London is too large and too various to understand as a single place. It is a city of villages — each with its own high street, its own pubs, its own history, its own social character. To know London is to know its neighbourhoods.
The West End
The West End — Soho, Covent Garden, Fitzrovia, Marylebone — is tourist London and local London simultaneously. Soho is where you go for food, film, music and nightlife. Covent Garden for theatre and street performance. Marylebone for quiet residential streets and excellent independent shops.
East London
East London — Shoreditch, Hackney, Peckham, Dalston — has been London’s creative engine for two decades. Shoreditch and Hoxton were the first to gentrify; the frontier has moved steadily east and south. Peckham is currently the most interesting neighbourhood in London, by most reasonable assessments.
South London
South London — Brixton, Peckham, Bermondsey, Streatham — is the part of the city that Londoners in the north and west talk about with vague unease, as if it were a foreign country. This is nonsense. Brixton has some of the best food markets in London. Bermondsey has the best concentration of galleries and artisan food producers.
North London
North London — Islington, Camden, Highgate, Hampstead — runs from the canal at Camden up to the hills of Highgate and Hampstead. Islington is the home of the political classes — Blair, Corbyn, and a thousand Guardian columnists have lived here. Hampstead is where you live when you have succeeded in London and want trees.
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