leaving london again

April 2, 20261 Comment

Here are the last few from my trip to Europe last summer, starting with the sketch drawn on the flight home. It’s like if I don’t sketch on the flight now I can’t tell if I flew or not. It does relax me on the flight though, helps pass the time rather than watch some silly movie, which I do anyway. This particular flight took off late, which is always fun as I love airports so much. This was the last page of that Moleskine sketchbook I really didn’t like much; you can see a few paint swatches from the Aquarius Watercolours that I got at the Symposium, plus a few others I was trying out there. I was definitely ready to go home by this point though, real life was calling, and as much as I love London it was starting to get on my nerves. I had a 5k race to run the next morning in Davis too (the Labor Day Run; I did pretty well too), and it was super nice to be back in Davis, back to routine, back to my own bed. There were a couple of sketches from my last Saturday morning in London though, as I decided to jump on the tube and head down to Oxford Circus for some very last minute shopping. I went to Liberty’s, they had their Christmas stuff up already (it was August!), and then found the Oasis ‘Live 25’ pop-up shop and bought some merch, and a nice black Adidas long sleeve shirt. I then sketched the church with the very pointy steeple just past the top of Regent Street, All Soul’s Langham Place. I remember years ago, when I was an open-top-bus tour-guide, we’d go past this and I’d say it was the sharpest pointiest church in London. It was designed by John Nash, who built Regent Street and also a lot of the buildings around here that date from the Regency period. You could say he suffered from Regency Bias. (Damn, I wish I had said that on my tour).

Then I walked down Mortimer Street, and started a sketch of the buildings below, which caught my eye. I started drawing the windows, and outlines, but then decided it would have to be finished later as I needed to get the tube back to Burnt Oak, as I was going up to Watford with my mum. So I walked down towards Goodge Street; as I was about to cross Charlotte street, one of those guys on a delivery e-bike zipped in front of me, Deliveroo, having jumped the red light. I said instinctively “he just went through a red light,” and went on with crossing the road. But the bike man stopped, and yelled back at me, “yeah does it bother you?” I was a bit shocked but he kept yelling that at me. I responded yes it bothers me, you went through a light as I was crossing the road. Anyway I kept walking down Goodge Street. Next thing I know, he is right behind me, on the pavement on his bike, saying “I’m following you on the pavement now too does that bother you?” He was pretty aggressive, and started to threaten me and ride in front of me. After telling him to leave me alone he kept on, to the point where I realized he wants an argument here and probably more, so I just decided to ignore him completely, and walked around the back of his bike and across the street. I could hear him still when I turned into Goodge Street. I was a bit shaken about it, but not much, maybe I should have reported it to the delivery company but what’s the point in that. There had been so many times going around central London where those bloody e-bike delivery guys have cut in front of me as I’m crossing the road, it’s dangerous, and there are some not very nice people with tendencies towards aggressive behaviour out there. I got on the tube and back up to Burnt Oak.

After a month away, I was ready to get back home, and I was so done with London for now. I love London and won’t have people knocking it, but it can be exhausting and I’m often glad I don’t live and work there any more. When a man is tired of London, he is tired of those e-bike delivery drivers, add that to the list, but you get them everywhere now. While it was sad to leave my London family, it was nice to get back home to my California family, and do that 5k run while still jetlagged (easy peasy). Anyway a week later I would be off again to San Francisco to see Supergrass play, and then, though I did not know this at the time, flying off to Los Angeles to see Oasis. I’ll save all that for another post…

Some Time in Soho

March 27, 2026March 27, 2026Leave a comment

Back in London from Berlin, I rested for a day before heading down into central London on Friday for some more sketching before heading back to California. I had a standing ‘groundling’ ticket to see Twelfth Night at the Globe Theatre, but since it looked like rain and I was not up for a trek to the South Bank, I decided to go down to Soho and sketch around there before meeting up with my friend Roshan. If I’m going to stand for a few hours I may as well be sketching. I like exploring Soho. I made my way to St.Anne’s Churchyard on Wardour Street. I always liked the steeple of St. Anne’s. Many years ago when my mate Rob lived in Soho at the end of the 90s we could see the steeple from his living room window. It reminded me of a Teletubby. They have those big round ear things, if you remember, I didn’t really watch Teletubbies. I stood in the Churchyard and sketched the colourful bunting, love a bit of bunting, especially love the word ‘bunting’, it’s so ‘England’. Takes time to draw though. While sketching, two women (Romanian I think, I recognized some words) came in and sat in the churchyard dragging oversized suitcases with them. One of them was very noisy, yelling at the other in a loud raspy voice. It was a bit distracting, but you don’t really expect silence in Soho. I stood next to a tree, and soon an old man came up and started throwing bird seed on the ground, right in front of me. I didn’t think I thought I was a bird, but right away several dozen pigeons came out of the trees and surrounded me. This would make a good magic trick in a story, I thought, the old man throws birdseed, you are surrounded by pigeons and then VOOM you are gone, transported to a pigeon dimension. Actually that would be quite a bad story, the sort of one that would have been made in the 1970s and replayed right up to the 90s in the 5:10pm slot on BBC1 kids TV. I’d still watch it. At least no pigeons pooed on me. I was going to say ‘SHOO’ but remembered that this is an anagram of ‘SOHO’ and I thought, better not, magical anagrams and all that. It didn’t rain, a few droplets, so I drew the steeple as well. It doesn’t really look like a Teletubby, now I think about it. I looked up their website; St. Anne’s was built by William Talman, who was ‘clerk or works’ to Sir Christopher Wren, and consecrated in 1686. Then the Blitz came and destroyed it in 1940. It was rebuilt in 1990. I didn’t go inside, but being outside under the bunting was enough, like being in a village churchyard.

