North London

A potent combination of political dissent, bohemian intellectualism and jaw-droppingly expensive real estate has led north London to become a byword for middle-class privilege – just check out satirical paper Private Eye’s cartoon strip “It’s Grim Up North London”, peopled by bearded creatives Quin and Jez brunching and blogging their way through First World nightmares. And while you will undoubtedly spot Quins and Jezes in the cafés of Islington and the pubs of Primrose Hill, on the paths of Hampstead Heath and in the bookshops of Highgate village, to write off this varied, vibrant and historically rich swathe of London would be a huge mistake. From the willow-lined banks of the Regent’s Canal to the rock’n’roll markets of Camden, north London is an unmissable destination.

North London officially begins at the Regent’s Canal, which on its completion in 1820 delineated the city’s northern periphery. Today it passes along the north side of Regent’s Park, one of London’s finest, framed by elegant Nash-designed architecture and home to London Zoo. The canal then cuts through Camden, a rakish place even today, whose market is one of the city’s big attractions – a warren of stalls selling a mishmash of vintage fashion, street food, furniture, hippie crafts, jewellery and vinyl.

Neighbouring Islington has its own flourishing antiques alley, a few quirky sights and lots of good pubs and restaurants. The real highlights of north London, though, for visitors and residents alike, are leafy Hampstead and Highgate, pretty, largely eighteenth-century neighbourhoods that still feel like the villages they once were. They have the added advantage of proximity to one of London’s wildest patches of greenery, Hampstead Heath, where you can enjoy stupendous views, fly kites, swim outdoors and admire high art at the Neoclassical mansion of Kenwood House.

A handful of sights in more far-flung suburbs are also worth seeking out: the nineteenth-century utopia of Hampstead Garden Suburb; the Orthodox Jewish suburb of Golders Green; the RAF Museum at Hendon; and the spectacular Swaminarayan temple in Neasden.

Note that, unlike some other areas of the city, most of north London is easily accessible by tube; in fact, it was the expansion of the Underground network that enabled the relentless forward march of bricks and mortar in London’s outer suburbs.

Little Venice

Warwick Avenue

The Regent’s Canal starts out from the west in the triangular leafy basin known as Little Venice, a nickname coined by one-time resident and poet Robert Browning. The title may be far-fetched, but the willow-tree Browning’s Island is one of the prettiest spots on the canal, and the houseboats and barges moored hereabouts are brightly painted and strewn with tubs of flowers. While you’re here, try to catch a marionette performance on the Puppet Theatre Barge, moored on the Blomfield Road side of the basin, a unique and unforgettable experience; performances take place every weekend at 3pm, and more often during the school holidays (except Aug & Sept). You can also catch a canal boat to Camden, or walk south to the Paddington Basin.

Regent’s Canal

The Regent’s Canal, completed in 1820, was constructed as part of a direct link from Birmingham to the newly built London Docks in the East End. After an initial period of heavy usage it was overtaken by the railway, and never really paid its way as its investors had hoped. By some miracle, however, it survived, and its nine miles, 42 bridges, twelve locks and two tunnels stand as a reminder of another age. The lock-less stretch of the canal between Little Venice and Camden Town is the busiest, most attractive section, tunnelling through to Lisson Grove, skirting Regent’s Park, offering back-door views of Lord Snowdon’s famous aviary at London Zoo and passing straight through the heart of Camden Market. You can walk, jog or cycle along the towpath, but this section of the canal is also served by scheduled narrowboats. Beyond, the canal takes you to Camley Street Natural Park and the newly regenerated King’s Cross.

Three companies run daily boat services between Camden and Little Venice, passing through the 270-yard-long Maida Hill tunnel. Whichever you choose, return trips take around ninety minutes and you can board at either end.

Jason’s Trip jasons.co.uk. This one-hundred-year-old traditional narrow boat has been running trips since 1951. There are three (weekdays) or four (weekends) services a day between Little Venice and Camden. There is commentary on the way to Camden but none going the other way. Cash only. Return trips £14.50, single £9.50. April–early Nov daily.

Jenny Wren 020 7485 4433, walkersquay.com. The narrowboat Jenny Wren gives narrated tours, starting off at Camden, travelling through a canal lock (the only company to do so) and heading for Little Venice. Two/three trips daily; £14. March Sat & Sun only; April–Oct daily.

London Waterbus Company 020 7482 2550, londonwaterbus.com. Four working canal boats offer trips (eight daily in summer, fewer at other times) from Camden and Little Venice; you can include a visit to London Zoo with your trip; boats stop at the canal gate and you can enter the zoo direct from there. Return £14; with zoo visit £25 from Camden, £27 from Little Venice. No bookings, pay on the day only. Cash only. April–Sept daily; Oct Thurs–Sun only; Nov to mid-Dec & Jan–March Sat & Sun only, weather permitting.

St John’s Wood

The wealthy residential district of St John’s Wood was built over in the nineteenth century by developers hoping to attract a moneyed clientele with a mixture of semidetached Italianate villas, multi-occupancy Gothic mansions and white stucco terraces. Novelist George Eliot and Mrs Fitzherbert, the uncrowned wife of George IV, lived here; more recently its celeb-studded roll call of residents has included knights Richard Branson and Paul McCartney, singer Lily Allen, cricketer Imran Khan and comedian/actor Eric Idle.

Lord’s Cricket Ground

St John’s Wood Rd, NW8 8QN • Guided tours On non-match days only, hourly 10am–3pm daily • £20, concessions £12–15 (includes museum admission) • 020 7616 8500, lords.org • St John’s Wood

The arrival of the Regent’s Canal was bad news for Thomas Lord, who had only recently been forced to shift his cricket ground due to the construction of Marylebone Road. In 1813, with the canal coming, he once more upped his stumps and relocated, this time to St John’s Wood Road, where Lord’s, as the ground is now known, remains to this day. Lord’s is home to the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club), founded in 1787, and the most hallowed institution in the game, boasting a very long members’ waiting list (unless you’re exceptionally famous or stinking rich). Its politics were neatly summed up by UKIP stalwart Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who said, “I have been a member of the Committee of the MCC and of a Conservative cabinet, and by comparison with the cricketers, the Tories seem like a bunch of Commies.”

Lord’s is home to the MCC Museum, which started out in 1953 as a memorial to cricketers who had died in battle. Today its collection, arranged thematically, covers around four hundred years and houses the minuscule urn containing the Ashes (along with the complex tale of this odd trophy), numerous historic balls, bats and bails and a sparrow (now stuffed) that was “bowled out” by Jehangir Khan at Lord’s in 1936; you can also watch footage of staggering cricket performances through the years. There are two ways to visit the museum: on match days entry is possible only with a match ticket and is free during internationals and £3 for almost all other matches; or, at all other times, on one of the guided tours of the ground, which also cover the famous Long Room (from where the players walk onto the pitch), dressing rooms, stands and the futuristic aluminium Media Centre.

Regent’s Park

Daily 5am to dusk • 0300 061 2300, royalparks.org.uk • Regent’s Park, Baker Street, Great Portland Street, St John’s Wood or Camden Town

Regent’s Park is one of London’s smartest parks, with a boating lake, ornamental ponds and waterfalls and wonderful gardens all enclosed in a ring of magnificent nineteenth-century mansions. As with almost all of London’s royal parks, we have Henry VIII to thank for this one, which he confiscated from the Church in order to create yet more hunting grounds. However, it wasn’t until the reign of the Prince Regent (later George IV) that the park began to take its current form – hence its official title, “The Regent’s Park”. According to John Nash’s 1811 master plan, the park was to be girded by a continuous belt of terraces, and sprinkled with a total of 56 villas, including a magnificent pleasure palace for the prince himself, linked by Regent Street to Carlton House, George’s palace in St James’s. The plan was never fully realized, but enough was built to create something of the idealized garden city that Nash and the Prince Regent envisaged; the public weren’t allowed in until 1845 (and even then for just two days of the week).

The eastern terraces

Nash’s terraces form a near-unbroken horseshoe of cream-coloured stucco around the Outer Circle. By far the most impressive are the eastern terraces, especially Cumberland Terrace, completed in 1826, and intended as a foil for George IV’s planned pleasure palace and tea pavilion. Its 800ft-long facade, hidden away on the eastern edge of the park, is punctuated by Ionic triumphal arches, peppered with classical alabaster statues and centred on a Corinthian portico with a pediment of sculptures set against a vivid sky-blue background. In 1936 an angry crowd threw bricks through the windows of no. 16, which belonged to American divorcée Mrs Wallis Simpson, whose relationship with Edward VIII was seen as a national calamity, and eventually led to his abdication.

