With any book we want available online, bookshops are finding new ways to appeal to customers. This one does so with an approach that abandons traditional categories, encouraging discovery with themed sections: ‘dark days’, ‘madonnas, mothers & whores’, ‘enlightenment’. All of which, along with little nooks in which to cosy up, careful lighting and a no phone policy, make it so suited for browsing that some might prefer it to their own home.

The sign over the door with its welcoming cuppa has enticed customers across the threshold for decades, and you can still get a lovely cup of tea here. These days the classic British menu is augmented with home-cooked Thai food, which means you can have liver and bacon or a cheese and pickle roll with a side of tom yum – until 5pm anyway, evenings are Thai only. The exceptional value and BYO policy can make it very busy.

One of central London’s more surprising green spaces, with its Japanese garden, ornamental ponds and strutting peacocks. In recent years British Longhorn cattle have been introduced in the summer months to munch through bracken, bramble and nettles and so create the conditions required for a wildflower meadow.

Home to the Berkley Whipping Horse, a sort of saucy sandwich board that allowed for manual manipulation from the front and a beating from the rear. Its devotees were many, among them ‘mad’ King George IV. The device was designed for Theresa Berkley in 1828, a madam whose clientele was such that letters discovered after her death contained revelations so shocking that they ‘threatened the very fabric of society’. The Horse was later acquired by the Royal Society of Arts, for reasons unknown.

At this flat in May 1973 Lord Lambton, under-secretary of state at the Ministry of Defence, was caught on film smoking marijuana in bed with prostitute Norma Levy. Explaining this indiscretion to MI5, the peer explained that everyone needed an outlet, his being ‘vigorous gardening [and] debauchery.’

For centuries the capital’s gay community was forced to hide in the shadows. In the 18th century the south side of Finsbury Square was known as Sodomite’s Walk and parts of Covent Garden and Holborn were notorious cruising grounds, frequented too by blackmailers. Today London’s most famous gay cruising ground stretches across the west side of Hampstead Heath. By its nature a secretive pastime, George Michael was one outspoken fan of cruising on the Heath: ‘The handful of times a year it’s bloody warm enough, I’ll do it… It’s a much nicer place to get some quick and honest sex than standing in a bar.’