Playboy on the Town in London

In the 200 Years since Dr. Johnson first noted that when a man is tired of London he is tired of life, this astonishing, swinging metropolis has amassed even greater evidence to affirm the erudite doctor's perception. To the foot-loose young bachelor on the move, London offers more of the best and less of the worst in virtually every pursuit and diversion known to civilized man. Understandably, contemporary London has been written about, photographed, filmed, televised, analyzed and almost inundated in a flood of phraseology such as switched on, with it, fab, gear and super. But great cities aren't summed up in a phrase; the enigma of London has challenged the descriptive powers of observers all the way back to the days of Caesar. Spenser, Pepys, Boswell, Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton, even Winston Churchill, have attempted, with varying success, to define London's uniqueness--but the protean city on the Thames persists in presenting as many faces as there are artists to limn them.

The personality of London today suggests urban schizophrenia that has some-how come to terms with itself. While its nocturnal turbulence sounds the upbeat staccato of a major city (text continued on page 160)London(continued from page 151) on the move, the diurnal mood of London's green and wooded parks bespeaks a contemplative serenity far from the madding noise of traffic and the electronic distractions of the 20th Century. Besides being the third largest city in the world, the capital of England and the focal point of a battered-but-unbowed Commonwealth that still stretches from Sydney to Saskatoon, this cosmopolitan, sprawling city is a nation unto itself. Saxon ruins, Roman walls, Norman fortresses, Gothic armories, Elizabethan pubs, Tudor mansions, Renaissance cathedrals, Regency town houses, Georgian mews, Victorian office buildings, Danish-modern apartments and chrome-and-plastic luncheonettes combine to encapsulate London's 1900-year history in architectural microcosm.

London is a man's city, designed by men. Not surprisingly, London is also a city of startling and constant contrast. Stainless-steel skyscrapers cast their shadows across slate roofs that were old when they survived the Great Fire in 1666; a column of mounted cavalry, wearing the plumes and breastplates of the Life Guards, trots past a brace of miniskirted secretaries out for a lunchtime stroll; and a brewer's dray loaded with barrels of draught ale and manned by a Micaw-beresque carter straight out of Dickens waits for a light next to a gun-metal Aston Martin DB6, wherein a sleek blonde deb adjusts a nylon before roaring down the Mall to meet her date in Knights-bridge.

While the London of 1966 still preserves much of its archetypal pomp, less venerable elements have transformed the circumstance. Probably the single most important change since World War Two has been the breakdown of class prejudice, the results of which Edwardians would wince to contemplate. No longer does the workingman snap to mental attention at the nearby neighing of an upper-class accent; the bumbling forelock tugger who stood at the gates of the family estate while master rode off to hounds has long since gone the way of the Druids, along with master himself.

Happily, the London that has emerged from this slow shakedown of custom and precedent is a city full of bounce, bawdiness and birds--as the Londoner is apt to call the more youthfully eager members of the fair sex. In London there are more birds on the ground than in the trees: saucy-hipped, leggy creatures of infinite warmth, whether it be between dances on the discothèque floor or between drinks at your London digs. "She's not dead, she's English," was once the Procrustean punch line to half a dozen medieval saws describing the legendary immobility of the beleaguered British bedmate; it no longer applies, if in fact it ever did: Sexual dalliance in today's London demands not vivification but downright stamina. Like they say, London swings, and so do its birds.

The city's climate is a blend of misty mornings and the darkling damp, so pack warm clothes; but if you plan to fly, travel light--because you'd be foolish not to bring back some of those finely tailored London togs. Unless you expect to attend a masquerade party, avoid polka-dot bell-bottoms, Beatle hats and boots with Cuban heels. The cut of a good American suit is as much admired (and diligently emulated) by sartorial savants in London today as the extreme Mod wardrobe was a year ago. The way-out fashion look exploited by a handful of young British businessmen along Carnaby Street (you may have heard of that thoroughfare by now) is giving way to a fad that began a decade ago in the city's hipper art schools: a vintage-ish look, combining the best elements of early George Raft and Regency run amuck. Take a raincoat--and never scorn the umbrella. Apart from its more mundane function, a "brolly" often provides pleasant introductions: Many a lightly clad lass, snared by a sudden shower, has found sanctuary under a stranger's bumbershoot.