I remember coming down there as a teenager in the early 90s wandering about exploring London, when I would occasionally sketch but mostly just explore the city, make a map of it all in my head. This corner of Soho was a bit like stepping into a different, dangerous world, a Dickensian London but set in the 70s, all sex shops and seedy cinemas and prostitutes openly hanging about on a Saturday lunchtime. The corner below, leading into that little alley of Walkers Court just off Brewer Street, was one of the seediest spots, I remember being shocked at all the neon lights and dark doorways leading to god-knows-what, it was a world that I wasn’t part of and definitely didn’t want to be. Rupert Street facing it had market stalls and newsagents alongside shops selling bondage gear and ladies of negotiable affection calling out to passers-by, and passing down the narrow Tisbury Court back up to the relative normality of Old Compton felt like a brief passage through a frightening dimension. I found it fascinating that this was a real place in the middle of the city, and yet also just another neighbourhood where people lived their normal lives. I remember at school, we were tasked with doing a project about ‘community’, and I struggled for ideas, but I remember walking through this area (I think it was with my uncle who was going to a cool movie poster store down the street) and realizing there was a community living in Soho, even here in this bizarre world of neon lights flashing ‘girls! girls! girls!’ and shifty men in doorways. Soho is a blend of communities but it is and always has been a residential area, a village in the middle of the city. London has a lot of those. A few years later when I was at university and my mate Rob lived on the corner of Rupert Street and Winnett Street with his girlfriend, it was still an area of sex shops but already seemed less scary, and we would pass through Walkers Court on the way to the supermarket to buy milk and tea, not paying any mind to the red light district we were passing by. I remember that we stayed up and watched the whole Star Wars trilogy (back when there was only one trilogy), while from his kitchen window you could catch a glimpse into other windows, where there were other fantasies going on, some in full view (did these windows not have curtains?). These days, this part of Soho feels quite different. There are a few sex shops and the big green Soho’s Book Store on the corner of Walkers Court feels less like a seedy emporium and more like a cheeky part of Soho’s adult-themed heritage, but this mostly this area feels like it has gone upmarket now with fashion stores and such. Raymond Revuebar, the big theatre and strip club that I felt was the centre point of Soho, opened by Paul Raymond in 1958 but finally closed in 2004, having stood lighting up this corner for decades. I vaguely recall going to a gig there in about 99 or 2000, or maybe that was at Madame JoJo’s next door. When my friend lived around there he actually met Paul Raymond, and said he really was the King of Soho. There’s a fashionable clothes shop there now. I stood on the corner of Rupert Street to sketch this, thinking about all of this past, and how everything moves on.

