Why does cashmere cost a small fortune? Discover the biology of high-altitude goats, the intense harvesting process, and how to wash your luxury sweater safely.
Lady Wallace's will never forbade lending — that was the trustees' own reading of it, abandoned in 2019 by a Charity Commission order rather than an Act of Parliament. What does bind is a statute of 1992 barring this museum, alone among the national collections, from ever adding or disposing of an object. Hertford House is Grade II; the fountain in front of it is Grade II*.
The portico on Millbank is shut until 2027 and the way in is round the side. Four official names in a hundred and thirty years, Henry Tate's money and what Tate itself has published about it, a Turner bequest that built no almshouses, the flood of 1928, and the restaurant that is now a gallery.
Not a Royal Park but the borough's, and the ruin at its centre was demolished rather than bombed flat. Three Japanese gardens of three different dates, an opera season older than its company, peafowl nobody has counted, and an area no two official sources agree on.
The Science Museum's collections date from 1857 inside the South Kensington Museum and the institution from its formal separation on 26 June 1909. The building is not listed, despite frequent claims otherwise. Stephenson's Rocket left London in 2018 and is now at York, and the Exploring Space gallery closed in 2025.
The Royal Opera House is the third theatre on its Covent Garden site, by E. M. Barry, opened in 1858 after two of its predecessors burned down. The organisation that runs it renamed itself Royal Ballet and Opera in 2024, but the building keeps its name. Since the Open Up works of 2018 anyone can go in without a ticket.
The Victoria and Albert Museum began in 1852 as the Museum of Manufactures. The Great Exhibition's surplus bought the eighty-seven-acre South Kensington estate rather than founding the museum, and the Royal Commission that spent it still owns the land. Victoria named the museum in 1899; Edward VII opened the building in 1909, the same day the science collections became a separate museum.
The Palace of Westminster was rebuilt in Perpendicular Gothic by Charles Barry and A. W. N. Pugin after the fire of 1834, with Westminster Hall of 1097 surviving at its heart. Big Ben is the bell, not the tower. Parliament has narrowed the choice on restoring the building to two options and will not decide between them before 2030.
Vienna stands as one of Europe's most architecturally rich capitals, where centuries of imperial grandeur meet bold artistic innovation. The Austrian capital tells its story through stone and mortar, from the sweeping Baroque facades that once housed emperors to the whimsical contemporary structures that challenge conventional design. Each building serves as a chapter in Vienna's fascinating narrative—one that spans Gothic cathedrals, imperial palaces, and avant-garde housing projects that look like they've sprung from a fairytale.
In a world increasingly driven by conformity, consumerism, and the relentless pursuit of success, the Bohemian lifestyle offers a refreshing alternative.
Three of the best things on Observatory Hill are routinely mis-told. The transit circle is a telescope, not a clock. The time ball has not stopped — it still drops daily at one o'clock, as it has since 1858. And this is not Australia's oldest astronomical centre, a claim the Observatory itself never makes.