For American citizens, entry into Britain requires minimal paperwork--a valid passport and a round-trip ticket. You'll need the usual smallpox vaccination certificate to re-enter the U.S. If you go by sea and find you've forgotten your certificate, the ship's doctor will give you a free shot. In our view, ocean travel on a British vessel affords a welcome preview of the delights to follow. The tradition of amatory adventure on the high seas is no fiction, for within the compact but isolated limbo of an ocean voyage, shy girls become bold, icy types melt and teasers stop kidding. For the male as yet uninitiated in the joys of shipboard life, we recommend this route above all others. Many lines, incidentally, offer special round-trip rates combining sea and air--a leisurely, introductory get-there, and a prolongation of your sojourn to the last moment before you jet home in a matter of hours, picking up clock time as you wing westward. The crossing from New York to Southampton takes only five days on the bigger liners, a few more on the smaller (and often livelier) ones. Round-trip fares start around $500 tourist and $800 first-class. And Southampton is just under two hours' train ride from London's Waterloo Station.

If your itinerary is too tight for a lazy ocean voyage, jets make the crossing in just over six and a half hours. Twenty-one-day round-trip fares start at $300 from New York, $375 from Chicago and $590 from San Francisco. First-class is $713, $817 and $1034, respectively. The route is served by all major carriers, including Alitalia, Pan Am, TWA, BOAC and Air India. We've flown all of them, and the service is negligibly variable and generally excellent, although the smaller carriers tend to pamper their passengers slightly more than the larger ones.

Weather permitting, your first glimpse of England from the air will be the farmland of Cornwall and Devonshire, a checkerboard of soft green pasture and deep brown crop soil that has been tilled in some areas for more than a millennium. London lies only 290 miles to the northeast. Soon after your jet has touched down, you'll be driven from the plane to Customs in a bus.

While you are clearing Customs, you will be asked whether you are carrying more than the permitted maximum of 400 cigarettes, one fifth of liquor and one bottle of wine (duty is payable on excess quantities). Once you have collected your luggage, you may either take the airlines bus to a city terminal or ride in by taxi. Or you may rent a car from any of the major agencies in the transatlantic arrivals building. (Remember that unless you specify otherwise, you'll probably get a floor shift, four-forward-and-one-back gearbox.) Rates begin as low as $35 a week (unlimited mileage) on Mini-Minors and rise to $126 a week unlimited for a Jaguar Mark X. Summer rates are higher, but discounts are generally offered on extended rentals. If you have reserved accommodations at one of London's more prestigious hotels, and should you not be driving yourself, you should make a quick check outside the Customs hall to see if the hotel has sent a uniformed chauffeur to meet you. He can be identified by the braided lettering on his cap--or by a discreet lapel insignia.

If you've picked up a rental car at the airport, you'll notice that London drivers seldom use the horn (they indicate a desire to pass by flashing their lights) and that cryptic hand signals supplement turn indicators and brake lights. The English drive on the "wrong" side, of course, but if you're coming in from the airport, the first ten miles are on divided expressways; you'll probably be accustomed to right-hand drive and left-hand lanes by the time you've reached the center of London.

There are 35,000 hotel rooms available in London, but many of them fall far short of American standards and are not recommended to those accustomed to running hot water, private bathrooms, central heating and dry walls. Conventions, trade exhibitions, reunions of one kind or another and the perpetual attraction (continued on page 316)London(continued from page 160) of the city itself put a constant premium on better-class hotel space; so if you arrive without a reservation, you could spend valuable hours searching out acceptable digs. The government-run London Hotels Information Service, at 88 Brook. Street in Mayfair, might well spare you the ordeal.

Hotel staffs expect to be tipped if there is no service charge included in the price of accommodations--and lightly tipped if there is. Give 2/6 (half a crown) to the boy who brings your luggage up to your room. Get the hall porter on your side with a ten-dollar note for a stay of a week or two (hall porters like ten-dollar notes), but make sure it is the head hall porter before you let go. Despite his lowly title, he'll fix your theater seats, make your travel reservations, arrange car rental, guest memberships in clubs, restaurant bookings, etc.

The most exclusive hotel in London is still Claridge's, which began as a group of private houses some 125 years ago and, though rebuilt around the turn of the century, preserves all the hushed, elegant refinement of an Edwardian town house, staffed with liveried footmen and entirely committed to the faultless pampering of its guests. The Duke of Windsor stays there on his rare and poignant visits to his former capital, and Stavros Niarchos maintains a permanent residence in the seventh-floor penthouse. It is perhaps the only hotel in the world employing a press officer to keep its name out of the news. Rates start at $25 single, $35 double--and spiral to around $200 a day for the best of the best.

Grosvenor House is a deluxe hotel in the grand manner, with an efficient, unhurried air and a dignified and superbly comfortable style. Singles start at $17, doubles at $27. Three streets east is the Connaught, veddy English in its appointments, relentless in its dedication to service and massively Edwardian in every other respect. No two of its 100 rooms are furnished alike. Rates start at $20 single, $26 double.

