Coming here as a child and even now the collection is utterly astounding I can spend hours in the fossel and mineral room. Plus the architecture of the building is completely unique and breath taking.

Coffee roastery, café, pizzeria and cocktail bar inside an old warehouse just around the corner from Broadway Market.

Kind of secret, dark, intimate cocktail bar in Soho. Really easy to cozy up on a couch and stay there all night.

Inspired by Dave Eggers’ projects in the USA such as the Pirate Store in San Francisco and Superhero store in Brooklyn, The Monster Supplies Store in Hoxton is home to the Ministry of Stories: A volunteer run organization, founded by Nick Hornby, to help young people with creative writing of all kinds through workshops and free mentoring sessions. The store is the “Purveyor of quality goods for monsters of every kind” with fascinating bottles and tins containing everything from eyeballs to Zadie Smith’s short story Mortal Terror.

This painted of the shopping centre by my brother, Leo Verhoeven, shows a rather idyllic vision of the shopping centre we both share. Its pretty rough, full of budget shops and funny cafes and framed by a shanty town style open air market. I have a real soft spot for it as the classic under dog, thats so often slated and condemned but lives on.