London in summer: the city worth seeing the way locals do, not through a postcard

London in summer is a different city - warmer, calmer, brighter, with long evenings when the parks and streets come alive. For anyone who wants to see the city the way the people who actually live there see it, and not just through the postcard shots, summer is the moment.

The hotel scene stopped being just a place to sleep a long time ago. Broadwick Soho hides speakeasy bars and a secret Italian restaurant, The Standard by St Pancras station shows off its brutalist facade, and The Newman in Fitzrovia, with its art-deco aesthetic, is one of the bigger openings in town. Even if you don't stay there, it is worth stepping in for a drink.

When it comes to eating, the choice is as wide as the city itself - from Spanish flavours at Mountain, to hand-made pasta at Manteca in Shoreditch, to Southeast Asian grill cooking at Kiln. London stopped being a byword for bland food ages ago; today it is one of the most varied food scenes in Europe.

And then there is the culture, which is especially rich in summer. The Victoria & Albert museum is running a retrospective of the fashion house Schiaparelli, while Tate Modern opens a Frida Kahlo exhibition with some thirty major works. Between the legendary Waterstones bookshop, the historic Liberty department store, and the independent cafes, London offers more than you could ever cover in one holiday. Maybe that is exactly why it is a city worth coming back to.