Toward the Thames is the Savoy, large and plush, and although part of the same group as Claridge's, a shade less sedate. The staff is efficient and genuinely courteous, and the service combines the best of traditional diligence with the most up-to-date innovations of hostelry. Sensational views of the Thames, and proximity to theaters, shopping, restaurants and night spots combine to make the Savoy one of London's finest hotels, and possibly--as not a few authorities insist--the finest anywhere. Singles start at $17, doubles at $29.

Among the more recent additions to London's hotelscape is the Hilton, a 30-story, 510-room giant with rates beginning at $20 single and $35 double. The Hilton offers such American amenities as air conditioning throughout, TV and running ice water in every room; yet--by London standards--the service is a shade impersonal and the reception desk could stand a touch of organization. However, the Hilton offers first-class rooftop dining, highly recommended for gastronauts, and off the main foyer is The 007 Room, an intimate niche for Bondsmen with a yen for a martini, Stateside-style. Just up Park Lane from the Hilton is the Dorchester, much favored by visiting Hollywoodites for its luxury, efficient service and close attention to minutiae. Singles begin at $20, doubles at $29. Other recommended hotels in the vicinity are the Ritz, noted for its crystal-and-marble decor and the ultimate in baroque bedrooms--with brass beds and French silk coverlets; the Westbury, an American establishment owned by the Knott chain; and the Berkeley, a fashionable, traditional London landmark. Rates at all three start at around $15 single and $24 double. The Hyde Park Hotel is in Knightsbridge surrounded by department stores and smart shops. This is a hotel in the grand tradition, comfortably old-fashioned, and expensive--singles around $17, doubles $23.

Beyond the fringe of London's deluxe hotels can be found many others that provide first-rate service, convenient locations, scrupulous cleanliness and moderate tariffs. Under this heading we would include the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, a new skyscraper with expansive picture windows and enclosed balconies overlooking Kensington Gardens, TV in every room, faultless plumbing, a magnificent bar, a 24-hour coffeeshop (a rarity in London) and a huge underground garage. Singles here start at $12, doubles at $20.

The Strand Palace gets our nod for its brisk efficiency and prime location--in the Strand, across the street from the Savoy. Public rooms are modern, dining rooms comfortable. Singles with bath start at $8.50, doubles at $14.50. In the same price-and-comfort bracket are the Charing Cross Hotel in the Strand, the Green Park just off Piccadilly and the Royal Court in Sloane Square. The Regent Palace, which faces Piccadilly Circus, is close to Soho, the theater district, and the glitter and glare of London after hours. Its principal virtues are its location and its prices, which start at $7 single and $10.50 double; though it is England's--and Europe's--largest hotel (1148 rooms), it has no private baths. For those whose wallets are well padded, sumptuous suites are available at all the better hotels.

Once settled in your room, and with your clothes put away by an obliging chambermaid, you will be ready to assail the multifold diversions that swinging London has to offer. Some seasoned air travelers choose to spend their first day in the vicinity of their hotel, adjusting to the five-hour transatlantic time advance. Our habit is to plunge right into the life of the city the moment we arrive.

For most Americans, learning London's layout can be as delightful as it is confusing; the streets were planned before grids were invented, and one feels that even if the system had been known, the British wouldn't have used it. The results are tiny alleys, narrow, bending lanes, unexpected courtyards, broad promenades, tree-lined avenues, traffic circles, squares, mews--and all forms of streets, crescents and terraces. If you plan to drive extensively in town, pick up a Geographers' A to Z Atlas of London and Suburbs, minisized and available at most bookstores.

London, Disraeli observed, "is a nation, not a city, with a population greater than some kingdoms, and districts as different as if they were under different governments and spoke different languages." While Chelsea and Hampstead are no longer inhabited by impoverished artists--and houses that once fetched $6000 there now bring $160,000 or more--most of London seems unchanged since the time of Disraeli, or long before. The financial district, that section of London which retains some of England's most ancient memories, is still referred to simply as "The City." Its establishment credentials include the Bank of England, Lloyd's of London, the Stock Exchange and headquarters for most of the nation's financial, shipping and insurance corporations. At night it is as empty as Wall Street, but for five days a week The City swarms with hurrying clerks, with Exchange functionaries resplendent in silk hats, morning coats and striped pants, and with secretaries and messengers queuing at bus stops. If you find yourself in The City on business, you can enjoy an excellent lunch at Ye Olde Dr. Butler's Head, in Coleman Street, which has been nourishing London businessmen since 1616. A short walk to Aldgate High Street will bring you to the Hoop and Grapes--which has been licensed to provide provender and liquor since about the year 1200. The Bank of England's exterior certainly looks no less imposing than it did in the salad days of the British economy and, at night, a detachment of British Guardsmen (the only state troops permitted into The City with bayonets fixed) still tramps dutifully through the Old Lady's lofty halls and corridors.

