Reading is sexy (again)
On a recent Friday evening under pink skies and in a warm breeze, 500 bright young things chose not to sit outside with pints and Camel Blues, but instead crammed into an East London warehouse for the summer gala of Soho Reading Series.
The monthly event, launched by Yale graduate Tom Willis, invites budding writers to read out their work for five minutes apiece, honing their craft before a live audience. It’s the closest London has come to having a bona fide literary ‘scene’ in years, with evenings as raucous as they are instructive. The capital’s beau monde can also be found frequenting the poetry parties of James Massiah, a multidisciplinary artist whose soirées begin as readings and quickly descend into dancing.
People are keeping their phones tucked away and reading books on the Tube again. There’s comfort in the analogue: in 2014, book sales totalled £2.2 billion; last year, they stood at £3.7 billion. There’s always been something alluring about reading in public, a certain cachet, the hint that you’re a thinker. Now, it comes with bravado. A decade ago, people were buying Kindles because they were too embarrassed to be seen reading Fifty Shades of Grey in public. Conversely, today’s commuters proudly brandish their copy of Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses.
The swagger of literary London is back. Earlier this month, Substack — an online platform for independent journalism that reached five million paid subscriptions this March — hosted a garden party near Russell Square intended to evoke the spirit of the Bloomsbury Group, whose members might have swapped writerly notes in the same spot. Fittingly, Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs Dalloway turns 100 this year (you'll find out five minute guide to the book, here): an occasion The Bloomsbury Hotel is marking with a ‘Clarissa Chronicles’ package (from £550 a night). Included is a special edition of the novel, which continues to divide audiences. This magazine’s Editor dubs it ‘one of the most impenetrable in the English language’, much to the displeasure of his own son, who calls it a masterpiece.
La vie en beige
From the words on everyone’s lips to the label on everyone’s hips. As the British Fashion Council decided to skip London Fashion Week this month, allow me to turn your attention to the one presently unfolding in Paris, where superstar designer Jonathan Anderson (Belfast by way of Bond Street) has just presented his hotly anticipated debut collection for Dior.
Yet it’s Carhartt, the American brand of heavy-duty workwear that’s popular with boarding-school alums looking to mask their origins, which is currently enjoying the most hype with the style set. Ballet pumps and marinières are no more: the new uniform in the French capital is one of sandy Detroit jackets and workman’s jeans.
Beige is having a moment in interiors, too: a return to normality after a year of butter yellow and chartreuse. Taupe, the well-known variant that’s somewhere between a grey and a brown, is in again: sales of Lick Paint’s own edition increased by 106% in the past year.
King of the metroplex
The King’s Cross/St Pancras metroplex, one of Britain’s busiest railway hubs, was once a symbol of industrialisation, but wildlife is returning.
The rooftop garden of Google’s Thomas Heatherwick-designed premises at Pancras Square, known as ‘Platform G’ and branded a ‘landscraper’, is believed to house 40,000 tons of soil and 250 trees; now, foxes have joined the fray. One vixen has been spotted on almost every floor. Foxes are famously cunning, but this particular skulk seems especially smart-confirming the academic belief that urban vulpines have evolved to develop a different skull shape.
It is a poetic justice that foxes should end up running amok in Google’s King’s Cross HQ, considering the essential role of railway tunnels in facilitating the animals’ historic journey into the city.
This feature originally appeared in the June 28, 2025, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe
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