London Evening Standard (West End Final A)

Get ready for take-off!

From the paradise beaches of Mozambique and Panama to off-the-beaten-track adventures in Peru and Finland, here’s where to travel in 2026.

Is posting on social media making you look tragic?

Isn’t it refreshing to be phone free!” somebody shouts as we descend into the underbelly of Shaftesbury Avenue. It’s a thudding Friday night at Lost, London’s hottest club night in years, which has taken over the former Odeon Covent Garden. Our...

A big thank you

Evgeny Lebedev and Ian McKellen meet the Londoners our Winter Appeal is supporting, as the total raised hits £2.6m.

Topjaw

ISSUE 62 GRACE DENT + SCOTT GALLOWAY + JEREMY LEE + BIFFY CLYRO Lush co-founder Mark Constantine gives £50,000, boosting our winter appeal to £2.47million

The rise of Farage and Vance’s philosopher king

It is hard to miss James Orr — with his slicked-back mane of blond hair, booming voice and all the confidence of a Wykehamist and an Oxford Balliol graduate, he could easily play the quintessential stage Englishman in a stage adaptation of Agatha...

What has Reeves done to London this time?

First the good news. Rachel Reeves did at least manage to avoid crashing the bond market. Admittedly that is an incredibly low bar. Only one of her predecessors — Kwasi Kwarteng three years ago — has managed to wriggle under it in recent years. The...

Steven Bartlett

ISSUE 59 JEREMY CORBYN + ELLA EYRE + JAMES REED + PATTI SMITH + MARK CAVENDISH £900,000 from This Day Foundation boosts our Winter Appeal to £1.4million

Paul McCartney

John and I were always in competition.” So speaks Sir Paul McCartney, reflecting not on his time as a Beatle but on what came after the Fab Four disbanded. At the start of the 1970s, he and his ex-bandmates took different paths: John Lennon became a...

The Indian billionaires transforming the capital

there was something on Shanay Jhaveri’s mind when he became head of visual arts at the Barbican in 2023. “I was quite surprised when I arrived that there hadn’t been a show at a major London public institution of a South Asian or Indian artist since...

Police failure and an institutional cover-up

In the shadow of Stratford Westfield, just a few minutes’ walk from the Olympic Park and the canal dotted with riverboats, young skateboarders and dancers would flock nightly to the glossy, white-tiled floors of a nearby shopping mall. The fading...

The society sisters spinning style from tragedy

It has been a year, almost exactly to the day, that London it girls and half-sisters turned fashion designers Lady Lola Bute and Jazzy De Lisser teamed up to launch their partywear label, named DeBute. Today, the two blondes, both dressed in black — De...

Special Report

Adecade ago Anthony Constantinou appeared to be the epitome of a Square Mile success story — sitting atop a burgeoning business empire, rubbing shoulders with royalty and striking deals with Premier League champions. His City of London firm had risen...

By royal appointment

As Nicole Scherzinger prepares for her Royal Albert Hall show, she talks to Craig McLean about her evolution from pop princess to stage queen. Page 8

NYC’s sexiest restaurant comes to town

Since the day we opened Carbone, this was always our dream,” says Jeff Zalaznick over whisky and cigarettes. With chefs Mario Carbone and Rich Tollisi, two Italian-American chefs from Queens and New Jersey respectively, the trio founded Carbone in...

BAD FAITH

In Croydon a few weeks ago, men marched down the streets in heavy black boots, dressed in gold and purple. Footsteps rhythmic on the pavement. They had a message they wanted to spread about their religious organisation — a Hebrew Israelite group called...

Let’s get young London working again

Tosin Alabi’s shift at Gina’s, a restaurant near the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, was supposed to start at 9am, but he arrived six hours late at 3pm, without even calling ahead or letting his boss know. It wasn’t the first time the young father in his...

What does £1m get you in London?

Londoners are all too painfully aware that, if you want to buy a home in the capital, you’ll need deep pockets — and often a generous helping hand from the Bank of Mum and Dad. But when one Stoke Newington “shed” was spotted on the market this summer...

TYLA

Want to party with Tyla? Here are the ground rules. First things first, it has to be dark — day parties are fine, but for a real turn up, the only light should be flashing from spotlights and lasers. Aircon is non-negotiable. Boring punters nodding...

You beauty

ISSUE 45 CIARA + THE MACCABEES + JAMEELA JAMIL + YOUR DREAM HOUSE IN EUROPE FOR €1

The Americans are coming!

It seems as though the whole of New York has decamped to London. David Ellis looks at why — and the impact it’s having.

THE LONDON STANDARD

THIS WEEK /// JULY 24, 2025 /// STANDARD.CO.UK As Oasis fever sweeps the city ahead of the band’s Wembley gigs, in this week’s issue we celebrate the Gallagher brothers and their relationship to London with some fabulously gossipy stories. We hear...