Below, the spread of Wardour Street, just a few steps away from the last sketch. I feel like I spent a lot of the 90s down this street too, a busy but relatively narrow thoroughfare splitting Soho in two. I stood in a precarious location to draw this, a traffic island that has been converted as a parking spot for those electric bikes you see all over the place, with a narrow bike lane to my right. As I took a quick picture of the scene before starting to sketch, a policeman came up and said, “ello ello ello, what’s going on ‘ere then, you gotta be careful sah, there is ‘orrible tea-leaves on bikes who will nick your dog-and-bone, sunshine”. Actually he didn’t say it like that, my head was still in old 1970s films. He just said to eb careful taking pictures with my phone as there are people on bikes who will snatch it from my hands very quickly. I knew this is a particular plague of London these days and have been quite careful with this, though especially here you can’t be too careful, and I actually smiled and felt genuinely grateful that there are police out there watching for this and warning people. Though what I said was, “oh it’s ok, this is my old phone”. which it was – I used my old phone when out and about in London, just in case – but I was grateful and thanked him. Still, I held tight onto my sketchbook as I drew the scene, out of the way of the e-bike bandits. Wardour Street was always one of my favourite streets, and it contains The Ship, one of my favourite pubs in London. It used to contain The Intrepid Fox as well, the best rock pub in the city, where I sometimes would meet up with my friends from the Hellfire Club (on Oxford Street) and attempt to listen to figure out what each other was saying over the loud heavy metal music. It was sad when that place closed (it actually moved to New Oxford Street before closing for good). For a little while in ’96 I went out with someone from Italy, and she used to work in an arcade further down Wardour Street near Leicester Square, before she switched jobs to work in Las Vegas, not the city but the arcade on the left of this sketch, which still has the same sign as it had 30 years ago, a Soho relic. Cinema House is next door; this area is at the heart of the British film industry too, or at least it was (Cinema House has a fashionable clothes store now, because there aren’t too many of those). What was the Intrepid Fox next door is now a steak house, but you can still see the old stone sign of The Intrepid Fox on the outside corner. The sky was looking nice, above Oxford Street in the far distance. You can just about make out the Telecom Tower poking through on the right (follow the arrow). For some reason I remember being about 19 or 20, walking down here on a late afternoon having been to the Virgin Megastore, where I’d bought myself the Beatles Complete (Guitar/Vocal Edition), a massive book with all the Beatles songs in it (which I still have), and treating myself to a pastry and some tea at a nice cafe as a self-reward for finishing up all of my college projects and homework, and that being quite a nice moment down here. It often feels a little too busy or a little too cramped to stop and sketch on the corners around here, but I’m glad I spent the time looking at it again. Soho is always worth sketching. I’ve been back to London since this trip last summer, and I was in Soho sketching again just last month. By this rate I post my sketches on this blog, those will probably be up by about 2028. Click on the image to see it bigger.

literally Marylebone

January 22, 2026January 22, 2026Leave a comment

I walked over from Fitzrovia to Marylebone. London is just a big collection of villages they say, I mean they are quite big villages with lots of big expensive buildings. When a man is tired of London, he is tired of cliches about London. That said, I lied exploring this part of town, which I don’t really ever come to. In the case of Marylebone High Street, I don’t remember ever coming here. I must have when I was young, I remember doing a job at a big upstairs-downstairs type house around here, when I was a waiter in my teens, serving tea and sandwiches, but I didn’t explore the area. So finally in 2025 I decided to wander through, do some sketching, and visit Daunt Books. I’d seen pictures of the place, and of course those little bags everyone likes that have the drawing of the bookshop on it. I was asked once by another bookshop here in California if I could do a drawing for a similar bag ‘just like the Daunt Books one in London’ but I didn’t have time to do that. I made sure to pick up one of these famous bags (they aren’t cheap, I got a small one for my book purchases that day). I didn’t realize it’s primarily a travel bookshop, but carries all sorts of other books and literature as well, but everything was organized by geographical location. Not just the guidebooks and phrasebooks, you would expect that, but novels too. I was looking in the Berlin section, ahead of my trip there, and all the novels that were set in Berlin were to be found there. I liked that a lot, it made more sense. It was a big store to explore, but a bit of a squeeze upstairs. I sketched it from across the street, and added only the green which made a lot of sense. That woman entering the shop probably wasn’t wearing the same green as the lamps, but maybe she was. Maybe she didn’t exist and I just needed to draw a generic person walking into the bookshop. It was busy, Saturday afternoon in Marylebone, lots of shoppers out, people standing outside the pubs, and expensive cars pulling up and people in expensive clothes with expensive haircuts speaking expensive languages, it’s quite an upmarket village. Yet it still felt like an active neighbourhood, and there were little places of calm. I went up to Paddington Street Gardens South, a little park in the middle of Marylebone, and sat for a while in the calm under the trees.

I walked over to the Monocle Cafe, I wanted to sketch it since I saw another artist I follow (whose name escapes me now) do a really nice drawing of it several years ago. Also, I have a friend (who I haven;t seen for years) who has worked at Monocle, the magazine, since it first launched almost twenty years ago now. I still have somewhere the first edition that he mailed over to me. It’s a really good magazine, focusing on culture and travel and all sorts of stuff, but admittedly not one I read regularly, it’s quite big and I don’t buy magazines as often as I used to (except the occasional history or football magazine which I get from Newsbeat, and sometimes the one about ukuleles). They would always end up piling up around the house, not wanting to throw them away until I’d read all of it, which I never did. I still buy magazines more than most people I know though, and almost always British magazines (American magazines are terrible, they weigh a ton, there are far too many advertisements, and finding the actual articles is like trying to solve an escape room). This is a nice little cafe, tucked away on the quiet Chiltern Street. They have other cafes in cities like Zurich, Paris, Hong Kong, as well as shops, all connected to the magazine. This one is very pretty and sketchable though, but it being the end of the day, I kept it pretty simple, as I had to get the tube home. One of the staff came over to check out the sketch and offered me a drink, but I had to go soon. Some ladies from the middle east were very excited to see the sketch and I think they wanted to be in it, but I just let them pretend one of them were the figures inside (they weren’t) and they took photos. I was pretty tired though, and this was all I had left in me to sketch (I’d already drawn two pubs, one bookshop, the BT Tower and had three beers since Hampstead, it was time to go home for dinner). I saw all sorts of other places I’d like to sketch or explore around here, such as Marylebone Lane, and even Baker Street underground station so will be coming back at some point, when I’m next in London.

