The Elstree–St John’s Wood cable tunnel forms a key part of National Grid’s newly launched North West London Upgrade (NWLU), a programme to increase the amount of electricity that can be carried into London and provide connections for new developments.

As part of the project, engineers will upgrade the existing tunnel and its headhouses before installing a new 400kV cable circuit along its length.

Working in such a long tunnel presents an obvious logistical problem, so contractor Hochtief-Murphy Joint Venture (HMJV) may use the engineers’ monorail inside the tunnel to move people, equipment and materials along the underground route while the upgrade and cable installation work takes place.

At the moment, the final decision hasn’t been taken, and a spokesperson confirmed that they are still “assessing the condition and suitability of the existing infrastructure” as part of their design process, adding that the “exact approach to cable installation, including the use of any existing tunnel infrastructure, will be determined during the design phase.”

Around 60km of new cable infrastructure will be installed inside the tunnel, which stretches from Elstree in Hertfordshire to St John’s Wood in London.

The tunnel was built in the early 2000s and already carries what National Grid says are the longest alternating current (AC) transmission cables in England and Wales. Helpfully for the latest upgrade, it was designed from the outset with enough space for an additional cable circuit to be installed if extra capacity was needed in the future.

That spare capacity will now be put to use.

The tunnel work is part of a much larger upgrade stretching from Sundon substation in Bedfordshire through Elstree and into London. More than 200km of existing overhead line will be upgraded along the 35km Sundon–Elstree route, while substations at Sundon, Elstree and St John’s Wood will also be upgraded.

National Grid will also build a new 132kV gas-insulated switchgear substation at Letchmore Heath, next to the existing Elstree substation to provide connections for five new data centres with a combined electricity demand of around 1GW.

National Grid says the overall programme will strengthen the resilience of electricity supplies while providing additional capacity for homes, businesses and digital infrastructure across North West London and surrounding areas. The company says increasing network capacity should also help reduce electricity constraint costs, which arise when limitations on the transmission network mean cheaper electricity cannot be moved to where it is needed.

Several major contractors have been appointed to carry out the programme. HMJV will be responsible for the tunnel upgrades and cable installation, while Laing O’Rourke will carry out substation works at Letchmore Heath, Elstree and St John’s Wood.

Hyundai Electric will supply and install major electrical equipment, including transformers, and Siemens Energy will provide shunt reactors for the Elstree substation.

The North West London Upgrade joins two other major National Grid projects in the capital — London Power Tunnels 2 and the North London Reinforcement scheme — as the electricity network is expanded to cope with rising demand.

However, during November, weekday access to the house will be a little different, with general opening replaced by a series of conservation tours.

The quieter period gives staff and volunteers an opportunity to carry out important conservation work on Ham House’s historic interiors before the festive season begins. But while the building is half-closed for conservation work, they offer guided tours to see what’s going on.

The 50-minute guided tours will take visitors through some of the house’s most spectacular rooms, with a chance to see conservation work taking place and learn how the National Trust looks after the historic building and the objects inside it.

The weekday tours run hourly from 11:30am to 2:30pm and are included with the usual admission price to Ham House and gardens.

Prices and opening hours here.

Note: the tours are subject to volunteer availability.

No advance booking as you book tickets at Visitor Welcome on the day of your visit, first come, first served. The site opens at 10am daily.

Conservation tour details are here.

If you’d like to explore the house at your own pace in November, they recommend visiting on a weekend when normal open days will take place.

The whole site is closed on Thursday 26th and Friday 27th November, reopening on 28th November decorated for Christmas.

Now, a small exhibition at the Jewish Museum London’s temporary home inside JW3 tells the story of the catering empire – although largely from the point of view of the Gluckstein and Salmon families who controlled it for most of its existence.

The origins of J. Lyons & Co lie not in tea and cakes, but in tobacco.

Brothers Isidore and Montague Gluckstein, together with their brother-in-law Barnett Salmon, ran the successful Salmon & Gluckstein chain of tobacconists. In the 1880s, Montague spotted an opportunity in catering for the huge exhibitions then attracting Victorian crowds.

However, a slight problem remained.

The family considered catering rather beneath them and didn’t want the respectable Salmon & Gluckstein name associated with it. So they brought in a distant relative, Joseph Lyons, and used his name instead.

