London’s cultural scene combines the assurance of long-standing tradition with the verve of regained creativity. The sheer breadth of cultural activities on offer in London is breathtaking with over 150 theatres and 300 art galleries. Contemporary figures like Tracy Emin and Zadie Smith complement the rich heritage of Turner and Shakespeare.

The hulking concrete mass of the South Bank Centre, South Bank SE1 (tel: (020) 7960 4242; website: www.sbc.org.uk ), is one of the city’s cultural Meccas. It houses the Hayward Gallery and three concert halls: the Royal Festival Hall, home of the London Philharmonic Orchestra ( website: www.lpo.co.uk ), the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room. Next door, the flagship Royal National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 (tel: (020) 7452 3400 (information) or 7452 3000 (box office); website: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk ), performs in three auditoria: The Olivier, The Cottesloe and The Lyttleton. The National Film Theatre (tel: (020) 7928 3232) is also based here.

Flying the cultural flag north of the river, the labyrinthine Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2 (tel: (020) 7638 8891 (tickets) or 7638 4141 (information); website: www.barbican.org.uk ), is an all-inclusive performing and visual arts venue with a varied all-year programme of events. It is also the London home of the Royal Shakespeare Company ( website: www.rsc.org.uk ) and the London Symphony Orchestra (tel: (020) 7588 1116; website: www.lso.co.uk ).

Annual highlights of the cultural season include the prestigious Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, W1 (tel: (020) 7413 1717), and the summer series of BBC Promenade Concerts (the Proms) at the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, SW7 (tel: (020) 7589 8212; website: www.bbc.co.uk ). Non-seated tickets are a snip at £3 and the Last Night, led by the BBC Symphony Orchestra (tel: (020) 7765 4216), is one of the few occasions when unabashed patriotism
is the order of the day.

London Tourist Board’s Visitor Call service (tel: (0906) 133 7799) and Time Out magazine ( website: www.timeout.com ) provide details of the week’s entertainment. Ticket agencies include
First Call Ticketing (tel: (020) 7420 0000 and Ticketmaster UK (tel: (020) 7344 4444; website: www.ticketmaster.co.uk ).

Music:  The world-famous Royal Opera House, Covent Garden WC2 (tel: (020) 7304 400; website: www.royalopera.org ), has reopened after a facelift and is home to the excellent Royal Opera. However, despite some attempts to cut the price, ballet and opera tickets are still often prohibitively expensive. More accessible are performances by the English National Opera at the London Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, WC2 (tel: (020) 7632 8300). Large-scale concerts are staged at the Royal Festival Hall, South Bank Centre, South Bank, SE1 (tel: (020) 7960 4242; website: www.sbc.org.uk ), the Barbican, Silk Street,
EC2 (tel: (020) 7638 8891 (tickets) or 7638 4141 (information); website: www.barbican.org.uk ), and the home of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (tel: (020) 7608 2381; website: www.rpo.co.uk ), the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore,
SW7 (tel: (020) 7589 8212 (box office); website: www.royalalberthall.com ). Music connoisseurs head for the traditional but friendly surroundings of the Wigmore Hall, 36 Wigmore Street, W1 (tel: (020) 7935 2141), to hear impeccable chamber music and solo recitals. More informal concerts take place in halls and churches all over the capital, including St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, WC2 (see the Key Attractions section), St John’s, Smith Square, SW1, and St James’s, Piccadilly, W1. Summer sees a month of music at the City of London Festival and regular outdoor performances in Holland Park theatre (tel: (020) 7602 7856) and in the gardens of Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath, NW3 (tel: (020) 7973 3427).

Theatre:  Within the extraordinary diversity of London’s theatre scene, the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company compete for audiences with commercial West End theatres, repertory companies, ‘off-West End’ productions and fringe theatres.

Tickets for blockbuster musicals in the West End cost up to £40. They can be purchased in advance from the theatre box office or half-price from the ticket booth on Leicester Square, on the day of the performance. The repertory Peter Hall Company – who returned to the Old Vic, The Cut, Waterloo, SE1 (tel: (020) 7928 7616; website: www.oldvictheatre.com ), in autumn 1999 – offers inspired traditional drama. Meanwhile down the road,
at 66 The Cut, the Young Vic (tel: (020) 7928 6363; website: www.youngvic.org ) presents modern productions of contemporary and classic plays. The incomparable English Stage Company at the Royal Court, Sloane Square, SW1 (tel: (020) 7565 5000; website: www.royalcourttheatre.com ), continues to foster excellent new writing. Quality innovative productions can also be expected from ‘off-West End’ theatres such as the Donmar Warehouse, Earlham Street, WC2 (tel: (020) 7369 1732), the Almeida, Almeida Street, N1 (tel: (020) 7359 4404) and the Tricycle Theatre, 269 Kilburn High Road, NW6 (tel: (020) 7328 1000), which also sports a cinema.