Fifty-two more statues depicting British worthies were planned for the even longer facade of Chester Terrace, to the south, but Nash decided the ridicule they provoked was “painful to the ears of a professional man” and ditched them. Nevertheless, Chester Terrace is worth walking down if only to take in the splendid triumphal arches at each end, which announce the name of the terrace in bold lettering; the northern one features a bust of Nash.

To the north of Cumberland Terrace, the neo-Gothic St Katharine’s Precinct provides a respite from the Grecian surroundings, though not one Nash was happy with. The central church (Tues–Fri 9am–1pm, Sat noon–3pm, Sun 10am–3pm; danskekirke.org) serves the Danish community, who have erected a copy of the huge Jelling Stone – an imposing runic stone dating back to the tenth century – on the grounds.

The Inner Circle

Of the numerous villas Nash planned for the park itself, only eight were actually built, and of those just two originals have survived around the Inner Circle: St John’s Lodge, built in 1812 and now owned by the Sultan of Brunei, and The Holme, Decimus Burton’s first-ever work (the Nash protégé was just 18 at the time), picturesquely sited by the Y-shaped Boating Lake (April–Sept 10.30am–6pm; boats £8/30min), and now owned by a Saudi prince. Within the Inner Circle is the Open Air Theatre, and Queen Mary’s Gardens, by far the prettiest section of the whole park. A large slice of the gardens is taken up with a glorious rose garden, featuring some 12,000 flowers and hundreds of varieties, surrounded by a ring of ramblers; they’re at their most beautiful in early June.

The Beatles in London

Since the Fab Four lived in London for much of the 1960s, it’s hardly surprising that the capital is riddled with Beatles associations. The prime landmark is, of course, the Abbey Road zebra crossing featured on the eponymous album cover, located near the EMI studios where the group recorded most of their records. The nearest tube is St John’s Wood – remember to bring three friends (one barefoot), plus another to take the photos. Incidentally, Paul McCartney still owns the house at 7 Cavendish Ave, which he bought in 1966, two blocks east of the zebra crossing.

One (short-lived) nearby curiosity was the three-storey Apple Boutique, opened by The Beatles at 94 Baker St (Baker Street), in December 1967, as a “kind of psychedelic Garden of Eden for lovers of hippy gear with all the trappings of beautiful living”, as George Harrison put it. The psychedelic murals that covered the entire corner building were whitewashed over after a lawsuit by the neighbours, and eight months later The Beatles caused even more pandemonium when, having made a huge loss on the venture, they gave the shop’s entire stock away in the closing-down event – a blue plaque commemorates the shenanigans.

Other Beatles locations include the old Apple headquarters at 3 Savile Row, Mayfair, where the impromptu 1969 rooftop concert – their final live performance – took place, while Macca’s MPL Communications offices are on Soho Square. Real devotees of the group should sign up for a Beatles tour, run by London Walks (daily except Mon; 2hr; £10; 020 7624 3978, walks.com).

Islamic Cultural Centre and the London Central Mosque

146 Park Rd, NW8 7RG • Daily 9am–10pm • Free • 020 7725 2212, iccuk.org • Marylebone or St John’s Wood

The skyline of Regent’s Park is punctuated by the shiny copper dome and minaret of the London Central Mosque, part of the Islamic Cultural Centre. The foundation stone for the building was laid in 1944, after which the site served as a community hub until the mosque was constructed thirty years later. Non-Muslim visitors are welcome to visit the Islam Gallery in the basement, a promotional exposition of Islam as much as a museum.

Winfield House

On the opposite side of the road from the London Central Mosque is Winfield House, a dull 1930s replacement for Decimus Burton’s Hertford House, built by the heiress to the Woolworth chain, Countess Haugwitz-Reventlow (better known as Barbara Hutton), who gifted Winfield House to the US government during World War II and went on to marry Cary Grant; it’s now the American ambassador’s residence, and tends to be where the US President stays when he visits London.

London Zoo

Outer Circle, Regent’s Park, NW1 4RY • Zoo Daily April–Aug 10am–6pm (5pm during Sunset Safaris); March, Sept & Oct 10am–5.30pm; Nov–Feb 10am–4pm • March–Oct £24.30 online, £27.04 on the gate, concessions £21.90/£24.36, under-16s £18/£20, under-3s free; Nov–Feb £20.45 online, £22.73 on the gate, concessions £18.40/£20.45, under-16s £15.95/£17.73 • Sunset Safaris June to mid-July Fri 6–10pm • £20.80 online, buy in advance • 020 7722 3333, zsl.org/zsl-london-zoo • Camden Town

The northeastern corner of Regent’s Park is occupied by London Zoo, founded in 1826 with the remnants of the royal menagerie. Among the biggest attractions here today is the impressive Land of the Lions, a scaled-down re-creation of an Indian village in the Gir Forest, where the wild cousins of the Asiatic lions who now live here hail from. Opened in 2016, the enclosure allows surprisingly close encounters with its residents, including the chance to stare down at the lions from overhead walkways. It’s the latest in a number of innovative new enclosures to have opened over the last decade or so at the zoo, compromised somewhat by a relatively small site and a number of dated but striking architectural features. The modernist 1934 spiral-ramped, former Penguin Pool, Lord Snowdon’s 1962 tetrahedral aviary and the nineteenth-century Neoclassical Giraffe House are among the twelve listed buildings within the grounds. Many of the animal species once housed in these constructions have been moved to newer enclosures, better designed for their welfare. The penguins, for example, now occupy the much larger and less concrete-heavy Penguin Beach, and Gorilla Kingdom provides significantly more space for the zoo’s small colony of western lowland gorillas than they used to have.

Other popular attractions, besides the regular live shows, are Animal Adventure – the children’s petting zoo and adventure playground – the B.U.G.S. invertebrate house, and several walk-through enclosures, such as Rainforest Life, Meet the Monkeys and In with the Lemurs.

Primrose Hill

The small northern extension of Regent’s Park, known as Primrose Hill, commands a great view of central London from its modest summit. And it lends its name to the much sought-after residential area, to the northeast, which has attracted numerous successful literati, artists, bohemians and luvvies over the years: H.G. Wells, W.B. Yeats, Friedrich Engels, Kingsley Amis, Alan Bennett and Morrissey have all lived here, along with all the great and the good of the 1990s Britpop scene, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Moss. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath lived in a flat at 3 Chalcot Square, just east of Regent’s Park Road, which skirts Primrose Hill to the east, and it was nearby at 23 Fitzroy Rd, the house where Yeats once lived, that Plath committed suicide in 1963. Primrose Hill is swiftly being bought up by oligarchs and bankers, but you may still catch media darlings such as Jamie Oliver or David Walliams as you browse its boutiques, bakeries and bookstores.

Camden Town

Until the canal arrived, Camden Town wasn’t even a village, but by Victorian times it had become a notorious slum area, an image it took most of the twentieth century to shed. In the meantime, it attracted its fair share of artists, most famously the Camden Town Group formed in 1911 by Walter Sickert, later joined by the likes of Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. These days, you’re more likely to bump into young foreign tourists heading for the market, and as-yet-unknown bands on the lookout for members of the local music industry.

For all the gentrification of the last thirty years, Camden retains a gritty edge, compounded by the various railway lines that plough through the area, the canal and the homeless shelter on Arlington Road. Its proximity to three mainline stations also made it an obvious point of immigration over the years, particularly for the Irish, but also for Greek Cypriots during the 1950s. Nowadays, the market overwhelms the area, especially at weekends; that, along with some genuinely mixed, unpretentious and rollicking pubs and music venues, make it a corner of London well worth visiting.

Camden Market

Camden Market was confined to Inverness Street until the 1970s, when the focus shifted to the disused warehouses around Camden Lock. The tiny crafts market which began in the cobbled courtyard by the lock has since mushroomed out of all proportion, with stalls on both sides of Camden High Street and Chalk Farm Road. More than one hundred thousand shoppers turn up here each weekend, and Camden Lock and the vast labyrinth of the Stables Market now stay open all week long. For all its tourist popularity, Camden remains a genuinely offbeat place. To avoid the crowds, which can be overpowering in the summer, aim to come either early (before noon) or late (after 4pm), or on a Friday. The nearest tube is Camden Town, though this is exit-only at peak times; Chalk Farm tube is only ten minutes’ walk up Chalk Farm Road from Camden Lock.