Freedom of speech

Why it’s still worth fighting for, by Evgeny Lebedev, Toby Young and Melanie McDonagh

33 best hair and skincare buys for summer

SCENT TO TRANSPORT YOU Italy is this summer’s olfactory destination of choice. For a hit of dolce vita without the plane ticket try Jo Loves With Love from Como A Fragrance (£135 for 100ml, joloves. com — 6) which conjures up quiet summers by the lake...

PRIDE

Like so many queer kids before her and so many since, Violet Chachki noticed the rigours of gendered indoctrination young. Leaning towards drag, Chachki says, was “escapism, yes, but also therapy”. She attended a Catholic elementary school in Atlanta,...

He’s got balls!

Jack Draper’s reminder of his new-found place among the tennis elite came with a tap on the shoulder in a Wimbledon changing room last year. He arrived at SW19 and made his way upstairs to secure his locker ahead of the championships, laying out his...

The Spencer twins

Forget pregnant Rihanna or Alexander Skarsgård in thigh-hugging leather boots, the red-carpet moment of Cannes 2025 was the appearance of the Spencer twins: Lady Amelia and Lady Eliza: tall, platinum blonde and with the burnished aura that comes from...

Ruth Wilson

The sexuality of women is always weaponised or used against them,” says Ruth Wilson. “Whether you’ve slept with men or not, it’s sort of dangerous either way.” The 43-yearold star of His Dark Materials, Luther and The Affair is talking about her role...

Jarvis Cocker

Jarvis Cocker is sitting in The Park restaurant in Queensway in front of a rather beautiful hot dog which he’s worrying about how to eat — “I don’t know how I’m going to eat it now and not disgust you,” he shrugs. Dressed in quintessential Cocker...

Festival fever

Summer is nearly here! And for music fans that means the sensation of plastic cups being crushed underfoot, the sound of revellers in neighbouring tents talking all night about their “so random” uni experiences, and checking your weather app every five...

Pop goes summer!

THE SOCIETY PARTIES SERPENTINE SUMMER PARTY June 24 The vibe: Actors, artists, aristos and royalty gather on the lawns around the gallery in Hyde Park to see the new Serpentine pavilion, designed by a different artist each year. It’s the crème de la...

Richard Branson

So what does a billionaire business tycoon eat for breakfast? I’m sitting with Sir Richard Branson in his spanking new, 120-room Virgin Hotels London Shoreditch, where I imagine they served him something delicious this morning. I am wrong. “I went to E...

The weird and wonderful world of Walton Goggins

I don’t know if we come back here again,” Walton Goggins ponders of life on Earth, every bit the philosophical, low-buttoned shirt-wearing dude we have come to love. “I don’t know anything, none of us really do, right? The only thing that we have...

Robbie

The first time I met Robbie Williams I couldn’t get rid of him. It was 1998, I was leaving a big job, and someone was throwing a dinner for me in one of the upstairs rooms in The Groucho Club, the private members’ club in Soho. About an hour into the...

Shockingly funny Ibsen for our times

Ghosts Lyric Hammersmith, W6 with season three of The White Lotus, London’s two recent Oedipuses, and now this extraordinary show, revelations of incest that make an audience gasp and squirm are having a moment. Gary Owen’s gripping contemporary...

Goldie

In the third series of The White Lotus, Jason Isaac’s shifty Timothy Ratliff says that people move to Thailand either because they’re looking for something or running from something. Goldie, who in the past 30 years has become something of an alt...

How to get rich in a mayhem market

In the back-covering weasel words of a financial adviser, “the value of your investments can go down as well as up”. And boy did they go down over the days of Trump-inspired mayhem on the world’s financial markets. It is still only a week since the US...

Inside London’s blackmail boom

Imagine, if you can, that you’re an unfathomably wealthy man living a picture-perfect life: a tight-knit family, cute kids, an impressive job title and enough money to make life as frictionless as it can possibly be. Then, one day, boredom creeps in....

SHORT BACK & SIDE HUSTLE

It’s a scene familiar across the capital. Run-down high streets, just a stone’s throw from well-heeled residential neighbourhoods, where fruit shops knock up against building supply merchants and restaurants with enormous pictures of the food...

Ashley Walters

Ashley Walters really wishes people would stop asking him about jail. It was almost a quarter of a century ago that the Peckham-born rapper and actor was arrested by armed police for waving a firearm at a traffic warden. Half a lifetime ago. Back when...

‘I’m a chav’

Louis Tomlinson still cannot shake the One Direction mob. It’s the first, big realisation I have as the growing horde of girls barely into their teens — many of whom have been waiting for 10 hours, others who have flown in from Italy, and some...