Not an auspicious start to a firm that would go on to dominate the high street.

The new business started by catering at exhibitions in 1887 with the first Lyons teashop on Piccadilly in 1894, growing into a nationwide chain of tea shops, restaurants and vast Corner Houses, as well as hotels and a substantial food-manufacturing business.

At its height, Lyons was one of Britain’s biggest catering companies and helped change the way people ate out, offering comparatively inexpensive meals in respectable surroundings at a time when the alternatives were often either pubs or much more expensive restaurants.

The exhibition focuses mainly on the less familiar Gluckstein and Salmon side of the story, exploring family relationships and how successive generations kept a tight grip on the company.

Most of the exhibition consists of display boards, photographs and family material. The storyline jumps around a little when it gets into the family’s tobacco interests, but it doesn’t ignore the less comfortable parts of that trade, including connections with slavery.

Inevitably, though, it’s the Lyons tea shops that provide much of the visual interest.

Plenty of photographs show their interiors and staff, including the famous waitresses known as “Nippies”. One particularly remarkable wartime photograph shows Nippies being trained to fire guns on the roof of a Lyons building during the Second World War – probably not part of the normal waitress training programme.

Lyons was also unusually keen on technology and experimentation. That ranged from innovations in mass catering and advertising to rather more unexpected inventions.

A film clip in the exhibition shows an early automatic door developed so that waitresses carrying trays of food didn’t have to push doors open.

More significantly, Lyons entered the computer business.

Faced with the enormous administrative task of running its empire, the company developed LEO — the Lyons Electronic Office — based on technology pioneered at Cambridge University. Their new computer first ran a business application in 1951 and was used for jobs including bakery calculations and, later, payroll and other administrative work. Lyons subsequently built computers for other companies, creating one of the more improbable sidelines in the history of British catering.

The company’s appetite for new ideas eventually extended to fast food. Lyons brought Wimpy to Britain in the 1950s, opening the first British Wimpy restaurant long before McDonald’s opened its first UK branch in 1974.

Away from tea and technology, the exhibition also follows members of the family into public life. Several became councillors, mayors or MPs, including Sir Isidore Salmon, who combined senior roles at Lyons with a political career. He also used the company’s commercial clout against fascism. In 1934 he threatened to withdraw Lyons advertising from the Daily Mail unless Lord Rothermere ended the newspaper’s support for Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists.

That sits alongside the exhibition’s account of the antisemitism faced by the family, particularly during the Second World War, despite their support for the British war effort.

Eventually, however, the sprawling Lyons empire began to lose its way. The tea shops that had once seemed modern increasingly looked old-fashioned as eating habits changed, while the company had expanded into an unwieldy collection of businesses. Its fortunes deteriorated during the 1960s and 1970s, and the empire was subsequently broken up by the 1980s.

Today, all that’s left are a few familiar brands on the shelves of supermarkets.

But there’s also now a small exhibition.

The exhibition, The Story of the Jewish Family who founded J Lyons and fed Britain, is at JW3 on Finchley Road until 15th November 2026.

Entry is free, and it’s open Sun to Thur from 12pm to 7pm.

Details here.

JW3 is a short walk from Finchley Road tube station (Jubilee/Met) or Finchley Road and Frognal station (London Overground Mildmay line).

The new SL12 will enter service on Saturday 5th September, operated by new electric buses, fitted with air conditioning, improved real-time passenger information and charging points at the seats.

To mark the launch, Transport for London (TfL) says travel on the SL12 will be free for pay-as-you-go passengers for its first week of operation.

The SL12 will run from around 5:30am until 12:30am every day. During the daytime, buses will operate every 12 minutes from Monday to Saturday, dropping to every 15 minutes in the evenings and throughout Sunday.

The arrival of the SL12 will require some changes to bus stops used by routes 86, 498 and the N86 in Romford town centre to make it easier for passengers to interchange between services.

The new route is the latest expansion of the Superloop network, which was launched in July 2023 as a collection of limited-stop orbital bus routes intended to provide faster journeys between outer London town centres and transport hubs.

TfL says more than 81 million journeys have now been made on Superloop services. Figures from December 2025 showed passenger numbers on corridors served by Superloop routes, including parallel conventional bus routes, had increased by an average of 12 percent more than the London bus network as a whole.