Camden Lock

If you’ve seen enough market stalls for one day, stand on the bowed iron footbridge by Camden Lock itself, and admire the castellated former lock-keeper’s house, to the west. You can catch a boat to Little Venice; the flight of three locks to the east begins the canal’s descent to Limehouse and the Thames. To the south are the covered basins of the Interchange Warehouse, linked by a disused railway line to the Camden Catacombs, built in the nineteenth century as stables for the pit ponies that used to shunt the railway wagons.

Roundhouse

Chalk Farm Road, NW1 8EH • 0844 482 8008, roundhouse.org.uk • Chalk Farm

Camden’s brick-built Roundhouse, on Chalk Farm Road, is now a performing arts venue, but was originally built in 1846 as an engine repair shed for 23 goods engines, arranged around a central turntable. Within fifteen years the engines had outgrown the building, and for the next century it was used for storing booze. In 1964, Arnold Wesker established the place as a political theatre venue, and two years later, the Roundhouse began to stage rock gigs – everyone from Hendrix and The Doors to The Ramones and Kraftwerk – and countercultural happenings.

Jewish Museum

129 Albert St, NW1 7NB • Daily 10am–5pm, Fri until 2pm • £8.50, concessions £6.50 • 020 7284 7384, jewishmuseum.org.uk • Camden Town

Despite having no significant Jewish associations, Camden is home to London’s purpose-built Jewish Museum. The Welcome Gallery, on the ground floor, features ten extremely varied accounts of what it’s like to be Jewish in contemporary London, from a teenager at the JFS (Jewish Free School) to an Orthodox rabbi. On the first floor, there’s an engaging exhibition explaining Jewish practices and illustrated by cabinets of Judaica from all over Europe, including a seventeenth-century Venetian Ark of the Covenant and treasures from London’s Great Synagogue in the City, burnt down by Nazi bombers in 1941. The second floor has an interactive display on the history of British Jews from 1066 onwards, with good sections on Yiddish theatre, boxing and tailoring, plus a special Holocaust gallery that focuses on Leon Greenman (1920–2008), one of only two British Jews who suffered in and survived Auschwitz. The museum also puts on a lively programme of special exhibitions, which have included an excellent, long-running exhibition on Amy Winehouse in recent years, as well as various talks, films, discussions and concerts, and has a café on the ground floor.

DANCING ON GRAVES

Iconic nineteenth-century clown Joseph Grimaldi (1778–1837), whose annual remembrance service at Holy Trinity Church in Dalston has become a cult event among hipsters and circus performers alike, is buried in the otherwise unremarkable Joseph Grimaldi Park, just off Pentonville Road. His real grave is set back behind respectful railings, but a modern memorial nearby allows a more irreverent homage. Two bronze casket shapes set into the ground, one dedicated to Grimaldi and the other Charles Dibdin, who employed him at Sadler’s Wells, lie side by side. Against all instincts, just take the leap and dance on Grimaldi’s “grave” – the pressure of your footsteps sets off his trademark tune Hot Codlins. Less “Rest in Peace” than “Rest in Play” it’s a fitting, and poignant, celebration of one of the world’s wisest fools.

Islington

Since the 1960s, Islington’s picturesque but dilapidated Regency and early Victorian squares and terraces have been snapped up by professionals and City types and comprehensively renovated. The impact of this gentrification, however, has been relatively minor on the borough as a whole, which stretches as far north as Highgate Hill, and remains one of the city’s most mixed. Chapel Market (Tues–Sun), to the west of Upper Street, selling cheap clothes, fruit and veg and Arsenal football memorabilia, is a salutary reminder of Islington’s working-class roots. For more on the history of Islington, visit the borough’s museum.

There’s little evidence of those roots on the glossy main drag, Upper Street. Its well-established antique market – along a pedestrianized lane confusingly known as Camden Passage – regularly brings an influx of wealthy customers, and its pubs and restaurants are filled night after night with young professionals splashing the cash. It’s a popular place to come in the evening – a kind of off-West End – boasting the long-established King’s Head pub theatre, the Little Angel puppet theatre and the ever-popular Almeida, plus several live music venues.

Upper Street

Looking at the traffic hurtling – or crawling – along Upper Street today, it’s hard to believe that “merry Islington”, as it was known, was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a spa resort where people would come to drink the clear water and breathe lungfuls of clean, pure air. Today this broad, bustling thoroughfare has something of a mini-West End feel about it, lined with chichi boutiques, cool design stores and an ever-increasing roster of restaurants that bring in punters from all over north London and give the area a distinct buzz after dark. Look out for the raised pavements along stretches of this and surrounding streets: in the nineteenth century Islington was a grazing halt for livestock en route to the local Royal Agricultural Hall or nearby Smithfield, and those high sidewalks protected pedestrians from being splattered with mud.

The New River

In 1613, Hugh Myddelton (1560–1631), Royal Jeweller to James I, revolutionized London’s water supply by drawing fresh water direct from the River Lea, 38 miles away in Hertfordshire, via an aqueduct known as the New River. A weathered statue of Myddleton, unveiled by Gladstone in 1862, stands at the apex of Islington Green. Right up until the late 1980s the New River continued to supply most of north London with its water – the original termination point was at New River Head, near Sadler’s Wells theatre; the succession of ponds to the northeast of Canonbury Road is a surviving fragment of the scheme. It is possible to follow the channel by foot from Islington all the way to Hertfordshire – the three-mile walk from New River Head via Canonbury and Clissold Park to the “Castle” pumping station in Stoke Newington (now a climbing centre and café) is particularly pleasant; north of here much of the river remains in situ. You can download maps on thameswater.co.uk.

Clockwise from top Amy Winehouse statue in Camden; Swaminarayan temple; Little Venice

Royal Agricultural Hall

52 Upper St, N1 0QH • Angel

The modern glass frontage of the Business Design Centre hides the former Royal Agricultural Hall, Islington’s finest Victorian building, completed in 1862. As well as putting on agricultural and livestock exhibitions, the hall hosted the Royal Tournament but during World War II it was requisitioned by the government for use by the Post Office, who remained in residence until 1971. The interior is still magnificent, even if the exhibitions now held there are more prosaic – think mobile phone conferences and marketing expos, with January’s London Art Fair, a prestigious contemporary art show, being one high spot.

Islington Green to Cross Street

Today, Islington has fewer green spaces than any other London borough – one of the few being the little Islington Green, just up from Angel tube. Five days a week (antiques Wed, Sat & Sun; books Thurs & Fri), the pavements to the east of the green are occupied by the antique stalls of Camden Passage market (camdenpassageislington.co.uk); the antique and design shops in the market’s narrow namesake and the surrounding streets, along with a number of good cafés and restaurants, stay open all week.

Just north of the green stands St Mary’s Church (stmaryislington.org), built in the 1750s. Only the steeple survived the Blitz, though the light, spacious 1950s interior is an interesting period piece, with six fluted Egyptian-style columns framing the sanctuary. The churchyard opens out into Dagmar Passage, where in 1961 a former temperance hall was converted into the Little Angel Puppet Theatre. The archway at the end of Dagmar Terrace brings you out onto chichi Cross Street, with elegant eighteenth-century houses and raised pavements on both sides.

Union Chapel

Compton Terrace, N1 2UN • 020 7226 1686, unionchapel.org.uk • Highbury and Islington

Built in 1888, at the height of the Congregationalists’ popularity, the fancifully extravagant Union Chapel remains a church, but is now also an innovative independent live music venue. Its lugubrious, spacious, octagonal interior is designed like a giant Gothic auditorium, with raked pew seating and galleries capable of holding 1650 rapt worshippers (or concert-goers), and the pulpit centre stage.

Orton in Islington

Controversial playwright Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell lived together for sixteen years, spending the last eight years of their lives in a top-floor bedsit at 25 Noel Rd, to the east of Upper Street, where the Regent’s Canal emerges from the Islington tunnel. It’s ironic that the borough council has seen fit to erect a plaque on the house commemorating the couple, when it was instrumental in pressing for harsh prison sentences after both men were found guilty of stealing and defacing local library books in 1962. A few of the wittily doctored books are now on display at the Islington Museum.