West of The City is Mayfair, an aristocratic rectangle bounded by Park Lane, Oxford Street, Regent Street and Piccadilly. Here is the American Embassy, as well as the most luxurious hotels, the plusher casinos, the finest stores and a few of the wilder discothèques. Here, too, is the London Playboy Club--about which a good deal more later. Mayfair was not always the patrician protectorate it is today. "I never in my life saw such a number of lazy-look'd rascals, and so hateful a throng of beggarly, sluttish strumpets, who were a scandal to the Creation, mere antidotes against lechery, and enemies to cleanliness," opined Ned Ward, an 18th Century observer of Mayfair's Shepherd Market. Until very recent years, Shepherd Market was a thriving strong-hold for prosties. Oxford Street, which lies along Mayfair's northern flank, is the home of Selfridges, the biggest department store in London.

East of Mayfair is Soho, famed for nonstop revelry as well as first-rank dining, and one of the few areas in London laid out in grid form. A stroll through its short, charming streets--illuminated at dusk by a kaleidoscope of neon--will pleasantly assail the nostrils with myriad aromas of Soho's varied cuisine: garlic, curries, spices, bean sprouts in peanut oil, bouillabaisse and every now and then, as a pub door swings open onto the street, a heady whiff of draught ale.

In and around Soho you can find dozens of restaurants specializing in Italian, French and Indian dishes--and a scattering of authentic Greek and Turkish cuisines. The Trattoria Terrazza, in Romilly Street, is bustling, noisy and cheerful, and serves what is probably the best Italian food in London. Try their specialty, pollo sorpresa. The best Cantonese restaurants are in East Stepney, outside the nine square miles that constitute London's night-life circuit. The two finest Lucullan pagodas are the New Friends and--the best, we think--the Good Friends. If you call Mr. Cheung at EAS 5541, he will prepare one of the finest Cantonese meals served anywhere--including China. (Bring your own beverages.)

Persistent but unfaithful tradition has it that roast beef is the staff of British life. In fact, there are fewer than ten restaurants in the entire city that serve roast beef in what culinary experts would agree is the grand manner. One of them is Simpson's, in the Strand, which looks from the outside as though its builders had intended to disguise its function as a restaurant. Inside, the ground floor is studded with high-backed, pewlike booths. When the management proposed to dismantle them around 1882, Simpson's customers threatened a boycott. The pews still stand. The waiters are all elderly gentlemen assisted by younger apprentices. Carvers move up and down the aisles, wheeling huge silver domes under which repose succulent roasts of beef. One will ask you how you want your portion carved and which part you want--the same questions carvers have been asking Simpson's patrons for 117 years. Give him two shillings before he starts carving. Should you prefer to forgo the beef and branch out into other avenues of English cuisine, order the steak, kidney, mushroom and oyster pudding, a palate-piquing dish unknown to most Americans; or try the jugged hare, steeped in port or claret, cooked for hours in a cloak of mushrooms, clover, apple slices, shallots, citrus and spices. On your second visit, order the saddle of mutton or the haunch of venison. Washed down with a tankard of best Bass or with any of the wines from Simpson's extensive list, capped with a glass of 30-year-old port after coffee, any of the above banquets will give the lie to myths about English cooking.

Several of the city's better hotels house superior restaurants. The Carlton Tower, in Cadogan Place, is a modern, 18-story hostelry, the smartest stopover spot in the excellent shopping district of Knightsbridge. (Harrods, London's most exclusive department store, is a few minutes' stroll away.) The Rib Room in the Carlton Tower dispenses giant slabs of roast beef that are easily a match for Simpson's, but the atmosphere is distinctly Manhattanesque, which may or may not be your cup of tea. The Savoy Grill and Connaught Grill are two more hotel-based restaurants among the best in all of London.

The famous House of Rothschild in Hamilton Place, Mayfair, is now the home of Les Ambassadeurs; appropriately expensive provender is proffered here, and in the summer, diners may sit in the terraced garden. Tiberio, also in May-fair, serves up top Italian offerings. For dining after the opera at Covent Garden, there's Boulestin, in Southampton Street, adjacent to the flower and vegetable market. Prices are moderate and the cuisine is pure French. London probably serves up the best Indian fare to be found in the West, and a visit to Jamshid, Glendower Place or Veeraswamy's, off Regent Street, will attest to this. For exquisite Greek food and a charming menu and atmosphere, try the White Tower, north of Soho on Percy Street. Everything on the helpfully descriptive menu is superb, and the wine list seems inexhaustible. Rules, just off the Strand in Maiden Lane, is similar to Simpson's and is decorated with old playbills and photographs, a reminder that Drury Lane, a name renowned in London theatrical history, lies just a few blocks away. At Wolfe's, located in Kensington's Abingdon Road, you can feast on fine French viands and order wine that dates back 50 years, while at Wilton's, in St. James's, Brobdingnagian portions of grouse and salmon await the in-season epicure.