the king and queen of fitzrovia

January 21, 2026January 20, 2026Leave a comment

I went for a walk around an area I don’t visit often, Fitzrovia. This is the area of London to the west of Gower Street, south of the Euston Road, east of Great Portland Street, north of Oxford Street. I got out at Warren Street and walked down that way to Cleveland Street. It’s a quieter area than you’d expect on a Saturday afternoon in central London, full of surprises. London is full of surprises. I walked down Cleveland Street and sketched one of my favourite buildings in London, the BT Tower, and then walked further and sketched the King and Queen pub, on the corner of Foley Street. I had heard about this pub, being famous as the place where Bob Dylan first played in London, and they do mention this in a few places around the pub, but I was pleasantly surprised to find this was not some tourist trap full of Bob Dylan fans, but just a normal looking proper pub with locals and good beer. They even had a Southern Comfort mirror on the wall, proper old pub style, exactly the same one we used to have on our dining room wall when I was a kid (very likely from a pub). It was quiet around here, no traffic rushing by, hardly any of those bloody delivery cyclists cutting corners and red lights, and after I had sat across the street drawing I popped in for a couple of pints. This sketch took me a bit longer than I wanted, I was getting a bit bogged down with details, but I enjoyed sitting in the pub listening to the chat and the football results (Spurs won). Proper pub. These are a dying breed in this city. I was reluctant to leave, but I had some more wandering and sketching to do before I went home.

Here is my first sketch, which I drew while sitting on a wall outside the George and Dragon pub. By the way, look at that bumpy paper the watercolour Moleskine now has, I don’t like it. I prefer the Hahnemuhle I used in the other sketch. I love this building though, poking out above those old rooftops. It’s been the BT Tower (or Telecom Tower) all of my life, though when I was a kid it was still called the Post Office Tower by older Londoners so that’s how I first knew it. I always like that it looked like a lightsabre, but also it was visible from so many places, being all up on its own and very unique in the London skyline, a bit like the Fernsehturm of Berlin. The top featured a revolving restaurant, so you could never complain about the view. BT Tower is located at [REDACTED]. Ah, yeah I forgot, it’s a secret. Yes I know you can see it, but like a rainbow, you aren’t supposed to know where the base is. This is genuine, it was designated as an official secret back in the 1970s, and was referred to by a judge as “Location 23”. This is presumably due to its importance in national communications during times of emergency, this was the Cold War after all. Apparently the tower was recently sold by BT to an American hotel company who will turn it into a luxury hotel, hopefully restoring the revolving restaurant. They will have to find it first.

The Theatre of the Thames

January 19, 2026January 19, 2026Leave a comment

More from last August in London. It was a lovely day down by the Thames, one of those perfect weather days, not too hot, nice river breeze, sunshine with a few wispy clouds. We were going to have a family day out down here, watch some theatre, eat some dinner, walk down the river. I came down a little early to get some sketching in, and drew the view over to St. Paul’s and the City. That skyline has changed so much since I left 20 years ago. I had bought tickets for The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, in the seated areas rather than standing in the groundling spots, and I got the comfy cushion too. Those seats are a lot more than the standing sections, but I thought, well it’s important to support the London theatre scene. I did donate to the Globe during the pandemic when they were closed, they were posting full performances online and they were fantastic. To my shame I had never been to see a play at the Globe, in all those years since it opened. I’ve been to the gift shop loads of times. I remember when the Globe opened, as I was a drama student at Queen Mary at the time, and I wondered if it would get confusing that there is another theatre called The Globe down by Shaftesbury Avenue (that was subsequently renamed The Gielgud). Our ‘Places In Performance’ class taught by Richard Schoch (he is a published Shakespeare expert; he also recently wrote a very well-received book about Sondheim) did a tour of the new Globe, and some of the faculty at Queen Mary were part of the Friends of the Globe. I remember trying to walk there from north of the River and thinking, we could really use another bridge here you know, a pedestrian bridge nearby to St. Paul’s; a couple of years later we got the Millennium Bridge. I remember the tour, learning about Sam Wanamaker, the American actor (and Zoë Wanamaker’s father) who was the driving force behind the idea to rebuild the Globe right here in Southwark, but who did not live to see it finished. Yet in the twenty-seven years since my visit, I never ever saw a play there, until now!

