Cuttin’ It at the Young Vic review: A powerful 21st century take on an age-old tragedy June 2, 2016 Young Vic | ★★★☆☆ At just over an hour long, Cuttin’ It is a compact yet ambitious play that takes on the complex issue of female genital mutilation. Our guides through this painful subject are two 15-year-old girls, Muna (Adelayo Adedayo) and Iqra (played by newcomer Tsion Habte), Somali-British schoolgirls who seem to hail from different [...]
New homes on sale in London: from a Hackney reservoir opened by Sir David Attenborough to Shared Ownership homes in Greenwich and Penge June 2, 2016 Woodberry Down, Stoke Newington From £475,000 Live in an apartment overlooking a protected nature reserve in north east London that hasn’t been accessible to the public for 200 years. Sir David Attenborough re-opened the Stoke Newington Reservoir in April and now the first homes next to it, The Nature Collection, are on sale. Set across [...]
Property of the Week: We may have found the only bungalow in central London tucked inside a courtyard in Marylebone June 2, 2016 If you’re torn between living centrally in squished conditions or braving a suburban commute for a quainter way of life, then The Bailey in Marylebone may be the solution. Its sales agent Kay & Co claims it’s the only bungalow in central London. Bungalows – self-contained, single level houses – became popular in the inter-war [...]
Focus On Southfields: This south west London suburb is bucking the London property trend ahead of Wimbledon June 2, 2016 If you went down to Southfields today, you’d be in for a big surprise. Buying London property is hardly a teddy bear’s picnic at the best of times, but as buyers rush to the leafier outskirts in search of more affordable property, outer boroughs that were once overlooked are finding they’re in high demand. London [...]
Holiday Homes: Sussing out the property market in Barcelona, the Spanish city proving popular with cash-strapped millennials June 2, 2016 Barcelona is the millennials’ Paris. There are scores of city-wide events aimed at a younger demographic, the art galleries are overwhelmingly modern, and a cursory glance through social media will net you far more pictures of young couples standing atop one of Barcelona’s several hills than the Eiffel Tower. The city’s growing popularity means property [...]
Forget the dinner party chatter – Brexit won’t make much difference to the London property market June 2, 2016 Every week, City A.M. invites an industry professional to write about an emerging trend in the property market. While the Chancellor’s taxes have affected the number of property transactions in Prime Central London, this is not the chief spanner in the works being cited by prospective purchasers. That would be a fear of Brexit, which [...]
Jekyll and Hyde at the Old Vic review: Toe-tappin’ fun, if a little shallow May 26, 2016 The Old Vic | ★★★☆☆ Much is unfamiliar in this dance adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde – the lurid suits, the jazzy score, the fact that Jekyll is reimagined as a doctor of botany. That there’s little tying the production to RL Stevenson’s source material is testament to the enduring power of Dr Jekyll, a character [...]
Are you a GloMad or Tumbleweeder? Discover the London housing tribes that’ll be determining the property landscape May 26, 2016 Every week, City A.M. invites an industry professional to write about an emerging trend in the property market. Are you a MeCo, a Tumbleweeder, or perhaps a My Sizer? These are London’s new housing tribes. Through Strutt & Parker’s latest Housing Futures research, we discovered that 65 per cent of Londoners who intend to move [...]
Property Entrepreneurs: Johns & Co founder John Morley on how he plans to improve landlord-tenant relations May 26, 2016 For too many of London’s flat dwellers, their experience of property management has been wondering why repairs take so long and why calls for help go unanswered. Part of the problem lies in the fact developers have little long term interest in management once they have sold all the apartments in a scheme, so, all [...]
Focus On Deptford: First time buyers flock to SE8 in search of affordable homes, but is it the new Shoreditch? May 26, 2016 In Tudor times, Deptford was the centre of the naval world. Operated by the Royal Navy from the mid-16th to the late 19th century, the Deptford Docks maintained warships for 350 years and attracted the greatest mariners of the time to its shores, from Sir Water Raleigh to Sir Francis Drake. But once the navy [...]