The SL12 won’t be the last addition to the network.

Two more routes, the SL14 between Stratford and Chingford Hatch and the SL15 between Clapham Junction and Eltham, are due to start running during 2027. TfL is also considering consultation responses for the proposed SL13 between Ealing Broadway and Hendon.

Meanwhile, TfL is increasing frequencies on the SL9 between Heathrow and Harrow and gradually introducing more electric buses to the Superloop network. Electric buses have already arrived on the SL2, are being rolled out on the SL7 between Heathrow and West Croydon, and are planned for the SL11 between Abbey Wood and North Greenwich later this year.

Riley, Buster and Flo have joined the team at Britain’s busiest railway station, where they are carrying out regular security patrols as part of a three-month trial.

Riley, aged 11, and Buster, aged nine, are Cocker Spaniels, while ten-year-old Flo is a Labrador. All three are experienced security dogs, and Waterloo will be their final posting before they retire.

The dogs began patrolling the station this month, making London Waterloo the first major railway station in Britain to introduce dogs as part of a regular security programme.

South Western Railway (SWR) and Network Rail Wessex stress that the new patrols are not in response to any increased security threat. Instead, the dogs are intended to provide a visible deterrent while offering some extra reassurance to passengers and station staff.

And, judging by the inevitable attention three spaniels and Labradors attract in a busy railway station, they are also considerably more noticeable than the average security measure.

Dan Harrison, Station Manager for South Western Railway and Network Rail Wessex at London Waterloo, said: “Deploying these dogs is not linked to any increased threat. it’s simply part of providing more visual deterrence and offering our customers some additional reassurance. “

The three dogs are being supplied by Alpha Canine Specialists, which provides trained security dogs for public and private organisations.

Their arrival is part of a wider series of security and safeguarding measures at Waterloo and across the SWR network. These include body-worn cameras for staff, an ongoing renewal of CCTV and funding for a South Bank BID outreach worker who works with vulnerable young people around the station.

SWR has received maximum marks in the British Transport Police’s Safeguarding on Rail Scheme accreditation for the past three years.

And although famously minus the willies, the Reading one is actually a bit longer than the original because it includes the missing last panel. And although a “mere” replica, it’s still utterly compelling to visit and walk the long, oh so very long, length and read one of the most important stories in English history.

The idea of creating a British copy came from Elizabeth Wardle, an embroiderer and member of the Leek Embroidery Society in Staffordshire. Her husband, Thomas Wardle, was a prominent silk manufacturer and dyer, and the couple were closely involved in the Victorian revival of historic embroidery and textile crafts.

In 1885, Elizabeth visited Bayeux to study the original tapestry. She decided that a full-size reproduction should be made so that, as she put it, “England should have a copy of its own.”

Although universally called a tapestry, both the medieval original and the Reading copy are technically embroideries, with coloured wool stitched onto linen rather than an image being woven into the cloth.

But only the pedants complain about that – to all sensible people, it’s the Bayeux Tapestry.

Creating a copy of something around 70 metres long was no small undertaking. Thirty-five women took part, mainly members of the Leek Embroidery Society, although embroiderers from Derbyshire, Birmingham, Macclesfield and London were also involved. Thomas Wardle supplied woollen yarns dyed to resemble those used in the medieval original.

The embroiderers worked partly from their study of the original and partly from a set of hand-coloured photographs made in 1872–74 and held by the South Kensington Museum, now the V&A. Each woman stitched her name beneath the section she worked on, creating an additional blue lower border that distinguishes the Victorian copy from the original.

Remarkably, the entire project took little more than a year. Elizabeth Wardle added a final inscription recording the work of the women when the replica was completed by Whitsuntide (the seventh Sunday after Easter) in 1886.

There is, however, one particularly amusing difference between Reading’s version and the medieval original.

The Bayeux Tapestry contains several naked figures in its borders, but one man in the Victorian replica has acquired a pair of pants. It is often claimed that the supposedly prudish Victorian women of Leek added them, but that isn’t what happened. The women faithfully copied the photographs supplied by the South Kensington Museum — whose male staff had already discreetly covered the offending anatomy.