I selected our seats carefully, considering how the sun might move in this afternoon play, but obviously I completely miscalculated that because for the first half we were baking in the sun. Note to self, evening performances next time! It was great though, the performances were fun, I couldn’t tell if everyone was really following it but the costumes and physical humour was top notch. I did try a quick sketch before the show started (above) but didn’t draw during the show. I would like to do a proper sketch of the Globe’s interior some day, I’ve drawn the outside as few times.

This was not the only theatre I saw while I was back – I booked tickets to see My Neighbour Totoro at the Gillian Lynne Theatre on Drury Lane, a stage adaptation of one of our favourite animated Miyazaki films. It was without doubt one of the best things I have ever seen, so good that I immediately booked tickets to see it again when I got home. It was that good, especially how all the live music was performed. Looking at the program I realized that the director was Phelim McDermott, who co-founded Improbable Theatre Co, and I’d forgotten that name until that moment. I had seen his production of Shockheaded Peter many years ago at the Battersea Arts Centre, in about 2000 or 2001, and it erupted my imagination; some of the style of Totoro rang a bell with me. There were some elements of my own production of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in Aix-en-Provence in 2002 that were definitely inspired by that show. As a former drama student I don’t actually go to the theatre very much at all, so to go several times in one trip felt like making up for lost time. I even bought cheap five quid groundling tickets for Twelfth Night at the Globe a couple of weeks later, after my trip to Poland and Berlin, but ended up going sketching instead. I must go and see some more theatre though, and make more of an effort to see more in London.

Sometimes the best theatre is out on the streets though eh. Ooh, cheesy and not actually true. No, the streets is not the same as the theatre which takes a lot of effort in writing, acting, costumes, lighting, front of house; no, just standing on the streets and looking at things is not the same. The view above is quite a theatrical backdrop though. But nevertheless I do just that, I like to fill the sketchbooks with the stories of the world I see, and that is all my own story, my own theatre. I have often thought about the interaction between theatre/performance and urban sketching. As urban sketchers we ourselves might not see ourselves as performers but in a real sense we are. The act of standing on a street and observing makes us the ‘watched by C’ part of the Peter Brook equation of “A plays B watched by C” (that’s a very rough and probably inaccurate summarizing of his ‘Empty Space’ idea but I learned this in the first term of my drama degree, and that was in 1997 and I barely understood anything about theatre then, and probably even less now, but this ideas we discussed stuck with me, that everything can be boiled down to performance in some way). If I decide to observe and describe the scene in my sketchbook, I then become both observer (C) and performer (A), while the scene I am sketching becomes (B), the thing I am performing. I am starting to see why we drank so much at university now. That confusing calculus aside, the urban sketcher themself becomes a performer and attracts observation from people passing by, or sketched by other sketchers (A performs B watched by C who becomes A making the original A become B who is also performing another B which is also A; I’m surprised I didn’t get a D for that class). So we urban sketchers are performing in the act of drawing, and also in the act of sharing online with our fellow sketchers, who are the audience who then hopefully become inspired to keep sketching themselves. The thing I think about most though is that urban sketching, perhaps unlike more fine art styles, is an accessible art form that people feel more of a connection to when they see it. This is the everyday world as seen by the people living in it, who draw it because it’s there with the tools they have. I was always more interested in the basic idea of theatre as a storytelling device, one that anyone can take part in. I appreciate amazing acting, and the incredible hard work that goes into it, but it never interested me personally as much as the storytelling itself. We learned about interactive and forum theatre and the work of Boal, and I was very interested in Brecht. I look through the hundreds of posts each day that my fellow urban sketchers across the world are posting (that is, as much as the dreaded algorithms allow), and in very small and very big ways we are telling the story of the world we live in. It’s not necessarily in big determined narratives or five act structured entertainments but it’s all theatre of a sort, storytelling is at the heart of it, even if you don’t realize you are telling a story. I think a lot about this and try to get this small idea across in the sketchcrawls I organize. As with the interactive theatre work we did it’s all about accessibility and inclusiveness (in those first sketching events I ran, I brought along extra art materials and mini sketchbooks for people who saw us and might want to start sketching themselves) and what tools you have to tell your story with, that’s how I approach urban sketching. Or maybe, as with so many things with me, it’s just another excuse to draw.

The scene above, of the 2025 version of the City of London skyline, was drawn before the sun started setting, stood by Hay’s Galleria while people around me enjoyed an evening pint by the Thames. That skyline has changed so much in the 20 years since I left my home city, it’s unrecognizable. After this, my wife and I decided to walk down the Thames, and we walked and walked all the way to Charing Cross Station, for some reason. It was a really long way, and the South Bank was busy, really busy. London’s great, the Thames is my favourite, but it can be long and exhausting, just like some Shakespeare. Or some blog posts.

