famous timbered hut, and a statue of Charles II, the infamously licentious Stuart, and the English King who perhaps loved London the most of all the monarchs.
We’ll join you in a fortnight’s time. If you enjoyed this outing, please do tell your friends about what we’re doing here, or even become a paying subscriber. All comments are welcome below, and please do email us with any tips or comments or queries. We hope you have a lovely weekend.
All the best,
TF