Six months in prison worked wonders for Orton’s authorial skills, as he himself said: “Being in the nick brought detachment to my writing.” It also brought him success, with irreverent comedies like Loot, Entertaining Mr Sloane and What the Butler Saw playing to sell-out audiences in the West End and on Broadway. Orton’s meteoric fame and his sexual profligacy drove Halliwell to despair, however, and on August 9, 1967, the latter finally cracked – beating Orton to death with a hammer and then killing himself with a drug overdose. Their ashes were mixed together and scattered over the grass at Golders Green Crematorium. Apart from the nearby public toilets, Orton’s favourite local hangout was the appropriately entitled Island Queen pub, at the end of Noel Road.

Highbury Fields

Highbury and Islington

At the top of Upper Street, across the busy Holloway Road junction, lies the largest open space in the borough, Highbury Fields, where more than two hundred thousand people gathered in 1666 to escape (and watch) the Great Fire. Now overlooked on two sides by splendid Georgian and Victorian terraces, and fringed with plane trees, it’s one of Islington’s more elegant green spaces. A plaque on the park’s public toilets commemorates the country’s first-ever gay rights demonstration (against police harassment), which took place here in 1970. Highbury itself is also world famous as the former home of Arsenal Football Club, who now play at the modern sixty-thousand-seat Emirates Stadium, ten minutes’ walk away.

Canonbury Square

Islington’s most perfect Regency set piece, Canonbury Square is centred on a smartly maintained flower garden, somewhat blighted by traffic ploughing up Canonbury Road. In 1928, Evelyn Waugh moved into the first floor of no. 17 with his wife Evelyn Gardiner (they called themselves “He-Evelyn” and “She-Evelyn”). In those days, the square was nothing like as salubrious as it is now. In fact, it was precisely the square’s squalor that appealed to George Orwell, who moved into the top floor of no. 27 in 1944, with his wife and son, having been bombed out of his digs in St John’s Wood; he later used it as the prototype for Winston Smith’s home in 1984. Immediately northeast of the square stands the last remaining relic of Islington’s bygone days as a rural retreat, the red-brick Canonbury Tower (not open to the public) originally part of a Tudor mansion and occupied variously by figures such as Renaissance man Francis Bacon and writer Oliver Goldsmith.

Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art

39a Canonbury Square, N1 2AN • Wed–Sat 11am–6pm, Sun noon–5pm, first Thurs of month until 9pm • £6.50, concessions £4.50 • 020 7704 9522, estorickcollection.com • Highbury & Islington

Islington’s most intriguing attraction is the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, which occupies a Georgian mansion on Canonbury Square, with the entrance on Canonbury Road. The most exciting works here are those of the early Italian Futurists, whose founding manifesto of 1909 urged followers to “divert the canals to flood the museums”. Futurism’s mouthpiece was the fascist Filippo Marinetti, a rich boy with a penchant for crashing fast cars, and, as evidenced by the photos on show in the gallery, an eye for natty waistcoats.

The permanent collection, spread out over the two upper floors, ranges from the rainbow colours of Music (1911) by Luigi Russolo, which is firmly Futurist, to a Modigliani self-portrait and Symbolist paintings from Giorgio de Chirico. One of the most intriguing pieces is Medardo Rosso’s wax sculpture Woman with a Veil (1893), which had a profound influence on the Futurists. The gallery also features paintings by lesser-known Italian artists such as Giorgio Morandi and Zoran Music, as well as by Italy’s two leading postwar sculptors, Emilio Greco and Marino Marini. There are excellent temporary exhibitions and a good little Italian café that spills out into the back garden in nice weather.

Hampstead

Perched on a hill to the west of Hampstead Heath, Hampstead village developed into a fashionable spa in the eighteenth century, and was not much altered thereafter. Its sloping site, which deterred Victorian property speculators and put off the railway companies, saved much of the Georgian village from destruction. Later, it became one of the city’s most celebrated literary quartiers and even now it retains its reputation as a bolt-hole for high-profile intelligentsia and discerning pop stars – the local Labour MP for many years was the actress Glenda Jackson.

The steeply inclined High Street, lined with posh shops and arty cafés, flaunts the area’s ever-increasing wealth without completely losing its charm, though the most appealing area is the extensive, picturesque and precipitous network of alleyways, steps and streets east and west of Heath Street. Proximity to Hampstead Heath is, of course, the real joy of the area, for this mixture of woodland, smooth pasture and landscaped garden is quite simply the most exhilarating patch of greenery in London.

Holly Bush Hill

If you wander into the backstreets north of Hampstead tube, you will probably end up at the small triangular green on Holly Bush Hill, where the white weatherboarded Romney House stands (closed to the public). In 1797, painter George Romney converted the house and stables into London’s first purpose-built artist’s studio house, though he spent only two years here before returning to the Lake District and the wife he had abandoned thirty years earlier. Later, it served as Hampstead’s Assembly Rooms, where Constable used to lecture on landscape painting.

Fenton House and Garden

Hampstead Grove, NW3 6SP • March–Oct Wed–Sun 11am–5pm • NT • House £7.70; joint ticket with 2 Willow Road £12.50 • 020 7435 3471, nationaltrust.org.uk/fenton-house-and-garden • Hampstead

Fenton House, a seventeenth-century merchant’s house set grandly behind wrought-iron gates, houses a collection of European and Oriental ceramics, a smattering of British twentieth-century paintings by the likes of Walter Sickert, Duncan Grant and Spencer Gore, and a superb collection of early musical instruments – all displayed on the top floor, from which you can see right across London. Among the spinets, virginals and clavichords is an early Broadwood grand piano and an Unverdorben lute from 1580 (one of just three in the world). Don’t miss the beautiful walled garden, with an orchard, a kitchen garden and a formal garden.

Admiral’s Walk

Up Hampstead Grove, beyond Fenton House, is Admiral’s Walk, so-called after its most famous building, Admiral’s House, a vast whitewashed Georgian mansion whose top storey resembles a quarterdeck. Once painted by Constable, it was later lived in by Victorian architect George Gilbert Scott, of Albert Memorial and St Pancras fame.

St John-at-Hampstead and around

Church Row, NW3 6UU • Daily 9am–5pm • Free • 020 7794 5808, hampsteadparishchurch.org.uk • Hampstead

The Georgian terraces of tree-centred Church Row, at the south end of Heath Street, are where City gents would stay for the week when Hampstead was a thriving spa. The street forms a grand approach to St John-at-Hampstead, which has an attractive period-piece Georgian interior and a romantically overgrown cemetery. John Constable is buried in the southeastern corner; Hugh Gaitskill, Labour Party leader from 1955 until his death in 1963, lies in the Churchyard Extension to the northeast. If you continue up Holly Walk, you’ll come to St Mary’s Church, whose Italianate facade is squeezed into the middle of a row of three-storey cottages. This was one of the first Catholic churches built in London after the Reformation; the original facade from 1816 was much less conspicuous.

Hampstead Cemetery

Fortune Green Rd, NW6 1DR • Mon–Fri 7.30am–dusk, Sat 9am–dusk, Sun 10am–dusk • Free • 020 7527 8300, camden.gov.uk • Hampstead or Finchley Road & Frognal Overground

A good selection of Hampstead luminaries is buried in the neatly maintained Hampstead Cemetery, half a mile west of central Hampstead, on the west side of Finchley Road, and founded in 1876 when St John’s Churchyard Extension was full. The pioneer of antiseptic surgery Joseph Lister, music-hall star Marie Lloyd and children’s book illustrator Kate Greenaway are among those buried here. The full-size stone organ monument to the obscure Charles Barritt is the most unusual piece of funerary art, while the most unlikely occupant is Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovitch, uncle to the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II.

Hampstead Who’s Who

Over the years, countless writers, artists and politicos have been drawn to Hampstead, which has more blue plaques commemorating its residents than any other London borough. John Constable lived here in the 1820s, trying to make ends meet for his wife and seven children and painting cloud formations on the Heath, several of which hang in the V&A. John Keats moved into Well Walk in 1817, to nurse his dying brother, then moved to a semidetached villa, fell in love with the girl next door, bumped into Coleridge on the Heath and in 1821 went to Rome to die; the villa is now a museum. In 1856, Karl Marx finally achieved bourgeois respectability when he moved into Grafton Terrace, a new house on the south side of the Heath. Robert Louis Stevenson stayed here when he was 23 suffering from tuberculosis, and thought it “the most delightful place for air and scenery”.

