There are libraries full of screaming children and strip lighting, and then there are libraries like The London Library. Whenever I’m there it’s hard to believe I’m not caught inside a wonderful dream, because everything about this place is so perfect as to be almost unreal.
Website
londonlibrary.co.uk
Address
The London Library, 14 Saint James's Square, London, United Kingdom
Current city: London
Vanessa Pelz-Sharpe is a writer and broadcaster. Born and bred in London, she has written for a number of independent magazines and newspapers, including The Guardian, Illustrated Ape, and Pen Pusher, and was Contributing Editor for literary magazine Full Moon Empty Sports Bag. She co-hosts Letters You Never Sent, a monthly literary radio show on NTS. Pelz-Sharpe recently won a Cosmopolitan Magazine Blog Award for her blog Nightmares and Boners and is currently working on her first novel.
 

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A multi-disciplinary art and project space in White City. Designed by architects Liddicoat and Goldhill, Elephant West is a new venture from Elephant Magazine - an online and print art publication
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Small little Rose Garden in a beautiful neighbourhood. All the houses surrounding the park have a dutch appeal to them.
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A treasure trove in the The City of London. The Archive of London. Strongrooms hold kilometres of shelving; boxes of matter that has somehow been catalogued and categorised in a traceable manner by the public, for academic, genealogical and other research. This beautiful book is from a box on Epping Forest. On the same visit, I looked through photographs of Blitz singsongs in Bethnal Green Underground station, 1980s anti-Thatcher / pro-GLC gig posters and paper concertina optical models of the Crystal Palace.
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The best thing about any charity shop is that you never know what you are going to find. I have a well tested route around London that includes all of my favourite charity shops. This Oxfam has a great selection of books and often turns up some interesting clothes too.
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Although off the beaten track from the large national galleries, 198 is no less an important part of London’s artistic heritage. Developed during the social unrest in the Brixton area in the 1980s, 198 has grown from a community arts space into an exciting contemporary visual arts body that is often the first place to see the next rising star of the London art scene.
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