Andrew Whitehead

I've worked in the same building in central London for the most part of thirty years. But I'm still finding new things within a three minute stroll of my workplace.

This is an old parish watch house straddling what was a lane dividing two ancient parishes, but is now a pedesrtian only dead end, best accessed through a rather bleak set of stairs.

The lane has a resonant name (as do the stairs), and on it - as well as this rather wonderful watch house - is a small property owned by the National Trust - you can just get a glimpse of it on the right in the photo above.

Anyone know where we are?

We ate at Carluccio's in Covent Garden last weekend - the building on the left with the blue awnings - to celebrate my daughter's 16th birthday. The building beyond, the cream coloured HSBC branch (now without any bank tellers at all), was for many decades the headquarters of a national political party.

Anyone want to hazard a guess which once?

OK, so this was taken yesterday within four miles of Charing Cross, and from a main road of the sort that double decker buses trundle along. Can you work out the vantage point and the church that features?

Olympics Calling!

Away from my usual north London beat ...  where is there an inscription in the paving which marks the finishing line of the athletics track used in the 1908 Olympics?

I've posted the beginning and end of the inscription - but not the crucial words  which name the stadium.

If you think you know the answer, post a comment. And strictly no Googling!

A short distance away, on the exterior wall of an office building, is a replica of the medals table from those  Olympics.

As you can see, nobody but the host country got much of a look in. Great Britain took more than half of all gold medals. As curiously, Sweden ended in third place. Belgium was ahead of Russia. Bohemia had its own team. And only nineteen competing countries went home with any medals at all.

And I think it's safe to assume there was no synchronised swimming.

So, no googling. Do you know where this plaque is? No prizes for saying Islington. It's not the poshest part of the borough - but it is on a fairly busy road.

This was the London HQ of the ANC as the party built on the back of the Soweto uprisings and the rise of the black trade unions to challenge apartheid and then take power.

Nothing like as grand an address as South Africa House on Trafalgar Square - but in some ways, this was more important to the building of the new South Afrcia.

Ok, so I'm stretching beyond my normal bounds for this one.

Where is this enjoyable dig at the heritage industry? As you can tell from the graffiti in the background, it's not in a salubrious spot - though the postal address reads well.

And is that redundant apostrophe a deliberate snub to purists and the particular, or is it just, well, ignorant?

Added points if you can tell me who Will Coles is or how the name got to be used. Answers please as a comment here or on Facebook.

LATER -Kate P says: "ok, so i gave up and googled him- apparently they are all over the place... one is in Norwich, 2 are in Sydney where he now lives ( one is even blue) but your one is in DRURY LANE ...and interestingly his grandfather designed our pound coins..."

And that prompted a communication from 'Will Coles': Yes, they're quite a few in London as well as some in Norwich, Diss & Eye (where my Grandpa lives, but I don't think he approves!)

The superfluous apostrophe was a mistake made at the place I had the casting mould made. I'm rather glad people pick up on that as so many people can't even get there/their right these days!

London Occasionals is continuing on an ecclesiastical theme. Where can we find 'Hope'?

This picture comes from Martin (others welcome from browsers), and he adds: 'It appeared in a film set in Camden, with a young couple kissing in its
doorway, but I cannot remember the title of the film.'

Can anyone remind him of the movie?

A view across north London taken from Dartmouth Park Hill, with a skyline on the far side of Hampstead Heath.

But which are the two spires on the horizon - one the pin-like spire of what I imagine to be a late Victorian parish church, and the other (to the left) more squat, almost a cupola, and currently swathed in scaffolding.

Below is a more detailed view - and if you want to know the details, the photo was taken from the junction of Dartmouth Park Hill and Laurier Road, looking roughly west along Laurier Road.  If you recognise these landmraks, do let me know.

The most anonymous bookshop in London. But a good one. The question is: where is it?

I popped in there this evening. I love pamphlets, and came away with three nice items. A fine Hogarth Press title by Virginia Woolf from 1939, 'Reviewing'. Graham Greene's 'J'accuse: the dark side of Nice' from 1982.

And an Isaac Foot pamphlet from 1938 published by the Christian communitarian Brotherhood Movement.

Add to that a signed copy of H. Montgomery Hyde's A History of Pornography - see below. And a nice copy of a Martin Lawrence title from the mid-1930s, Proletarian Literature in the United States: an anthology. All reasonably priced. The lot for under £40.

The pornography book, by the way, is conspicuously light on images. The frontispiece is distinctly unerotic: Holywell Street in the mid-1890s, from the sketch by Aubrey Beardsley. 'The street continued to tbe the centre of the London trade in pornography.'

Holywell Street, long gone, 'ran parallel with The Strand between the churches of St Mary le Strand and St Clement's'. That where Bush House now stands. Where I work! There's a thought.

But coming back to the question - where is this bookshop?