Author H.G. Wells lived on Church Row for three years just before World War I. In the same period, the photographer Cecil Beaton was attending a local infants’ school, and was bullied there by author Evelyn Waugh – the start of a lifelong feud. The composer Edward Elgar, who lived locally, became a special constable during the war, joining the Hampstead Volunteer Reserve. D.H. Lawrence, and his German wife Frieda, watched the first major Zeppelin raid on London from the Heath in 1915 and decided to leave. Following the war, Lawrence’s friend and fellow writer, Katherine Mansfield, lived for a couple of years in a big grey house overlooking the Heath, which she nicknamed “The Elephant”. Actor Dirk Bogarde was born in a taxi in Hampstead in 1921. Stephen Spender spent his childhood in “an ugly house” on Frognal, and went to school locally. Elizabeth Taylor was born in Hampstead in 1932, and came back to live here in the 1950s during her first marriage to Richard Burton.

In the 1930s, Hampstead’s modernist Isokon building, a block of flats on Lawn Road, became something of an artistic hangout, particularly its drinking den, the Isobar: architect Walter Gropius and artists Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and her husband Ben Nicholson all lived here (Moore moved out in 1940, when his studio was bombed, and retired to Herefordshire); another tenant, Agatha Christie, compared the exterior to a giant ocean liner. Architect Ernö Goldfinger built his modernist family home at 2 Willow Road, now a museum, and local resident Ian Fleming named James Bond’s adversary after him. Mohammed Ali Jinnah abandoned India for Hampstead in 1932, living a quiet life with his daughter and sister, and working as a lawyer. George Orwell lived rent-free above Booklovers’ Corner, a bookshop on South End Road, in 1934, in return for services in the shop in the afternoon; Keep the Aspidistra Flying has many echoes of Hampstead and its characters. Sigmund Freud spent the last year of his life in Hampstead, having reluctantly left Austria, following the Anschluss; his house is now a museum. Artist Piet Mondrian also escaped to Hampstead from Nazi-occupied Paris, only to be bombed out a year later, after which he fled to New York. Nobel Prize-winning writer Elias Canetti was another refugee from Nazi-occupied Europe, as was painter/poet Oskar Kokoschka who, along with photomontage artist John Heartfield, was given assistance by the Hampstead-based Artists’ Refugee Committee, set up by local Surrealist artist Roland Penrose. General de Gaulle got first-hand experience of Nazi air raids when he lived on Frognal with his wife and two daughters.

Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain in 1955, shot her lover outside the Magdala Tavern by Hampstead Heath train station. Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten lived in a squat on Hampstead High Street in 1976. John le Carré lived here in the 1980s and 1990s and set a murder in Smiley’s People on Hampstead Heath. Michael Foot, the former Labour leader, lived in a house he bought in 1945 with his redundancy cheque from The Evening Standard until the age of 96. Today comedian Ricky Gervais, director Ridley Scott, footballer Thierry Henry and pop stars Boy George and Harry Styles have homes here.

Freud Museum

20 Maresfield Gardens, NW3 5SX • Wed–Sun noon–5pm • £8, concessions £4–6 • 020 7435 2002, freud.org.uk • Finchley Road

One of the most poignant of London’s house museums is the Freud Museum in the leafy suburban streets of south Hampstead. Having fled Vienna after the Anschluss, Sigmund Freud arrived in London in the summer of 1938, and was immediately Britain’s most famous Nazi exile. He had been diagnosed as having cancer way back in 1923 (he was an inveterate cigar-smoker) and given just five years to live. He lasted sixteen, but was a semi-invalid when he arrived in London, and rarely left the house except to visit his pet dog, Chun, who was held in quarantine for nearly a year. On September 21, 1939, Freud’s doctor fulfilled their secret pact and gave his patient a lethal dose of morphine.

The ground-floor study and library look exactly as they did when Freud lived here (they are modelled on his flat in Vienna); the large collection of antiquities and the psychiatrist’s couch, sumptuously draped in an opulent Iranian rug, were all brought here from Vienna in 1938. Upstairs, there’s some old footage of the family, while another room is dedicated to his favourite daughter, Anna, herself an influential child analyst, who lived in the house until her death in 1982. Sigmund’s architect son, Ernst, designed a loggia at the back of the house so that Freud could sit out and enjoy the garden; it has since been enclosed and serves as the museum shop.

Burgh House and Hampstead Museum

New End Square, NW3 1LT • Wed–Fri & Sun noon–5pm; Sat café only • Free • 020 7431 0144, www.burghhouse.org.uk • Hampstead

The Queen Anne mansion of Burgh House dates from Hampstead’s halcyon days as a spa – known briefly as Hampstead Wells – and was at one time occupied by Dr Gibbons, the physician who discovered the spring’s medicinal qualities. Today the house hosts exhibitions of local art – along with regular talks, music recitals and theatre pieces – and its attractive wood-panelled Music Room is a popular wedding venue. You can see fascinating old photos in the modest, two-room on-site Hampstead Museum of local history, along with some fine modernist Isokon plywood furniture, including a long chair by Marcel Breuer, found in a Hampstead skip. The Buttery Café has lovely garden seating in summer.

2 Willow Road

2 Willow Rd, NW3 1TH • March–Oct Wed–Sun 11am–5pm; note that before 3pm, visits are by hourly guided tour • NT • £6.50; joint ticket with Fenton House £12.50 • 020 7435 6166, nationaltrust.org.uk/2-willow-road • Hampstead Heath Overground or Hampstead

Designed as his own family home by Ernö Goldfinger – the Budapest-born architect best known for his brutalist concrete high-rises, such as Trellick Tower – 2 Willow Road is the central house in a modernist red-brick terrace facing a corner of Hampstead Heath. At the time of its completion in 1939 this was state-of-the-art stuff, its open-plan rooms flooded with natural light and much of the ingenious furniture designed by Goldfinger himself. The family altered very little during the fifty years they lived here, so what you see is a 1930s avant-garde dwelling preserved in aspic, a house at once both modern and old-fashioned. An added bonus is that the rooms are packed with the Goldfingers’ extensive art collection: Surrealist objets trouvés and works of art by the likes of Max Ernst, Bridget Riley, Henry Moore and Man Ray.

Keats House

10 Keats Grove, NW3 2RR • March–Oct Wed–Sun 11am–5pm; Nov–Feb Fri–Sun 1–5pm; free tours 3pm (30min) • £6.50, concessions £4.50–5.50; garden only, free • 020 7332 3868, cityoflondon.gov.uk/keats • Hampstead Heath Overground or Hampstead

The English Romantic poet John Keats is celebrated at Keats House, an elegant, whitewashed Regency double villa. The consumptive poet lodged here with his friend Charles Brown in 1818, after his brother Tom had died of the same illness. Inspired by the tranquillity of Hampstead, and by his passion for girl-next-door Fanny Brawne (whose house is also part of the museum), Keats wrote some of his most famous works here before leaving for Rome, where he died in 1821 aged just 25.

In the pretty front garden a diminutive plum tree stands on the site of the much larger specimen in whose shade Keats is said to have sat for two or three hours before composing Ode to a Nightingale. The simple interior contains books and letters, an anatomical notebook from Keats’ days as a medical student at Guy’s Hospital, Fanny’s engagement ring and two listening posts on which you can listen to his poetry. Visits begin with a handy, well-made ten-minute film providing an overview of Keats’ life and his time in the house. Check the website for regular poetry readings, performances and talks.

Hampstead Heath

cityoflondon.gov.uk • Hampstead or Hampstead Heath and Gospel Oak Overground

Hampstead Heath is hands down London’s most enjoyable public park. Little of the original heathland survives, but this green swathe nevertheless packs in a wonderful variety of bucolic scenery, from the formal Hill Garden and rolling pastures of Parliament Hill to the dense woodland of West Heath and the landscaped grounds of Kenwood. As it is, the Heath was lucky to survive the nineteenth century intact, for it endured more than forty years of campaigning by the Lord of the Manor, Thomas Maryon Wilson, who introduced no fewer than fifteen parliamentary bills in an attempt to build over it. It wasn’t until after Wilson’s death in 1871 that 220 acres of the Heath passed into public ownership. The Heath now covers more than eight hundred acres, and is run by the Corporation of London.