Richmond, by the river

January 17, 2026January 16, 2026Leave a comment

We met up with my friend Simon who was back visiting from Dublin, and took the Overground train down to Richmond. I was there last in the previous winter with Simon exploring the old pus and riverside walks, and wanted to go back in the summertime with the family. Richmond is London, but I hardly ever go there, it’s quite far but always worth a visit. I drew the White Cross pub, above, which we never went into but I know if it from videos I’ve seen online, apparently when the river tides get a bit high it cuts off the exits, and they lend you wellington boots to wade through to higher ground. I’d probably just stay in the pub. There are a lot of ducks around here, not surprising really. We had a nice refreshing drink at the cafe on one of the boats floating on the Thames. It didn’t go anywhere, but it was nice to sit and catch up. I sketched Simon (below; I was worried I was making him look like Pep Guardiola or Enzo Maresca, but it looked more like him this time, I always struggle sketching him for some reason). I was starting my new small Stillman & Birn brown paper sketchbook which would be my ‘people sketching’ book for this trip, and indeed I would get a lot of use from it in Poland at the symposium, Simon was a good page 1 subject. Some ladies were watching me sketch and asked if I could draw them, I respectfully declined (as they weren’t all that respectful themselves).

I tried to draw Richmond Bridge while sat on the boat but only got as far as outlines, I ended up finishing the rest off later on. The bridge dates from the 18th century.

On the train back into central London I sketched a little more in that brown book, this time using some interesting Derwent ‘Inktense’ paints I had picked up, fun to test those out, I don’t think I’ve used them since. I drew my wife, and also drew Simon again looking very different this time. Outside, it started raining, and got very heavy by the time we reached central London. Nothing more English than a mid-August downpour.

at the holly bush, hampstead

January 16, 2026Leave a comment

I should probably have included this in the last post about Hampstead but I didn’t, and it was drawn on a different day. A short but steep walk up Holly Hill from the tube station is the Holly Bush pub, tucked away in a narrow lane called Holly Mount. It’s a holly good pub too. This is definitely in ‘cute American-targeted movie set in Hampstead’ territory, and ‘random celebrity sighting’ land, but I like that it’s a little bit hidden and takes an effort to get to. I’ve wanted to sketch here for a while (I should draw the inside sometime) so one Saturday I was heading into London when I stopped off in Hampstead to buy some art supplies at Cass, sketch the Holly Bush, then met up with my friend who happened to be having lunch nearby with his girlfriend, we had a pint and a chat here. I used to enjoy spending the odd Saturday lunchtime down this way, another mate of mine used to live down here when I was in my twenties, though we would like going to the Haverstock down in Belsize Park, when the football was on. I miss this about London, even though it’s always so busy and crowded and expensive there are little places of relative calm and charm, and a Saturday afternoon pint and chat in an old pub can be so totally relaxing. After I left my friends I got back on the tube and headed into central London to explore some other areas, I’ll post those later. The Holly Bush is a Fullers pub which means they do London Pride, I always liked that beer, room temperature, nothing fancy. I got it once at a British themed pub in California and it was served cold, which was very odd (but tasted fine). As I sketched outside, a family of Americans all decked out in Tottenham Hotspur gear started to talk with me, they were getting ready to head over to N17 to watch Spurs play, which made me quite jealous as I wish I’d done that too (but couldn’t get a ticket). This was the day we beat Burnley 3-0 in an early season romp where we all thought, oh yes life will be very good under Thomas Frank, this season is going to be entertaining and full of wins. Spoiler alert: yeah not so much.

an afternoon in hampstead

January 13, 2026January 12, 2026Leave a comment

From Hemel Hemstead to regular old Hampstead, a place I’m a lot more familiar with. It was a nice summery day, and we went a few stops down the old Northern Line to look around. I did a quick sketch of Heath Street looking uphill past the tube station. These quick pen sketches while I’m waiting for people are often my favourite types, getting as much in as quickly as I can in a busy city. I love taking my time but dashing with a fountain pen is very liberating. I picked up a new book in Primrose Hill this summer by the artist David Gentleman called ‘Lessons for Young Artists’, a signed copy full of simple but powerful advice. I know, I know I’m not a ‘Young Artist’, but hey I’m significantly younger than David Gentleman so comparatively I still qualify. I’m a huge fan of David Gentleman; his book ‘London You’re Beautiful has pride of place on my shelf, and I look through it more than most books. I don’t often draw in a looser sketching style like he does, but when I do it feels like I’ve caught a bit more of how I really see London. It’s not static or linear, but organic and full of often incompatible personalities. London annoys me, but I can’t get enough of it, I don’t live there any more but my head is always in its space. The tree below, a huge London Plane in the shaded backstreet of Oriel Place is one of my favourite trees in London. We sat for a while eating our crepes, I did a quick sketch.