A travelling tapestry

The completed replica was first displayed at the Nicholson Institute in Leek in June 1886 and then went on tour.

Over the following years it was exhibited in towns and cities around Britain and travelled overseas, including visits to Germany and the United States. Its travelling days would continue intermittently for decades, with the tapestry eventually being exhibited as far afield as South Africa. It was even taken to Windsor Castle for Queen Victoria to see.

The replica arrived in Reading in 1895, when it was exhibited in the Town Hall.

A permanent home

Alderman Arthur Hill, a former Mayor of Reading and local benefactor, then offered to buy the tapestry and presented it to Reading as a gift. This was suitable, as Reading has an indirect connection to the story as William the Conqueror’s son, Henry I, founded Reading Abbey in 1121 and was buried there after his death in 1135.

When Reading Museum’s new Art Gallery opened in 1897, the Bayeux replica became one of its first exhibits. Unlike today’s display, the enormous embroidery hung high around the gallery walls, where it remained until 1927, after which it went on occasional tours again. Its modern home dates from 1993, when Reading Museum created a dedicated Bayeux Gallery.

Visiting

The tapestry is in the Reading Museum, and is free to visit, so just head in and up the stairs, and if you’ve never seen it before, you might let out a bit of a blimey – at how very long it is as it curves around all four sides of the large room. It’s one of those moments where you get a hint of how impressive the original must have been when it was first created.

It also hints at how remarkable it will be when the original goes on display at the British Museum, laid out completely flat for the first time. You probably won’t be able to see the far end when you walk into the room!

Walking around, it’s really fascinating how captivating it is to look at – even though it’s only a replica, the story and the embroidery are truly interesting to look at and absorbing. It’s a story we all know, but maybe less than we realise, and the tapestry tells a good yarn filled with politics, arrests, brotherly vows, revenge, doomsaying, and climaxing in a good old battle.

It’s so very Game of Thrones – minus season eight.

Obviously, you’ll want to see that contested moment where Harold might have been killed by an arrow, and find the man with the willy. A few things I like are how Harold is seen early on holding a hawk as a symbol of being the King, and later it’s William holding the hawk – a symbolic transfer of power.

Keep an eye out for the riders, with their hair swept back in the wind – a nice subtle detail – or the representation of Westminster Abbey, with the hand of God pointing to it. There’s the amusing religious clause that forbade Bishops from killing people with a sword, so Bishop Odo is shown wielding a club instead to get around that inconvenient ban on killing people.

A visit to Reading Museum is also a good way to get even more excited than you might already be about the opening of the actual Bayeux Tapestry exhibition next month.

If you haven’t got tickets – or don’t expect to get them when more are released in October and January, then a visit to Reading Museum is genuinely a good consolation prize. It may lack the miasma of history that comes from an authentic relic, but it’s so well made that you can almost forget it’s a replica and still bask in the monumental day that changed England forever.

But the Reading Museum has something extra – the missing last panel. The original was lost long ago, but enough written information remains for modern artist Jan Messent to recreate an impression of what it might have looked like.

And finally, you see the conquering hero enthroned HIC RESIDET WILLIAM REX ANGLORUM.

Visiting Reading Museum’s Bayeux Tapestry

Reading Museum is free to visit and open Tuesday to Saturday, but note that the tapestry room is often closed for tours and schools – so check their calendar for the closures and time your visit around that.

Guided tours are available as well, but sell out well in advance, especially at the moment.

All the visiting details are here.

While in Reading and wanting to stick with Normans, the ruined Abbey founded by William’s son is very much worth the 10-minute walk from the museum. Other non-Norman things are also worth visiting if spending a day there.

Reading is just 25 minutes by fast train from Paddington, and the museum is about a 10-minute walk from the station.

The museum tells the story of the ‘Secret Listeners’ – the intelligence operators hidden in the basement of Trent Park House – whose wartime eavesdropping on senior German prisoners of war led to some of the most important intelligence breakthroughs of WWII.

Since it opened, the museum says its visitors have come from all across the UK and as far afield as Belgium, Sweden, the USA, and even New Zealand.

They’ve also now announced that they will be joining the Art Fund National Art Pass, where members get a 50% discount on entry.

Adult entry is usually £14, so £7 for holders of the National Art Pass.