Parliament Hill

Crowds gather at Parliament Hill, the Heath’s southernmost ridge, for the unrivalled view over the London skyline, a sweeping panorama that takes in the City’s ever-expanding array of corporate towers and the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, among other landmarks. This is also north London’s premier spot for kite flying, especially at weekends when some serious equipment takes to the air. The “parliamentary” connection is much disputed by historians, so take your pick: a Saxon parliament met here; Guy Fawkes’ cronies gathered here (in vain) to watch the Houses of Parliament burn; the Parliamentarians placed cannon here during the Civil War to defend London against the Royalists; the Middlesex parliamentary elections took place here in the seventeenth century.

Boudicca’s Mound to Viaduct Pond

To the northwest of Parliament Hill is a fenced-off tumulus, known as Boudicca’s Mound, where, according to tradition, the warrior queen was buried after she and ten thousand other Brits had been massacred at Battle Bridge; another legend says she’s buried under Platform 10 in King’s Cross Station. Due west lies the picturesque Viaduct Pond, named after its red-brick bridge, which is also known as Wilson’s Folly. It was built as part of Thomas Maryon Wilson’s abortive plans to drive an access road through the middle of the Heath to his projected estate of 28 villas.

Vale of Health

West of Viaduct Pond, an isolated network of streets nestles in the wonderfully named Vale of Health, an area that was, in fact, a malarial swamp until the late eighteenth century. Literary lion Leigh Hunt moved to this quiet backwater in 1816, after serving a two-year prison sentence for calling the Prince Regent “a fat Adonis of fifty”, among other things; Hunt was instrumental in persuading Keats to give up medicine for poetry. Author D.H. Lawrence spent a brief, unhappy period here in 1915: in September of that year his novel The Rainbow was banned for obscenity, and by December, Lawrence and his wife, Frieda von Richthofen, whose German origins were causing the couple immense problems with the authorities, had resolved to leave the country.

Pond dipping

The Heath is the source of several of London’s lost rivers – the Tyburn, the Westbourne and the Fleet – and home to some 28 natural ponds, many of which are fishing ponds and three of which are used as Bathing Ponds. These are very popular in good weather: the single-sex men’s and ladies’ ponds, on the Highgate side, are open all year; mixed bathing, on the Hampstead side, is in summer only.

West Heath

The busy road junction around Whitestone Pond, west of the Vale of Health, marks the highest point in this part of north London (440ft), overlooked by the faux-ancient Jack Straws Castle apartments. To the west lies West Heath, a densely wooded, boggy area with a thick canopy of deciduous trees sloping down towards the suburban neighbourhood of Childs Hill; it’s a very peaceful place for a stroll and doubles as a popular gay cruising area. A track leads northwest from Jack Straws Castle, across West Heath, over to Hill Garden (daily 8.30am to dusk), the Heath’s most secretive and romantic little gem. Originally an extension to the grounds of nearby Hill – or Inverforth – House, built by Lord Leverhulme in 1906 (and now converted into flats), the garden’s most startling feature is the 800ft-long Pergola, whose Doric columns support a host of climbers including a wonderfully gnarled wisteria. The pergola is elevated some 15ft above the ground in order to traverse a public footpath that Lord Leverhulme tried in vain to have removed.

Golders Hill Park

West Heath Ave • Daily 7.30am–dusk • Free • 020 7332 3511, cityoflondon.gov.uk • Golders Green

Adjacent to the West Heath are the landscaped gardens of Golders Hill Park. Near the main entrance is the park café, serving Italian ice cream, and close by, a beautifully kept walled garden and pond. The central section of the park is taken up by a zoo containing alpacas, ring-tailed lemurs and a series of impeccably maintained aviaries, home to white-naped cranes and other exotic birds.

Kenwood

Hampstead Lane, NW3 7JR • Gardens Daily 8am–dusk • Free • House Daily: April–Oct 10am–5pm; Nov–March 10am–4pm • Free • Guided tours £12–15.80, concessions £10.80–14.20 • 020 8348 1286, english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/kenwood • Bus #210 from Archway or Golders Green

Hampstead Heath’s most celebrated sight is Kenwood, the former private estate whose beautiful white Neoclassical mansion faces south to catch the sun. The house dates from the seventeenth century, but was later remodelled by Robert Adam for the Earl of Mansfield, the most powerful judge in the country. Mansfield, who sent 102 people to the gallows and sentenced another 448 to transportation, was a deeply unpopular character and one of the prime targets of the 1780 Gordon Riots. He and his wife also raised Dido Elizabeth Belle, the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of his nephew and an African slave, at Kenwood, along with their adopted niece. Mansfield went on to make some important, if pragmatic, rulings that influenced the eventual abolition of the slave trade; Belle herself lived at Kenwood, ostensibly as a free woman, for thirty years.

Nowadays, with its free art collection and magnificently landscaped grounds, Kenwood is deservedly popular. The gardens, to the west of the house, boast splendid azaleas and rhododendrons and are dotted with sculptures by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Eugène Dodeigne; to the south, rolling green lawns slope down to a lake. The whole area is something of a suntrap and a favourite picnic spot; the provision-less can head for the Brew House Café in the old coachhouse, which has some wonderful garden seating.

Kenwood House

Kenwood House is home to a superb seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art collection from the English, Dutch and French schools. First off, head for the Dining Room, where an eminently moving late self-portrait by Rembrandt (1665) shares space with marvellous portraits by Franz Hals, Van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds and Ferdinand Bol and Vermeer’s delicate Guitar Player (1672). The Music Room holds more masterful portraits by Gainsborough, most strikingly the diaphanous Countess Howe (1764) caught up in a bold, almost abstract landscape, and the ghostly Lady Brisco (1776). Of the house’s many wonderful period interiors, the most spectacular is Adam’s Wedgwood-blue and rose pink Library, its book-filled apses separated from the central area by paired columns. The pièce de résistance is the tunnel-vaulted ceiling, decorated by Antonio Zucchi, who married Kenwood’s other ceiling painter, Angelica Kauffmann.

There’s less to see upstairs, but in the Upper Hall you’ll find walls lined with seventeenth-century full-length portraits by William Larkin. Among those depicted are the arrogant Richard Sackville, a dissolute aristocrat resplendent in pompom shoes, and his much nicer brother, Edward, also sporting some fine pompoms plus earrings festooned with ribbons.

Highgate

Northeast of Hampstead Heath, Highgate lacks the literary cachet of Hampstead, but makes up for it with London’s most famous cemetery, resting place of, among others, Karl Marx. It also retains more of its village origins, especially around The Grove, Highgate’s finest row of houses, set back from the road in pairs overlooking the village green, and dating back to 1685. Their most famous one-time resident, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, lived at no. 3 from 1816, with a certain Dr Gillman and his wife. With Gillman’s help, Coleridge got his opium addiction under control and enjoyed the healthiest, if not necessarily the happiest, period of his life, until his death here in 1834.

Coleridge was initially buried in the local college chapel, but in 1961 his remains were reburied in St Michael’s Church, in South Grove. Its spire is a landmark, but St Michael’s is much less interesting architecturally than the grandiose, late seventeenth-century Old Hall next door, or the two tiny ramshackle cottages opposite, built for the servants of one of the luxurious mansions that once characterized Highgate. Arundel House, which stood on the site of the Old Hall, was where Francis Bacon, the Renaissance philosopher and statesman, is thought to have died, having caught a chill while trying to stuff a chicken full of ice for an early experiment in refrigeration.

Highgate High Street

Highgate gets its name from the tollgate – the highest in London and the oldest in the country – that stood where the Gatehouse pub now stands on Highgate High Street. The High Street itself, though architecturally pleasing, is packed out with franchises and estate agents, and marred by heavy traffic, as is its northern extension, North Road. If you persevere with North Road, however, you’ll pass Highgate School, founded in 1565 for the local poor but long since established as an exclusive fee-paying public school, housed in suitably impressive Victorian buildings. T.S. Eliot was a master here for a while, and famous poetical alumni, known as Cholmeleians after the founder Sir Roger Cholmeley, include Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Betjeman.