We walked down to St. John-at-Hampstead church down Church Row, looked about for a bit, then I stayed down and did some sketching, drawing the tall house next to the graveyard that comes right out of an old novel. This street has had a lot of celebrated residents. H.G. Wells (he of the Time Machine) lived at number 17; Giles Gilbert Scott (he of the red phone box) lived number 26. Peter Cook also lived at number 17 in the 1960s, and would write here with Dudley Moore, as well as hosting parties. Famous scientist Henry Cavendish lived at number 34; he discovered Hydrogen, though he called it ‘inflammable air’ (he got that right). The most well-known resident of number 12, which I drew, was a 19th century Christian Socialist called Edward Vansittart-Neale, who opened the first co-op store in London. Everybody needs good neighbours. It’s very picture-book Hampstead around here, the sort of place a main character walks down in a soppy movie before bumping into a rich American out walking a small dog and spilling their big coffee before opening a small antiques shop or bookstore and we’ve all seen those films. It’s nice down here though. I drew the graveyard a couple of years ago.

Burnt Oak Broadway, corner of Stag Lane

January 10, 2026January 9, 2026Leave a comment

Here are a couple of drawings from Burnt Oak that I did last summer. Specifically, Burnt Oak Broadway. I mentioned in a previous post that Edgware High Street was part of Edgware Road which is part of Watling Street which was an ancient Roman Road running from Dover to Wroxeter, passing through London and running in a north-westerly straight line, give or take. The A5, in modern parlance. It was probably a route before the Romans came as well, used by the ancient Britons, and we don’t really know what it was called before the Saxons migrated here from mainland Europe and called it Watling Street, or Wæcelinga Stræt, after a tribe that lived around what we call St. Alban’s now, the people of Waecla, or Waeclingas. Watling Street also marked the border between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms under Alfred and the Viking-ruled territory of the Danelaw. Our side of the street, in Burnt Oak, that would have been in the Danelaw, which explains a few things about us (what’s the Old Norse for “yeah what you looking at, come on then”), with our longships and our Odins, while those posh Saxons lived over there in Harrow with their burnt cakes and their Wodens. Burnt Oak is where I was born and grew up, and supposedly has its origins in Roman times (what’s the Latin for “yeah what you looking at, come on then”) and refers to the old practice of burning an oak tree to mark boundaries (a simple sign would have probably been easier). When we say we are going ‘Up the Watling’ we are not referring to Watling Street, but to Watling Avenue which turns downhill from here. This part of Watling Street, Edgware Road, the A5 whatever, is called Burnt Oak Broadway. Hey this is Britain, we can have as many names for things as we bloody well like. One summer morning I got up and walked up to the top of the Watling, and stood on Burnt Oak Broadway looking over at the junction with Stag Lane. This junction is ancient, and you could grow ancient waiting for the bloody lights to change, and is probably named after the Bald Faced Stag pub which would have been to my left on the Broadway before it was closed about a decade or so ago. All the old pubs are closing, there will be none left soon. There are none left around here. That’s a different story. The large building on the left with the clock on top has stood there for many years, and reminds me so much of being a kid. It was a department store for a long time, but it reminds me of my Nan, because I would see it when going to her flat, which was just across the street further down the Broadway, or in the Stag, where she would spend most days. Across the junction on Stag Lane, that building painted an ugly blue is now an amusement arcade and casino called Silvertime, well I say amusement, who really knows. It’s in the former location of Nat West Bank, and this was my branch when I opened my first account as a kid, do you remember those porcelain NatWest piggy banks? My mum or dad still have them somewhere I think. Sad to see the bank closed. There used to be two NatWests in Burnt Oak, both closed now. There is another blue Silvertime across the street, also located in a closed down bank, where the old Midland Bank (later HSBC) used to be. Funny how these casinos open in old banks. I really don’t know why they have to paint these old buildings bright blue though. Next door is a Romanian food market, and a restaurant next to that. There’s a sizeable Romanian community in Burnt Oak now, that was not there when I left. My mum did have a friend from Romania when I was a kid, she used to work with him and we would often meet with his family. He had escaped Ceaucescu’s brutal regime in the 70s or 80s (hiding in a box, apparently), and was able to bring his family over after that. I still remember when the communist regimes fell, and he was finally able to go and visit his homeland. Last time I saw him he had opened a bakery on Burnt Oak Broadway, about seventeen years ago just down from here, and he gave me a massive plate of pastries, but that’s gone now. Everything changes, you can’t stop it, but we’ve all got our stories in these places.