In the elegant purlieus of South Kensington you will find Emberson's wine bar, in Pelham Street. The lunchtime buffet boasts ham, tongue, roast turkey, capon, sirloin and shellfish, all served cold and fresh with a heady variety of sauces. Sheekey's is a small seafood house in a courtyard behind Leicester Square next to the New Theater. The clientele is theatrical and the menu offers the finest fish in London. The most individual cooking in town is at R. Parkes, an intimate basement restaurant at 4 Beauchamp Place, on the fringe of Belgravia. (Not incidentally, Beauchamp Place is one of the best little shopping streets in London.) Prices at Parkes are a little steeper than elsewhere, but for a five-course meal that costs nine dollars you may be served Charentais melon stuffed with fresh limes; quenelles of sole served with truffles, and a purée of celeriac and artichokes steeped in Pernod; and duck, boned and stuffed with forcemeat, wrapped in puff pastry, glazed and served with sour cherries.

Farther east, in Whitechapel, is Bloom's, where Sophie Tucker ate her first portion of chopped herring, and where good Jewish cooking is abundant. The service is homey, and if you're thirsty the pub next door will send over drinks. Sandwich delicatessens abound off nearby Shaftesbury Avenue, and if you find yourself in Piccadilly, make your way to the southeast corner of Shaftesbury Avenue, where you will find the kind of sandwichry for which London is famous: unobtrusive, diminutive and, to our knowledge, unnamed. We've never seen more than six persons eating there at one time and we doubt if more than nine could get inside, but the bill of fare is as generous as the surroundings are compact, offering fresh and delicately smoked salmon, incomparable potato salad and one of London's best cups of coffee. Total price: a dollar and some change.

The Caprice, in Arlington Street, is an animated meeting place for film and theater personalities. The food is uniformly excellent and the tab is even more gratifying--five dollars goes a long way here. The Empress, in Berkeley Street, is an intimate eatery with balcony tables that provide a romantic setting for diners. Many of England's restaurateurs have earned the criticism traditionally directed at their preparation of seafood, but today, at least a handful of London establishments are willing to think beyond Dover sole. Three of the best seafood houses are Prunier's, in St. James's Street (its Continental table is also recommended); Scotts, in Coventry Street, and Bentley's, in Swallow Street, for its oysters.

For a background more evocative of London's literary pre-eminence, there is the Grill Room of the Café Royal, in Piccadilly, where George Bernard Shaw and Max Beerbohm were wont to dine. The Marquis of Queensberry stormed through the front door in the summer of 1894, looking for Oscar Wilde, another frequent patron, shortly before the two met in the court battle that was to wreck Wilde's career. Today the interior is much the same as then--gilt mirrors, baroque cherubs and Edwardian opulence. Upholding the literary tradition is Graham Greene, who may often be seen dining alone when he is in London.

Mirabelle, in Curzon Street, has a world-wide reputation for its food and its wine cellars, catering almost exclusively to the Rolls-Royce set. Don't expect to dine à deux for less than $40-$50. If you ask for the 1803 Château Mouton Lafite, you'll be out of luck--the last bottle went a few years ago; but Mirabelle still has some years from 1832 to 1955, so if you want a wine bottled the year blushing Victoria took the throne, you know where to find it. Top-rated (and expensive) French restaurants include Les Pies Qui Rient, in Abingdon Road; A l'Ecu de France, in Jermyn Street; and Coq d'Or, in Stratton Street. One of the newer additions to the London eating scene is the revolving restaurant on the 35th floor of the Post Office Tower. The food is unsensational, but the beauty of the view is such that, barring being poisoned, the place is worth a visit. For food at a reasonable price, you can't beat the Lyon Corner House chain. The main one in Coventry Street off Piccadilly Circus has five different restaurants under one roof. The Egg & Bacon is especially popular late in the evening, after the theater, and when the pubs are closed. Other superior London restaurants include the San Lorenzo, in Beauchamp Place, Alvaro's in the Kings Road and Carrier's in the Camden Passage, Islington.