Museums Association and ICOM members also get free admission.

The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10.00am to 5.00pm, and you can either book tickets in advance, or buy on the day.

Details here.

Note: the museum is about a 20-minute walk from Cockfosters or Oakwood tube stations – Oakwood is usually easier as it has more trains calling there.

Passengers planning to travel on the Overground between Bethnal Green and Cheshunt/Enfield Town on the Weaver line, or on Greater Anglia services via Seven Sisters, on the weekends of 19th and 20th September and 26th and 27th September 2026 are being encouraged to check before they travel and to leave extra time to complete their journeys.

During the closure, Network Rail will be carrying out extensive overhead line renewals including replacing ageing wires, structures and concrete bases, reducing the risk of future faults and disruption.

They will also replace sections of worn-out track between Turkey Street and Theobalds Grove, and repair the Cadent gas pipe bridge at Stoke Newington, using the railway closure to complete the work and avoid further disruption.

They will also carry out some preparation work for future platform improvements at Seven Sisters station.

Travel arrangements for London Overground passengers

London Overground services will not run between Bethnal Green and Cheshunt/Enfield Town on the affected weekends. All stations in between these locations will also be closed.  Rail replacement bus services will be in operation during these closures.

Passengers travelling between Bethnal Green and Cheshunt will be able to change at Hackney Downs and use a Greater Anglia service to/from Cheshunt via Tottenham Hale.

Travel arrangements for Greater Anglia passengers

Greater Anglia services that normally operate via Seven Sisters will be diverted via Tottenham Hale on Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th September and Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th September.

Football travel

Passengers travelling to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the Tottenham Hotspur v Aston Villa fixture on Saturday 19th September or the BIGBANG concert on Saturday 26th September are encouraged to plan ahead and check before travelling, allowing extra time for their journeys.

The site features over 100km of archival storage and a conservation studio, which the tours will take visitors around. Visitors will also have time to ask questions of the staff who work there.

Following the tour, there will be a special display of historic documents from the medieval city, Tudor and Stuart governance and disaster, Victorian crime and health care, and the effects of two World Wars on the capital.

The tours are available on 7th October, 4th November, 2nd December 2026 and tickets are available here.

Conservation tours

There are also tours of the conservation studios available, offering an opportunity to understand the work of the conservators as they preserve the documents for generations to come.

Those tours take place on 22nd October and 19th November 2026 and tickets are available here.

Getting to the London Archives

The archive building is a short walk from Farringdon station, or the 63 bus (from King’s Cross) stops nearby.

It won’t be a conventional exhibition, but a walking trail, with the costumes dropped around the museum. It’s an idea the museum has been experimenting with in recent years, including its Taylor Swift trail in 2024.

Spanning the 1970s and 1980s, the costumes chart the development of Mercury’s famously theatrical stage persona, from Queen’s early concerts through to the huge arena performances of the band’s later years.

Each costume will be displayed alongside objects and interiors intended to complement aspects of Mercury’s interest in art, design and fashion. Also, specially made mannequins will be posed to recreate some of Mercury’s energetic stage presence, while several of the installations will also use sound, lighting and theatrical set dressing.

Among the earliest outfits is a monochrome costume Mercury wore for an early Queen concert at Imperial College, later featured on the cover of the band’s debut album in 1973.

Also going on display is the distinctive “Mercury Wing” catsuit, designed by Wendy de Smet and worn during Queen’s A Night at the Opera tour in 1975-76. The costume also appeared in the video for Bohemian Rhapsody, helping to create one of Mercury’s most recognisable early looks.

At the other end of his career with Queen will be his signature crown and cloak, designed by Diana Moseley and worn during the 1986 Magic Tour. Mercury wore them during the tour that included his final stage appearance with Queen at Knebworth in August 1986.

Kate Bailey, Senior Curator of Theatre and Performance at the V&A, said: “We are thrilled to display Freddie’s most iconic costumes at the V&A, celebrating one of greatest performers and songwriters of all time. Reflecting his love of ‘splendid things’ and his passion for art, design and fashion, Freddie will be very at home in the V&A galleries.”

The “exhibition”, Freddie Mercury | Splendid Things opens at the V&A South Kensington on 24th October 2026 and will be free to visit.