Further down the Broadway, opposite the flats where my Nan used to lived (when she wasn’t in the Stag), I stood under a tree and drew this on the morning before heading off on my trip to Poland. This building is in a sorry state, disused, boarded up. When I was younger it was a Mecca bingo hall, but closed more than ten years ago. We love leaving this big old buildings empty and derelict. Years ago it used to be a cinema, when my Mum was a girl, the Savoy, she remembers seeing Calamity Jane there as a kid. Someone contacted me to let me know that there are proposals to convert this space and the spaces next to it into new flats, with concerns about some more local history being lost to the march of redevelopment. Luxury flats are probably better than bright blue ‘adult gaming centres’, but London is at the mercy of big corporate property developers these days. Communities would be nice, and they still exist, if you want it. Pubs would be nice, and newsagents, and a post office, and banks with humans, and a cafe where you can get a nice cup of tea. It’s funny, I like drawing these big old buildings whose presence echoes so much through not only my own history but that of my family and local friends, yet I think I only ever stepped foot in here once in my life, when it was a bingo hall when I was a kid, and I am probably misremembering that for somewhere else. Memory and Nostalgia are funny things. I was considering writing a book called “I Remember When Things Used To Be A Little Bit Different From How They Are Now” but things keep changing and changing again. So I will just keep on drawing what I see, until it does. These were the only sketches I did in Burnt Oak in this trip but I did more around London, stay tuned for those, they won’t all come with maudlin’ nostalgic stories, but most will.

back to the railway hotel

January 9, 2026Leave a comment

The Railway Hotel in Edgware, at the end of the Northern Line in London, has been lying empty and boarded up for a long time now. It closed in 2006, twenty years ago, and it’s been in a sorry state ever since, even suffering a fire in 2016, which sometimes happens to old buildings that are in the way of new buildings. However it did survive, though it has spent the past decade with nobody sure of what will happen to it. However recent plans have been proposed to finally renovate the site as part of the lerger ‘Forumside’ development of the land behind it. That’s what it’s being called, Forumside, and this is that big plan to build tall towers with hundreds of flats, changing the look of Edgware, but the plan is that they will be keeping the Railway Hotel and restoring it, so we can still enjoy some older buildings in Edgware. Not that I live there any more, but I care what happens to this venerable old building, that goes back all the way to 1936. Ok yeah that’s not that old, you don’t have the ghost of Dick Turpin riding through here, but they don’t make pretend-old buildings like this any more. I stood in the graveyard of St. Margaret’s Church across Station Road, careful not to stand on anyone’s graves (I’m not superstitious, except when I definitely am, but I’m always careful where I tread in a graveyard). Those boarded up windows are sad, but it saves cleaning the windows. I love those big old chimneys. I remember going into the railway, it was a lovely pub and friendlier than most, and we had a nice dinner up there for my mate Terry’s 18th birthday (I remember his grandad making us laugh with his funny sayings). I drew the view below on the same day as the first sketch, just from a different angle so you can see more of the adjoining side building. It was that sky though, I loved drawing that last summer. Unfortunately that newer blend of Moleskine watercolour paper is not good at all and makes every wash look like it’s on textured bogroll, all those little bumps, this is why I have now stopped using the Moleskines, until they improve. I’m using Hahnemuhle now, which is much better.

I actually did draw it back in 2015 and wrote about it in a blog post ten years ago, where I lamented the ‘End of the Railway’ and noted that it was not a listed building. That’s what I was told at the time, but maybe it was listed (in 2003); it was added to the ‘Historic England’s At Risk Register‘ in 2013. Here’s the sketch I did in 2015. By the way if you’re on Facebook and talking about this building and you use my sketch, please ask me first, ffs. I drew that on Christmas Eve, I remember it, I think it was the last Christmas we even spent in London. We used to go over every other year for Christmas, but haven’t done so in years now. I’ve been over in November and December, but not for the big day itself. I remember going up to Edgware, last bit of shopping at M&S and WH Smiths the Boardwalk (both gone from there now), drawing the Railway Hotel, and then getting the 305 bus (a route which no longer exists) back to Burnt Oak to get ready for Father Christmas. I don’t think it snowed that year.

You can learn about the new plans for this building at: https://edgwarerailwayhotel.co.uk/. They have an artist impression of what it might look like (and I swear it looks like I’m sitting on a bench drawing it). Whatever ends up happening, I hope the Railway reopens with a new life, and these big mock Tudor triangles and tall chimneys stay on the Station Road for another century. Well ok they haven’t been here for one full century yet but you know what I mean. Stay tuned for more sketches from my big Summer 2025 trip back to Europe. These are the last of the Edgware ones, but there are a couple more from Burnt Oak to come.