Fringe theatre, ranging from the inspired to the insane, is performed in dozens of local venues, including the King’s Head, 115 Upper Street, N1 (tel: (020) 7226 1916), which is the oldest pub-theatre in London. From May to September, the Globe Theatre, New Globe Walk, SE1 (tel: (020) 7401 9919; website: www.shakespeares-globe.org), stages open-air productions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. There are also outdoor summer performances in Regents Park, NW1 (tel: (020) 7486 2431).

Dance:  Touring dance companies perform at the revamped Sadler’s Wells Theatre on Rosebery Avenue, EC1 (tel: (020) 7863 8000; website: www.sadlers-wells.com ). A less elitist approach means ticket prices are more reasonable than at the Royal Opera House (see above), which is home to the Royal Ballet.

Film:  Ealing Studios in west London (tel: (020) 8567 6655) presented English eccentricity and black humour in a distinctive London setting in the ‘Ealing Comedies’, such as Passport to Pimlico (1949) and The Ladykillers (1955). Before the war, Alfred Hitchcock established his reputation at Elstree Film Studios
( website: www.elstreefilmstudios.co.uk ), with London-based thrillers such as The 39 Steps (1935), featuring Richard Hannay (Robert Dunat) hanging precariously from the clock face of Big Ben. Recently, Sliding Doors (1997), Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Notting Hill (1998) have achieved huge success by combining a London setting with the box-office draw of Hollywood stars. The compelling gangster face of East End London has also been portrayed in Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000).

Local cinemas are less expensive than those in the West End, which charge about £8-10 per ticket. Two main cinema chains are Odeon (tel: (0870) 505 0007) and Warner (tel: (020) 7437 4347, for Warner West End Village in Leicester Square, WC2). Barbican Screen, Silk Street, EC2 (tel: (020) 7638 8891), is London’s leading independent cinema showing independent, arthouse and blockbuster movies, while IMAX magic can be experienced at the largest cinema screen in the UK, the new BFI London IMAX Cinema, South Bank, SE1 (tel: (020) 7902 1234; website: www.bfi.org.uk ). The annual London Film Festival
( website: www.lff.org.uk ) is a month-long celebration of celluloid at venues throughout London (November to December).

Cultural events:  New Year revelry – sometimes of the unruly and even violent sort – has long been a London tradition, with
the focus on an overcrowded Trafalgar Square. A few weeks later, Lion Dancers welcome in the Chinese New Year in Chinatown, WC2. July sees the Coin Street Festival at Gabriel’s Wharf, SE1, the Greenwich and Docklands Festival ( website: www.festival.org ), the West End Soho Festival, the one-day Irish Fleadh in Finsbury Park, N4, and the Mardi Gras parade and festival (a chance for the city’s gay and lesbian population to strut their stuff). The Notting Hill Carnival – a two-day celebration of Afro-Caribbean culture during the August Bank Holiday weekend – is Europe’s largest street carnival, attended by over two million people. More sedate events include the Trooping of the Colour, celebrating the Queen’s official birthday in June, and the impressive Lord Mayor’s Show in November, which is a colourful display of the long-standing independence of the City of London.

Literary Notes :
London has sheltered and inspired writers for centuries. Bunhill Fields’ graveyard has monuments to John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe and William Blake. Bloomsbury gave its name to a literary set that included Virginia Woolf, and the leafy suburb of Hampstead was once home to John Keats, H G Wells and D H Lawrence. Some of the country’s most famous writers are commemorated in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. The seething mass of 19th-century London life – and its legendary fog – is vividly recreated in the novels of Charles Dickens. Sinister goings-on in the capital surface in the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stephenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and The Secret Agent (1923) by Joseph Conrad. Graham Greene captured the unique atmosphere of wartime London in The Ministry of Fear (1943). More recently Martin Amis’ London Fields (1989), a depressing portrait of a London in pre-millennial decline, Chris Petit’s Robinson (1993), which delves deep into Soho life, Tobias Hill’s Underground (1999), a poetic murder mystery woven around the Tube, and Jake Arnott’s The Long Firm (1999), set in the London underworld of the 1960s, have added their voices to the rich London literary canon.