Having satisfied the inner man, you might, if the weather is fine, saunter leisurely through the city streets, long clear of officeworkers but still thronged with peach-cheeked, supple young wenches up from the country for the day, leggy debs hurrying back to Chelsea after dinner with Daddy at the club, gaggles of dark-eyed art students, and many a miniskirted model rushing to keep a theater date or a late appointment at the fashion studio. This is the age of the English girl; never have so many looked so good. Nearly every other salesgirl in London's stores, from the tiniest haberdashery to the most elegant emporium, looks like a combination of Julie Christie, Vanessa Redgrave, Jean Shrimpton and Susannah York--a tide of conformity in which, for once, you will be delighted to immerse yourself.

(If you'd like to see more of the same, walk through the boutique areas of Carnaby Street, Chelsea, South Kensington and Mayfair. Stroll through the oak-paneled shops and clamorous department stores in Piccadilly, Knightsbridge, Bond Street, Regent Street and Oxford Street. You'll see birds by the thousands: full-bodied or slender, Sassoon-coifed and Quantly chic. If London is the best of what cities are all about, its girls are the feminine ideal: compliant yet canny, pert but mature, naïve but knowing, and sharing a joyously uninhibited delight in sensual rapprochement with the opposite sex.)

If you've been able to latch onto a lass by theater time, by all means take her to one of the many dramas mounted in the West End. Center stage of London drama is Shaftesbury Avenue, a cosmopolitan night world of its own. The city's theater cannot be easily characterized, for it is at once that of Shakespeare and Schisgal, Olivier, Oliver! and Osborne. London's theater-ticket situation is a happy one; it is difficult to find a show charging more than three dollars for the best seats in the house, and even curtain time there is often an extra pair of tickets available, usually in the first few rows of the orchestra.

With or without a date, you should investigate the city's proliferating bird sanctuaries. Most of these are discothèques, where informality and outré accouterments reign supreme and the floor action often continues until five A.M. One of the smartest new night spots is Annabel's, in the basement of an 18th Century town house at 44 Berkeley Square, below the Clermont Club--London's grandest and most exclusive casino, which issues chips to the value of $14,000. While estates are gambled away upstairs, dollies and debs monkey around below.

The Ad-Lib, in Leicester Square, was once a Beatle hangout, but now their Mersey sound is translated by groups emphatically more pyrotechnical. For the bright young sounds now enriching London teeny boppers, Dolly's, in Jermyn Street, is hippest of the hip--spinning the latest discs and the latest names; it's a favorite haunt of the more delectable denizens of the night world of high fashion, theater and the arts. More formal are The Garrison, in Hamilton Place, and the Saddle Room, across the street, popular with the horsy set. Leather elbow patches are almost de rigueur, but no leather jackets, please. Membership is prerequisite in most night spots, but overseas visitors can usually secure honorary enrollment at nominal cost. Places such as the Yard Arm, a dinner-and-dance club housed in a yacht moored at Hungerford Bridge on the Thames Victoria Embankment, waive honorary membership charges for American guests packing Diners' Club cards.

The Phone Booth, which combines gambling with dancing, and The In Place, which serves drinks until the early hours, are both at Allsop Place, at the top of Baker Street. Off Piccadilly, in Swallow Street, is Sibylla's, part owned by Beatle George Harrison, and behind Fortnum & Mason's department store in Piccadilly is the Scotch of St. James. Or try the Cromwellian Club, in Cromwell Road.

In the unlikely event that you hit a discothèque on an off night, you might combine chercher with chemmy at one of the gambling parlors in the West End, or--as one Vegasite dubbed the district that encompasses London's nirvanic night life--Action Central. Membership at gambling parlors varies in price from club to club, but once again, overseas punters can usually find their way in without difficulty. Among the best and biggest casinos are: the Palm Beach Casino in the Mayfair Hotel, heavily favored by Americans, offering craps, roulette, blackjack, chemin de fer and stud poker; Crockford's, in Carlton Terrace, baronially appointed and set up for bridge and kalooki (which resembles gin) in addition to more familiar games: the New Casanova, Grosvenor Street, frequented by an odd mixture of former Rugby pros, feline femmes fatales, aging public schoolboys and enthusiastic crapshooters; the Curzon House Club, just up the street from The Playboy Club, equipped with a fine bar, a restaurant and bedrooms for members too weary to wager; the Colony Club and the Pigalle, hosted by George Raft and Joe Louis, respectively; and Le Cercle, which is across the street from the Saddle Room discothèque, and boasts restaurant, bar, sauna bath and barbershop. Not among the biggest, but one of the better casinos is the Pair of Shoes, in Hertford Street. The gambling facilities of the new London Playboy Club (with its three gaming casinos, featuring blackjack, craps and roulette) are, of course, second to none, as is the Club itself--the climax of our night-life tour and the new hub of London's swinging social scene.