Once upon a time in Montecito...

ISSUE 22 OUR NEW TRUE-CRIME PODCAST + MARLON JAMES + CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE + PAT MCGRATH + AYRA STARR

Flash Gordon

Gordon Ramsay is walking — striding — through the glass-walled dining room of Lucky Cat, his new restaurant on the 60th floor of 22 Bishopsgate. It is London’s highest restaurant, so far up that the building’s viewing deck is two floors below. “Come...

Right on cue

ISSUE 20 TOM NEWTON DUNN + ISAMAYA FFRENCH + HARRIS REED + DANIEL DUBOIS + THE DANGERS OF DARK DATA + MIA REGAN

Why isn’t London having babies anymore?

ISSUE 19 THOMAS HEATHERWICK + JASON ISAACS + INHALER + GUGU MBATHA-RAW + TOBY YOUNG + THE 151 CLUB

Farage for PM?

He’s a back-to-back guy these days,” says Nigel Farage’s press aide, Ed Sumner, as he takes me up in the lift to the new Reform UK HQ on Millbank. “He’s very busy.” Isn’t he just. Farage now shares a building with both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss —...

Inside Trump’s crypto court

Even by the standards of an extraordinary presidential handover it was a jaw dropping demonstration of Trumpite chutzpah at its most shameless. Just days before taking the oath in the US Capitol’s Rotunda, the man elected to be the 47th holder of the...

Travel 2025

The new paradise in Sumba, Indonesia This Indonesian island is the paradise-esque destination on so many travel insiders’ lips right now. And for good reason — still under the radar versus the country’s well-trodden Lombok and Nusa Penida, and double...

Jamie xx

London’s dance music king goes global

The shows! The gigs! The telly!

Congratulations: you’re almost at the end of the toughest week of the year. As a reward, welcome to our Culture edition of The London Standard. While January can be confronting, why not leap into 2025 by taking advantage of all the incredible things to...

We’ve raised £3million — thanks to you

An extra £755,000 from This Day Foundation and more than £125,000 from you, our readers, boost our Winter Appeal to help refugees and the homeless.

Restaurants of the year

You think you live in an echo chamber? Even my pharmacy is called the Devonshire. Though it opened late last year, the pub to end all pubs seemed to dominate so much of this year — even jokes about “maybe you’ve heard of it?” quickly went stale — which...

Confidence Man

It’s the biggest venue we’ve ever done,” says Janet Planet about Brixton Academy, where her band, Confidence Man, will perform two sold-out gigs this weekend. “I haven’t actually been yet. It’s very cool to go for the first time and play there.” Her...

Barratt Foundation gives £100k to our Winter Appeal

Maya Jama

Our appeal hits £1m! (Thanks to £460k from This Day Foundation)

How Keir Starmer is getting a rare win on climate change

Over the years, The Standard has been as renowned for its campaigns as its journalism. This Christmas we are partnering with Comic Relief to help two of London’s most disadvantaged groups, refugees and the homeless. The appeal is one of our most...

The week woke lost the war

THE 100 PEOPLE SHAPING LONDON

Tony Blair

As I sit opposite Sir Tony Blair in his private office at his Institute for Global Change in Fitzrovia, only 100 yards or so from David Beckham’s Studio 99 production company, I ask if Sir Keir Starmer is good enough to last two terms, or even...

DameJoan

ISSUE FOUR JACOB COLLIER + MUNYA CHAWAWA + TISH WEINSTOCK + BELLA FREUD + JAMIE DORNAN + LUCIEN LAVISCOUNT

ISSUE THREE

VICTORIA MONÉT + NICK GRIMSHAW + BETH RIGBY + TRISTRAM HUNT + DAPHNE GUINNESS + IDRIS KHAN & ANNIE MORRIS

Coming out of my sister’s shadow

ISSUE TWO JON SOPEL + CHARLOTTE TILBURY + SABINE GETTY + EVE + JAMES MIDDLETON + MANDIP GILL + INCREDIBLE OFFERS FOR OUR READERS

ISSUE ONE

ZANDRA RHODES + DEEPAK CHOPRA + ADOT GAK + LENNON GALLAGHER + ROBERT PESTON + GEORGE OSBORNE

‘Unions must reform now to fix railways’

NEW Transport Secretary Louise Haigh vowed today to “tackle the hard yards” on making unions abandon outdated working practices on Britain’s strikeplagued railways and get trains in London running on time. Speaking to the Evening Standard, she said...

My justice nightmare

GRIEVING families, pensioners with dementia, and even dead people have been wrongly prosecuted in Britain’s secretive fast-track courts, a major Evening Standard/ITV News investigation has found. Analysis by a panel of barristers of a sample of...