Highpoint 1 and 2

At the top end of North Road, on the left, are the whitewashed high-rises of Highpoint 1 and 2, seminal early essays in modernist architecture designed by Berthold Lubetkin and his Tecton partnership from the late 1930s. Highpoint 1, the more northerly of the two blocks, was conceived as workers’ housing, with communal roof terraces and a tearoom. The locals were outraged so Highpoint 2 ended up being luxury apartments, the caryatids at the entrance a joke at the expense of his antimodernist critics. Lubetkin also designed himself a penthouse apartment on the roof in the style of a Georgian dacha, with views right across London, where he lived until 1955.

Waterlow Park and Lauderdale House

Highgate Hill, N6 5HD • Park Daily summer 7.30am–8pm, winter 8am–6pm • Free • waterlowpark.org.uk • Lauderdale House Wed–Fri 11am–4pm, Sun 10am–5pm, closed Sat • Free • Café Daily 9am–5pm • 020 8348 8716, lauderdalehouse.org.uk • Archway

On the west side of Highgate Hill lies charming Waterlow Park, named after Sydney Waterlow, who donated it in 1889 as “a garden for the gardenless”. Occupying a dramatic sloping site, it’s one of London’s finest landscaped parks and provides a through route to Highgate Cemetery, just a few paces away. Waterlow also bequeathed Lauderdale House, on the eastern edge of the park, thought to have been occupied at one time by Nell Gwynne, mistress of King Charles II, and her infant son. The house itself is a plain, uninteresting edifice save for the one or two surviving remnants of the original sixteenth-century structure inside, but it’s also home to a decent café that spills out into the terraced gardens, a couple of exhibition spaces and stages theatre, jazz, cabaret and kids’ shows. Not far away, down Highgate Hill, you’ll find the Whittington Stone, with cat, marking the spot where Dick Whittington miraculously heard the Bow Bells chime.

Highgate Cemetery

Swain’s Lane, N6 6PJ • East Cemetery March–Oct Mon–Fri 10am–5pm, Sat & Sun 11am–5pm; Nov–Feb closes 4pm; guided tours Sat 2pm • £4, guided tours £8 • West Cemetery Guided tours only: March–Oct Mon–Fri 1.45pm, Sat & Sun every 30min 11am–3pm; Nov–Feb Sat & Sun hourly 11am–3pm; £12; no under-8s • 020 8340 1834, highgatecemetery.org • Archway

Ranged on both sides of Swain’s Lane, Highgate Cemetery is London’s most famous graveyard. Opened in 1839, it quickly became the preferred resting place of wealthy Victorian families, who could rub shoulders with numerous intellectuals and artists. As long as prime plots were available, business was good and as many as 28 gardeners were employed to beautify the place.

But as the plots filled, funds dried up and the place fell prey to vandalism. The cemetery, which had provided inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, found itself at the centre of a series of bizarre incidents in the early 1970s. Graves were smashed open, cadavers strewn about, and the High Priest of the British Occult Society, Allan Farrant, was arrested, armed with a stake and crucifix with which he hoped to destroy “the Highgate Vampire”. He was eventually sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, after being found guilty of damaging graves, interfering with corpses and sending death-spell dolls to two policemen.

In 1975, the old (West) cemetery was closed completely and taken under the wing of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery. Nowadays, you have to take a guided tour to visit it, though you can still wander freely around the less dramatic East Cemetery.

West Cemetery

The old, overgrown and ivy-tangled West Cemetery is one of London’s most affecting sights. While trees are being lopped and paths cut through the undergrowth in order to return it more closely to its original state, it remains a wild, otherworldly place, and gloomily beautiful with its huge vaults and eerie, crumbling statuary.

This being Highgate, there are countless artists, eccentrics and revolutionaries buried here, and several oddities among the familiar Celtic crosses and draped urns. Guides may well point out the lion that snoozes above the tomb of menagerist George Wombwell, and the faithful dog that lies patiently on bare-knuckle fighter Thomas Sayers’ grave. Another popular sight is the Rossetti family tomb, resting place of Elizabeth Siddall, Pre-Raphaelite model and wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who buried the only copy of his love poems along with her. Seven years later he changed his mind and had the poems exhumed and published. The poet Christina Rossetti, Dante’s sister, is also buried in the vault.

The cemetery’s spookiest section is around Egyptian Avenue, entered through an archway flanked by Egyptian half-pillars, known as the “Gateway to the City of the Dead”. The avenue slopes gently upwards to the Circle of Lebanon, at the centre of which rises a giant cedar. The circular Egyptian-style sunken catacombs here include the tomb of the lesbian novelist Radclyffe Hall. Above are the Terrace Catacombs, and the cemetery’s most ostentatious mausoleums, some of which hold up to fifteen coffins; the largest – based on the tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus – is that of Julius Beer, one-time owner of the Observer newspaper.

East Cemetery

What the East Cemetery lacks in spooky atmosphere, it makes up for by the fact that you can wander at will through its maze of circuitous paths. The most publicized occupant is Karl Marx who spent more than half his life in London, much of it in bourgeois Hampstead. Marx asked for a simple headstone, but ended up with this lumpen bronze bust and granite plinth bearing the words “Workers of all lands, unite”, from The Communist Manifesto. He was visited here by Khrushchev, Brezhnev and just about every postwar Communist leader in the world, and lesser-known Communists such as Yusef Mohamed Dadoo, chairman of the South African Communist Party until his death in 1983, cluster around him.

Nearby is George Eliot’s grave and, behind it, that of her lover, George Henry Lewes. Malcolm McLaren’s headstone is typically defiant – “Better a spectacular failure, than a benign success” – while a shelf of supersized stone books gives an unexpectedly learned air to the resting place of TV prankster Jeremy Beadle, “Writer, Presenter, Curator of Oddities”. Perhaps most striking, however, is Patrick Caulfield’s stark, self-designed stone, crowned with one simple word: D-E-A-D.

Alexandra Palace and Park

Alexandra Palace Way, N22 7AY • 020 8365 2121, alexandrapalace.com • Bus #W3 from Wood Green stops right outside the palace or train to Alexandra Palace station and 120m walk to the park, 800m to palace

Since its more famous rival, Crystal Palace, burnt down in 1936, Alexandra Palace, built in 1873 and affectionately known as “Ally Pally”, is London’s only surviving example of a Victorian “People’s Palace”. Built on the commanding heights of Alexandra Park there is currently more to do around the palace than inside it, though it does house an indoor ice rink and stages regular events, including concerts, boxing tournaments, fashion shows and trade fairs in its huge halls. Besides picnicking on the grassy slopes in front of the grand portico and taking in the views down to the City, Canary Wharf and beyond, you can visit the boating lake, a pitch and putt course, the deer enclosure, a children’s playground and skate park, and a garden centre, or just wander around the attractive grounds.

Sixteen days after the official opening, Ally Pally itself burnt down and, despite being rebuilt within two years and boasting a theatre, a reading room, an exhibition hall and a concert room with one of the world’s largest organs, it was a commercial failure. The palace was rebuilt again after another devastating fire in 1980 but much of it is still derelict, and the reconstruction continues today, with the entire East Wing currently closed for major restorations to the Victorian theatre and the original BBC studios where, in 1936, the world’s first television transmission took place. The studios will open as a visitor attraction at some far-off date, but in the meantime the annual round of funfairs, festivals and gigs continues and every summer, spread over several weekends between May and August, a street food and craft beer festival takes place along the palace’s terrace. There is also now a Go Ape adventure playground for kids.

Golders Green

If the East End is the spiritual home of London’s working-class Jews, Golders Green and the suburbs to the northwest of Hampstead are its middle-class equivalent. A little over a hundred years ago this whole area was open countryside but, like much of suburbia, it was transformed overnight by the arrival of the tube in 1907. Before and after World War II, the area was heavily colonized by Jews moving out of the old East End ghetto around Spitalfields or fleeing as refugees from the Nazis. Nowadays, Golders Green, along with Stamford Hill, is one of the most distinctively Jewish areas in London. The Orthodox community has a particularly strong presence here and there’s a profusion of kosher shops beyond the railway bridge on Golders Green Road, at their busiest on Sundays.

Hampstead Garden Suburb

hgs.org.uk • Golders Green

Much of Golders Green is architecturally bland, the one exception being Hampstead Garden Suburb, begun in 1907. This model housing development was the Utopian dream of Henrietta Barnett, who believed the key to social reform was to create a mixed social environment where “the poor shall teach the rich, and the rich, let us hope, shall help the poor to help themselves”. Yet from the start the suburb was socially segregated, with artisan dwellings to the north, middle-class houses to the west and the wealthiest villas overlooking the Heath to the south. As a social engineering experiment it was a failure – the area has remained a middle-class ghetto – but as a blueprint for suburban estates it was enormously influential.

