I vaguely thought about leaving London recently and the British Library came to mind as somewhere I’d miss. It’s an essential resource because it has almost everything. It also has some interesting exhibitions.

My favourite record shop in London. Old-school record store stocks eclectic blues, dance, soul, reggae and global music on vinyl and CD.

In my opinion this is the best bookshop in London, it stocks all my favourite magazines and has a wide selection of photography books, I spend a lot of my time there just browsing through all the books they have. David Bailey once described the place as “maybe the best photography bookshop in the world”

The Lambeth Walk is not as billed in the song. Quite a bleak but somehow beautiful mishmash of architectural accident–or–design; a legacy of stray WWII bombs intended for more auspicious near-at-hand targets, such as the Houses of Parliament. I study sculpture here each Monday; a lovely workshop inside. The exterior features one of only a few examples of an outside pulpit, apparently for the minister to take his message direct to the shoppers, in the Walk's heyday.

If you've lived in North London then you probably know all about The Faltering Fullback and their legendary multi-level beer garden