The London Playboy Club is a ten-story, block-length pleasure palazzo that opened six months ago with a celebrity-studded debut party that rocked from dusk till dawn. By sunrise, London cabbies had become so familiar with the Club's Mayfair location that it was unnecessary for passengers to give the address. Literally overnight, The Playboy Club had become a landmark, and a mecca for members new and old from all over the world.

Within two months after the first key-holder had passed under the brass canopy and through the walnut-striped doors at 45 Park Lane, the membership rolls had to be closed until additional staff could be trained to cope with the overwhelming response from British applicants seeking the key to what's happening. "We expected that the Club would open with about five thousand members," said Victor Lownes, Playboy's European chief. "We got twenty thousand."

Of the 36,000 keyholders and guests who visited the Club in its first month, 7000 were Americans. Even they, accustomed to the upbeat, leisurely excitement that has become a Playboy Club hallmark, were impressed by the $4,500,000 London layout, with its discothèque, showcasing live groups (as well as Bunny deejays who spin the latest hits), its gaming casinos and its four dance floors.

The Club occupies one of the costliest pieces of real estate in London--in May-fair, between the Dorchester and Hilton hotels. The building was designed by Walter Gropius, the noted German architect. Its entire length at the sidewalk level is faced with a 20-foot-high glass wall, discreetly draped from within with fiberglass netting, although guests who visit during the day will enjoy a pleasantly pastoral view of Hyde Park, which is just across the street. Above the Club's five floors are four floors of luxury apartments and a roomy penthouse suite, which Frank Sinatra rented shortly after the Club's premiere. (Moviegoers who've been to the London Club and have seen Morgan! will recognize the penthouse terrace as the site of Vanessa Redgrave's riotous wedding scene.) All of the flats are available for daily, weekly or monthly rentals--which range from $14.70 a day for a studio single, complete with kitchenette-bar, to $441 a week for the penthouse, which boasts a private roof garden with decorative pool, in addition to twin bedroom, lounge, kitchen, dinette, study and terrace.

Downstairs, as well as upstairs, the over-all impression is one of luxury, sophistication and intimacy. A gift boutique offering a specially selected range of merchandise from Austin Reed of London (as well as Playboy Products) is just inside the foyer. Two steps down is the Playmate Bar gaming room, where members can stop in for some blackjack or a few twirls of the roulette wheel before going on to the Playmate Bar itself, which seats 84 and features a 28-foot copper-clad bar. Its walls are warmly aglow with backlit transparencies capturing the spirit of Playmates past. At the far end of the room is The Nook, where guests can dance to records.

The floor above is adorned with a series of LeRoy Neiman paintings --commissioned especially for the London Club--on the theme London 1966. The color-splashed oils present a random view of the city's sport and night life. "Surprising paintings," wrote a Daily Sketch critic. "Powerful, exciting, interpretative and full of movement. Outside, his art sells for anything from £1000 to £6000 a painting. His work indicates the serious side of the enjoyment business."

Entering the first-floor Living Room, one passes the Cartoon Corner--which, in the London Club, serves also as a small gaming area. Here, too, is the acclaimed Playboy evening buffet, served atop a 26-foot U-shaped expanse of Ashburton marble, with booth and table seating for more than 100 diners. At the end of the Living Room is the parquet discothèque dance floor, where the frug and the monkey flourish until 3:30 A.M.

The next floor up is the elegant VIP Room--which has already earned unstinting praise from discriminating British trenchermen. "Against a background of plush royal blue seating, velvet curtains, blue tablecloths and napery, blue-coated butlers and velvet-clad Bunnies, gourmets enter a wonderland of gastronomy. And all for £3/3/0 [$8.82]," wrote a correspondent in Britain's authoritative Hotel and Restaurant Management. He added: "Surely the finest value in gastronomy this side of the Atlantic." Fifty-two diners can enjoy the six courses in the posh confines of the VIP Room, which also boasts a quartet, thrice-nightly entertainment and a cocktail lounge.

On the floor above the VIP Room is the walnut-paneled Playroom, the largest showroom in the Club. Here, the featured entertainment is provided three times each week night and four times on Saturdays by a top-rank roster of performers, both American and European. Between the acts, there's dancing or, for gustatory gratification, succulent filet mignon and sizzling strip sirloin.

The Club's biggest gambling area is the fourth-floor Penthouse Casino, where the action is threefold: craps, blackjack and roulette. Soft drinks, coffee and sandwiches are served free of charge to those trying to beat the system. Judging by a house tally after opening night, this is not impossible: The casino showed a net loss of $84. "For that party it was worth it," a Club official shrugged the following morning.

