The ‘Cool Britannia’ era of Britpop and the Young British Artists may be in the rearview mirror, but London continues to innovate and remains a cultural metropolis rivalled only by its sister city of New York.
All eyes were on London this year for the coronation of King Charles III but underneath all the pomp and ceremony the UK capital is still one of the most vibrant, cosmopolitan capitals on the planet.
To capture the excitement around every cobblestoned corner of the Old Dart, the Luxury Escapes television team recently visited to film an episode for season six of the travel show with hosts Cameron Daddo and Rachel Khoo.
“I have been to London in the winter and I have been to London in the spring and in all seasons I find London exciting,” Cameron says over a whisky in the new Londoner hotel. “The city is vibrant, multicultural and packed with arts and culture.”
The London theatre scene is still rivalled only by Broadway forming the famous ‘NyLon’ commute between the two cities that has made them the twin cultural hubs of the Western world.
The regal Shaftesbury theatres attract top talent from all over the world. The Soho area is home to classic plays like The Mousetrap, the world’s longest running play, or revivals like Cabaret. But it is also the stepping off point for new epics like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child or the quirky 2023 debut of TONY! The Tony Blair Rock Opera.
No stranger to treading the boards himself, Cameron cites the Soho area with its private members’ bars and old Irish pubs as one of his favourite places to visit, but he is also a fan of the traditional afternoon tea.
Discover London
“The appeal of an afternoon tea is its elegance and it’s just being able to sit still and enjoy the care that has been put into the food that has been created,” Cameron says of his time shooting an afternoon tea for the show at The Kensington Hotel. “And there is something about having a cup of tea and eating a scone with cream that just feels very elegant and old world.”
London boasts hundreds of Michelin-starred restaurants, exciting and varied street food and it has been the home of local, craft brews for hundreds of years.
But for Cameron, he had two very specific food goals when coming to London. “I wanted to make sure that I had some fish and chips or a Guinness pie and I had them both,” he says.
Read the rest of this article on page 79 in the first issue of Dream by Luxury Escapes magazine. Get your copy here.
