After an 81-year-old’s fatal collision with a cyclist in London’s Regent’s Park, calls have risen for stronger sanctions
It is a bright early spring morning in central London, and inside Regent’s Park the birds are chirping as the sun rises sleepily over the lawns and lake. On the road which encircles the park, however, the mood is anything but lazy.
Scores of cyclists are riding on the 4.5km Outer Circle – some of them clearly commuters, others on racing bikes and dressed in Lycra or the colours of a cycling club. In one five-minute period before 8am, travelling anticlockwise alone, more than 150 riders pass, some in clumps of up to 15.
Big-name ballet dancers and rising choreographers have found a new home in the superclub where the after-party goes on until 5am
“It’s the easiest rider we’ve ever done,” says the Ministry of Sound’s Mahit Anam. “Normally it’s five bottles of Patrón, four bottles of vodka … ” And this time? Water, bananas and protein bars. It’s not your usual green room at the south London superclub, because this is not your usual show: the dancefloor is about to be taken over by professionals. Ballet Nights – a monthly production usually held in a Canary Wharf theatre and featuring the country’s top ballet stars and rising choreographers – is moving into clubland. So now amid the speaker stacks and DJ decks you’ll see Royal Ballet dancer Joshua Junker and work from Olivier award-winning choreographer James Cousins. It’s a whole different kind of podium dancing.
“Everything’s got too formulaic, too samey, and that’s why we want to do this stuff,” says Anam. “Pushing boundaries is something we should always be doing.” Ballet Nights was hatched by former Scottish Ballet soloist and choreographer Jamiel Devernay-Laurence in 2023. The idea was to give audiences an up-close view of big-name ballet dancers like Steven McRae and Matthew Ball as well as nurturing a stable of young artists. But he was itching to expand, and eager to attract younger audiences, people who are the same age as the dancers who perform. Devernay-Laurence had met with all sorts of venues – theatres, concert halls – and it was always a “let’s talk again in the future” situation. But when he walked into Ministry of Sound: “They had open arms, they were so excited. We walked out the same day with an agreement and a date.”
Trio of plays co-created by Roy Williams explores British identity in the era of Brexit, Covid and Black Lives Matter
The co-creator of the Death of England series of plays has said the decade-long project has endured because, alongside difficult conversations about race and immigration, the plays have a sense of pride in being English.
Three of the plays are to be performed together at Soho Place in London this summer, taking a project that started life as a “microplay”, commissioned by the Guardian in collaboration with the Royal Court, to the West End.
Force says no confirmed incidents in London as rumours spread on social media after nails found at Oxfordshire playground
The Metropolitan police have been forced to respond to rumours circulating online that nails have been stuck to children’s playground equipment, saying there have been no confirmed incidents in London.
In recent days parents’ WhatsApp groups have been inundated with reports that vandals have glued nails to children’s slides and other playground equipment.
Protesters call for rent controls as 2,682 households evicted in first quarter of 2024 in England and Wales
Bailiffs are evicting more renting households than at any time in the last six years, the Ministry of Justice has said, as protesters chanted for rent controls outside the HQ of Britain’s biggest listed private landlord.
More than 100 members of the London Renters Union (LRU) set off red and blue smoke canisters as they descended on the glass and steel office of the property firm Grainger, which rents out more than 10,000 homes in the UK bringing in a 28% pretax profit margin on nearly £100m a year in rent.
Museum of Homelessness features treasured belongings and first-hand accounts of homeless people
What makes an item so immensely valuable that it belongs in a museum, carefully preserved for future generations? Britain’s heritage institutions may be full of historic and priceless objects, but at what is claimed to be the world’s first museum dedicated to homelessness, which opens to the public in London on 24 May, the treasured artefacts are very different.
There is a bent and much repaired stick, originally made from two pieces of scrap wood, that for its owner was a walking aid, defensive weapon and cherished companion before he donated it, with great sacrifice, to the museum. There is the skeleton of an old shopping trolley that once carried all its owner’s worldly possessions before he offered it to help transport supplies for those in need during the Covid crisis.
From an AI that ‘creates’ family photos to images printed on glass – and then broken – these artists nominated for this year’s prize use radical methods to achieve groundbreaking results
Ex-leader who still does not have party whip will not be on shortlist and is likely to run as an independent
Labour has kicked off candidate selection to run in Jeremy Corbyn’s seat of Islington North, with the contender for the seat expected to be confirmed by 1 June.
Corbyn, who is still suspended for comments he made in the aftermath of the equalities watchdog report into antisemitism in Labour, has been barred from standing again for the party. He won the seat with a majority of more than 26,000 in 2019.
Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones, an English comedian with an interest in geography and a former geography teacher who's also very funny, are the Map Men ("...Map Men, Map Map Map Men Men" ), whose highly entertaining YouTube channel is chock full of educational cartographic goodness. Try any of their (27) videos at random, or all of them—even the ads are worth watching. Their recent episodes on undersea internet cables and country codes wouldn't be a bad place to start for the extremely online.
And when you're done with those, there's Jay Foreman's 15 episodes of Unfinished London and 8 episodes of Politics Unboringed (for UK definitions of "unboringed"). Hours of fun! (N.B. Approximately 6 hours and 36 minutes of fun.)
From YouTube channel Legends Of Soapbox Racing, I present to you London's BEST CRASHES EVER #redbullsoapboxrace #londoncrashes [28m]. It's a cavalcade of hilarious car designs and amusing sudden ends. Despite the crashing, there don't appear to be any real injuries.
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