It’s difficult to say which international affair is tugging more on the British psyche right now: the no-end-in-sight NATO conflict in Libya; the costly, clumsy run-up to the 2012 London Olympics; or the royal wedding that’s about to turn the capital into a full-blown Glastonbury mosh pit. All of this, mixed with the austerity measures of increasingly confident prime minister David Cameron, and you’d expect to find one glum metropolis. But tell that to the crowds marauding on Vyner Street during the free monthly art walks, or to the squatters gleefully taking ownership of a Qaddafi-family mansion, or to anyone who’s paused to peer up at Renzo Piano’s skyline-piercing Shard building. Seen through these lenses, that London fog you were expecting doesn’t seem so gloomy after all.
• The Three-Hour Art Walk
• Rogues’ Gallery
• Three Restaurants Londoners Clamor For
• The New Teenage Slang
• Squat Like a Pro
• What Your Football Club of Choice Says About You
• Where Three Foreign-Born Londoners Go When They’re Feeling Homesick
• A Survey of London’s Most Talked-About Buildings
• What London’s Listening to
• Where Locals Would Stay If They Weren’t Locals
Reported by Rachel B. Doyle and Will Frears