The house had probably cost a couple of million quid, with its two stories plus loft conversion, red brick, and detailing on the porch roof that hinted at Arts and Crafts without actually making it ov...
The Folly had last been refurbished in the 1930s when the British establishment firmly believed that central heating was the work, if not of the devil per se, then definitely evil foreigners bent on w...
One Hyde Park squatted next to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel like a stack of office furniture, and with all the elegance and charm of the inside of a photocopier. Albeit a brand new photocopier that dou...
Normally the police like to turn up nice and early, preferably around 6 a.m., because not only are people liable to be actually at home but that early in the morning they’re rarely playing with a full...
Most archaeology in London these days is rescue archaeology – projects designed to preserve as much as possible from the relentless cash-driven redevelopment. It’s not a new problem. Ask a medievalist...
M-am holbat la el. Nu credeam în fantome sau zâne sau zei, iar în ultimele câteva zile eram ca un om care privea la un spectacol de magie – mă așteptam ca un magician să pășească din spatele unei cort...
It’s like hypnotism,’ I told Warwick, after the two had been dispatched off to drink more coffee. But Warwick wasn’t buying.‘Hypnotism doesn’t work like that,’ she said.‘And that’s the way it’s not li...
I offered her the flowers, which she took with a delightful laugh. She pulled my head down and kissed me on the cheek. She smelled of cigars and new car seats, horses and furniture polish, Stilton, Be...
I heard a woman scream with rage and frustration and then grunt like a tennis player.
I don’t know why Nightingale was so surprised—I barely knew four and a half spells and you couldn’t have got me to give it up, and that’s despite close brushes with death by vampire, hanging, malignan...
Fenians,
Classic grooming behavior, Dr. Walid told me later, something our fellow primates indulge in to maintain troop cohesion. Dr. Walid said human beings use language for the same purpose—which is why you...
But Smithy, said Stephanopoulis. I don’t believe in respectable businessmen. I’ve been a copper for more than five minutes. And the constable here doesn’t think you’re respectable either, because it h...
But London didn’t care, she never does when you leave her because she knows for every one that leaves another two arrive. Besides, she was too busy painting on her neon lipstick and dolling herself up...
A major investigation, once it gets underway, is as exciting as watching reruns of Big Brother, although possibly involving less sex and violence.
We hit the Rotunda and we did a quick spin around the Museum of London and into the bit of Little Britain that runs beside Postman’s Park. The trees in the park still had most of their leaves, and the...
Culminating in one of those formless red brick shopping centres which artfully combines a complete lack of aesthetic quality with a total disregard for the utilitarian function for which it is built.
The rise and fall of Teresa Cornelys proves three things: that the wages of sin are high, that you should just say no to opera, and that it’s always wise to diversify your investment portfolio.
The bungalow was a hideous red-brick structure built, if I had to guess, in the early 1980s by some hack architect who’d been aiming at art deco and hit Tracy Emin instead.
It was a good plan, and like all plans since the dawn of time, this would fail to survive contact with real life.