In a decade and a half of covering British Summer Time Hyde Park, I’ve seen legends own the Great Oak Stage. I’ve watched Santana’s spiritual guitar journeys, stood spellbound as Steve Winwood revived a golden era, and witnessed Eric Clapton deliver a masterclass that bordered on the sacred. Those were unforgettable. But sometimes the stars align in a different way, not through…
The Guardian was a bit harsh I thought, designed to provoke like the art itself of course. Yes some walls are overloaded, yes the colours are bunched together rather crassly, yes there’s repetition – too many Full English breakfasts – but the sheer variety at Royal Academy summer exhibition is surprising, impressive, divisive. What about some recognition for the curators and…
At London Mums, we spend a lot of time cheering from the sidelines at sports days, swimming galas, and Saturday morning parkruns. But last night, our very own young reporter, 19-year-old Elenya Panesar, swapped the sidelines for the start line. She laced up her trainers to run shoulder-to-shoulder with one of Britain’s greatest ever athletes: Sir Mo Farah CBE.
The event was part…
If I had a pound for every time a fellow parent asked me, “What on earth do we do with them for six whole weeks?” I could probably fund the summer holidays myself. It is the eternal London mum dilemma: you want your children to be happy, stimulated and off their screens, but you also need to work, or simply to hear yourself think for five blessed minutes. Over the years I have tested more…
Recently, The 1885 Singers served up a buffet of Austro-German composers, featuring Brahms, Schumann, Korngold and Richard Strauss. Feelings of longing and loss gave the pieces cohesion, with a touch of spring in the flower songs of Strauss.
The 1885 Singers and in the front row L-R: Pianists Robert Bridge and Moritz von Freyhold, Baritone James Geidt, Soprano Iúnó Connolly, Musical…
When my friend Cristina and I stepped into Park Corner Brasserie at the London Hilton on Park Lane, we were hot, bothered and slightly out of breath. The journey had been a sweaty ten-minute walk from Victoria, and the city was doing its best to melt us into puddles. Within moments of arriving, however, we had been transported somewhere else entirely. Somewhere with island breezes, tropical…
If Saturday was all cowboy hats, country twang and Garth Brooks reducing 69,999 people to happy tears, Sunday at BST Hyde Park was something else entirely. It was glitter, perfectly synchronised dancing, screaming fans holding glowing orbs and a South Korean boyband setting that Royal Park ablaze with K-pop fire. Our very own reporter dad Mirko took his daughter Gaia along, joined by our lovely…
Forget the rest of any bucket list I may have had. Saturday night in Hyde Park, surrounded by 69,999 other souls in cowboy hats, watching Garth Brooks perform his first UK show in almost 30 years, was quite simply one of the most joyful live music experiences of my life. I am still emotional, and still wondering how a man can make an entire field of Londoners weep into their two pina…
King Charles and Queen Camilla have politely declined to unpack their slippers at Buckingham Palace, despite a £369 million glow-up that’s taken a decade. We can’t decide if this is peak “downsizing empty-nesters” or the poshest case of buyer’s remorse we’ve ever seen.
Imagine spending ten years having your entire house ripped apart. New wiring (the old…
Yesterday, it was officially the hottest day in 40 years. London had melted into a sticky, shimmering puddle and I was wading through it, late, with blisters bubbling on my heels, running towards the Royal Albert Hall in a state of considerable dishevelment. I arrived sweaty, flustered and deeply apologetic about both. I need not have worried. Every single person filing through those grand doors…