London

Why London bucked the national trend towards the Tories

A court has confirmed what many Londoners knew: the deposed mayor’s reign in Tower Hamlets was divisive, dishonest and corrupt

The quiet photographer who recorded England in post-war transition

Horse tartare in Belgrade is nicer than hot new London restaurant Barnyard

‘Occasionally one reads of an incident in this great metropolis so awful, so disturbing, that just for a moment one’s mental moorings are shaken’

How America saved the French Impressionists

A new short story

The British abstract artist Carol Robertson has been making paintings based on geometric forms for many years but consistently returns to the circle. In her current London exhibition, Circular Stories, the paintings are entirely based on circular motifs. Of these she says:

The circle is the purest and most archetypal geometric form. It has a universal resonance, so is frequently found in art, architecture and ritual. It’s an evocation of the universe and the heavens, the journey inward or outward to the centre: a symbol of wholeness, completion and infinity, the unbroken line with no beginning or end, the eternal cycle.

“The contemporary super-rich have little in the way of roots or connection, and therefore little sense of obligation”

Under the capital, huge mechanical drills are digging rail tunnels that recapture the spirit of the most ambitious Victorian engineers