The suburb’s formal entrance is the striking Arts and Crafts gateway of shops and flats on Finchley Road. From here, ivy-strewn houses, each with its own garden encased in privet, yew and beech hedges, fan out eastwards along tree-lined avenues towards Central Square, laid out by Edwin Lutyens in a neo-Georgian style he dubbed “Wren-aissance”. (Pubs, shops, cinemas and all commercial buildings were, and still are, excluded from the suburb.) Lutyens also designed the square’s twin churches: the Nonconformist Free Church, with an octagonal dome, and the Anglican St Jude-on-the-Hill with its steeply pitched roof and spire, and unusual 1920s murals. East of Central Square is the Lutyens-designed Institute, with its clock tower, now occupied by the Henrietta Barnett School.

Golders Green Crematorium

62 Hoop Lane, NW11 7NH • Daily: April–Sept 9am–6pm; Oct–March 9am–4pm • 020 8455 2374 • Golders Green

More than 320,000 Londoners have been cremated at Golders Green Crematorium since it opened in 1902. The city’s oldest crematorium, it’s a secular space (there’s even a special Communist corner), and more famous names have been scattered over the unromantically named Dispersal Area than have been buried at any single London graveyard: Enid Blyton, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Ernö Goldfinger, Joe Orton, Peter Sellers, Joyce Grenfell, Sid James, Marc Bolan, Keith Moon, Bram Stoker and Doris Lessing among them. Finding a particular memorial plaque among the serene red-brick chapels and arcades is not easy, so it’s best to ask at the office in the main courtyard. Other luminaries – including Anna Pavlova, Sigmund Freud and his wife and daughter – are in the columbaria, which you can only enter with an attendant.

Golders Green Jewish Cemetery

Hoop Lane, NW11 7NL • Sun–Thurs 8.30am–4.45pm, Fri until 3.45pm • 020 8455 2569, hooplanecemetery.org.uk • Golders Green

Golders Green Jewish Cemetery, also known as Hoop Lane Jewish Cemetery, was founded in 1897, before the area was built up. The eastern section is for Orthodox Sephardic Jews, whose tombs are traditionally laid flat with the deceased’s feet pointing towards Jerusalem. On the west are the upright headstones of Reform Jews, including the great cellist Jacqueline du Pré, and Lord Hore-Belisha, Minister of Transport in the 1930s, who gave his name to “Belisha beacons” (the yellow flashing globes at zebra crossings for pedestrians).

The RAF Museum, Hendon

Grahame Park Way, NW9 5LL • Daily: March–Oct 10am–6pm; Nov–Feb 10am–5pm • Free; simulators £3; 4D theatre shows £5 • 020 8205 2266, rafmuseum.org.uk • Colindale

One of the world’s most impressive collections of historic military aircraft is lodged at the RAF Museum, in the former Hendon Aerodrome. The most obvious place to start is in the Historic Hangars, dominated by a vast 1920s Southampton reconnaissance flying boat. Highlights here include the Hoverfly, the first really effective helicopter; the clinically white Valiant, the first British aircraft to carry thermonuclear bombs; and, of course, the most famous British plane of all time, the Spitfire.

Of the museum’s other halls, Milestones of Flight displays a century’s worth of aircraft from an early airship gondola to the state-of-the-art Eurofighter Typhoon, while the Grahame-White Factory, the UK’s first aircraft factory, purpose-built in Hendon in 1917, is filled with displays on aviation during World War I. Most chilling of all is the Bomber Hall, where you’re greeted by a colossal Lancaster bomber, similar to those used in Operation Chastise, the mission carried out by Squadron 617 (and immortalized in the film The Dambusters). The Battle of Britain and Sunderland Halls closed in 2016 to prepare them for the RAF’s centenary celebrations in 2018, when they will be relaunched.

A number of 4D shows evoke various thrilling aeronautical experiences, while simulators allow you to experience anything from a World War I dogfight to a Red Arrows flight. The kid-friendly interactive Aeronauts gallery teaches the basic principles of flight and airplane construction, and lets you take the controls of a helicopter.

The Swaminarayan temple, Neasden

105–119 Brentfield Rd, NW10 8LD • Temple Daily 9am–6pm • Free • Understanding Hinduism Mon–Fri 9am–5pm, Sat & Sun 9am–6pm • £2 • 020 8965 2651, londonmandir.baps.org • Neasden

One of the most remarkable buildings in London lies just off the busy North Circular, in the glum suburb of Neasden. Rising majestically above the dismal interwar housing like a mirage, the Shri Swaminarayan mandir is a traditional Hindu temple topped with domes and shikharas, erected in 1995 in a style and scale unseen outside of India for more than a millennium. The building’s vital statistics are incredible: 3000 tonnes of Bulgarian limestone and 2000 tonnes of Carrara marble were shipped out to India, carved by over 1500 sculptors, and then shipped back to London and assembled in a matter of weeks. Even more surprising is the fact that Lord Swaminarayan (1781–1830), to whom the temple is dedicated, is a relatively obscure and very recent Hindu deity. Note that shoulders, upper arms and legs must be covered when visiting.

The Mandir (temple)

To reach the temple, you must enter through the adjacent Haveli, or cultural complex, with its intricately carved wooden portico and balcony, and twin covered, carpeted courtyards. Having placed your shoes in the appropriate alcove, you can then proceed to the Mandir. The temple is carved out of marble, with every surface transformed into a honeycomb of arabesques, flowers and seated gods. Pillars are decorated with figures of gods and goddesses, while alcoves shelter Murti (idols), serene figures in resplendent clothes representing, among others, Rama, Sita, Ganesh the elephant god, Hanuman the monkey god and Shri Swaminarayan himself. The shrines are only open during darshan – or viewing – periods; check the website for timings. Visitors are welcome to attend the midday Rajbhog Arti ceremony, when candles are lit and musical prayers are offered to the deities.

Understanding Hinduism exhibition

Beneath the mandir, an exhibition explains Hinduism’s basic tenets, extols the virtues of vegetarianism and details the life of Lord Swaminarayan, who became a yogi at the age of 11, and stood naked on one leg for three months amid snowstorms and “torturing weather”. There’s also a short documentary about the temple’s history.

The Making of Harry Potter, Leavesden

Leavesden, WD25 7LR, 20 miles northwest of central London • Tours Run regularly but hours vary widely. Typically Mon–Fri 8.30/10.30am–6/10pm, Sat & Sun 8.30am–10pm; closed late Jan to early Feb, mid-Nov & around Christmas; last tour 3–4hr before closing; check website for latest hours and tour times • £39, under-16s £31; book far in advance • 0345 084 0900, wbstudiotour.co.uk • Watford Junction from Euston (around 8/hour; 15–45min), then shuttle bus (around every 30min; 15min; £2.50, cash only); last return shuttle bus 20min before closing

Kids and Harry Potter fans will love The Making of Harry Potter Warner Bros. studio tour; but impressively, they’ve managed to keep it interesting for everyone else, too. The self-guided tour takes you around the studios where much of the footage for the eight Harry Potter movies was shot, and every space is crammed with paraphernalia from filming. You can geek out over individual characters’ wands and original costumes, or marvel at the films’ creature technology – like the animatronic spiders – and the hand-drawn, hyper-detailed architectural plans.

The audioguides (£4.95) provide a wealth of extra detail, and behind-the-scenes anecdotes like how many wands Daniel Radcliffe broke. They’re only necessary for the more avid fans, though – everything’s well labelled and there’s plenty to discover just by wandering around. Many of the staff worked at the studios during filming, too, and it’s fascinating to chat with them about their experiences.

There’s a rest area halfway round, by Privet Drive and the Knight Bus, where you can buy refreshments (skip the disappointing “butterbeer” in favour of the ice cream) or eat what you’ve brought with you. It’s wise to save your money instead for the fantastic if eye-wateringly expensive gift shops. You can also drop a fair amount of cash on photos of yourself flying a broom or heading to platform nine-and-three-quarters.

Allow a few hours to get the most out of the tour and avoid rushing at the end – they save the best for last. If you can, time your visit to coincide with one of the seasonal events; these include Dark Arts at the end of October, and Hogwarts in the Snow, when the sets are decked out with fake snow and Christmas trees.

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