"That party"--the opening of the London Playboy Club last June--was attended by most of the show-business celebrities in London, many of whom have since returned again and again to enjoy the Club's manifold facilities. There were 58 newsmen from all over the world present; nine TV and newsreel crews jammed the lobby and trailed cables and equipment through the building; one of them, Visnews, fed footage to 31 countries around the globe. And a film crew was at work on a documentary entitled Playboy Comes to London, which will soon be shown in theaters throughout the U.S.

Stirling Moss was one of the first key-holders to arrive. A flash of klieg and strobe lights greeted him as he showed his key-card to Playmate-Door Bunny Dolly Read, then threaded his way through the black-tie crush in the foyer. Without further pause, he made straight for the Playmate Bar Casino, where he turned up a 20 to the unbeatable ace and queen that Bunny Jill, the Blackjack Bunny, had dealt herself. "I'm terribly sorry, sir," she said.

Minutes later the lobby erupted with another salvo of flashes at the appearance of Editor-Publisher Hugh M. Hefner, Club President, escorting a lithe and gorgeous blonde, August Playmate Susan Denberg, who was in London completing a movie. Susan wore a shimmering silver-and-gold metallic-thread minishift that seemed to have a life of its own--and caused at least one distracted male guest to address a passing Bunny as "Waiter." Miss Denberg and Hef stood in the lobby to greet guests, whose Rolls-Royces and Bentleys were queuing bonnet to boot along Curzon Street.

Lee Marvin arrived with Trini Lopez and James Garner, all three of them also in England making films--Garner starring in Grand Prix and Marvin and Lopez in The Dirty Dozen. Julie Christie appeared next, followed by Rex Harrison and his wife, Rachel Roberts. More flashbulbs. Then Ursula Andress swept in wearing her tawny hair long and loose; her escort was sideburned and mustachioed Jean-Paul Belmondo.

The Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire arrived soon after, followed by the Marquis and Marchioness of Tavistock, Lady Caroline Townsend, Lady Annabel Birley (for whom Annabel's is named), director Roman Polanski (Knife in the Water and Repulsion) and his date Sharon Tate, a pneumatic young screen-star-in-the-making. They were greeted by Hef and Robin Douglas-Home, nephew of the former Prime Minister and the London Club's membership secretary.

Also seen in the Club that night--and many nights since--were Morgan! star Vanessa Redgrave, actresses Barbara Bouchet and Joanna Pettet, and singer Shirley Bassey; Henry Luce III, Time-Life Bureau Chief in London; ex-Cleveland Browns fullback Jimmy Brown (yet another of The Dirty Dozen); Gene Barry; Sidney Poitier; Hugh O'Brian; Casino Royale producer Charles Feldman; Michelangelo Antonioni; Albert Finney; Princess Lee Radziwill and the Prince; Laurence Harvey; Richard Todd; Dame Margot Fonteyn; Rudolf Nureyev; and David Niven.

Before ten P.M., the clubrooms were jammed with guests. This 16th link in the international key chain seats 392, and all the seats were filled; even the open areas were something less than open. At times, especially on the dance floor of the Living Room discothèque, this made it difficult to avoid bodily contact with the likes of Miss Andress, Miss Christie and Miss Tate. Nobody complained.

At one point, an attractive woman in a wildly patterned pants-and-jacket ensemble walked through the Living Room. Tall, beautiful Bunny Liz whispered to a cottontail cohort: "Isn't that Olga Detterding, the oil heiress?" Miss Detterding, overhearing, turned to her own companion: "Isn't that Sir Fordham Flower's daughter, Elizabeth?" Bunny Liz is, indeed, the 20-year-old debutante daughter of the late brewery millionaire who was chairman of the Memorial Theatre at Stratford on Avon. In the VIP Room, a dapper young American was telling singer-pianist Bobbie Short, the featured entertainer there, that the last time he'd seen him was in an out-of-the-way club in Manhattan five years earlier. "I own that place," Bobbie said. "I wish I owned this one."

Up in the Playroom, all 126 seats were occupied. Hefner's party sat in a center booth and waited for the special show to begin. The house lights dimmed and the Bob Layzell Quartet struck up a medley of show tunes. Cy Coleman flew in from the south of France and entertained the crowd for 20 minutes. The Morgan James Duo sang and Woody Allen--wearing a blue corduroy suit belted in the back--unexpectedly skipped onto the stage and said: "Don't applaud; it slows up my rhythm and I'm not used to acceptance on that scale." A camera crew from the Merv Griffin show filmed Woody at work.

The night's entertainment was rounded out by Playboy comedian Jackie Gayle, followed by Trini Lopez, in the second unplanned guest appearance of the evening.

The show began at midnight and ended at 2:30. The guests moved out of the Playroom, some to gamble in the Penthouse Casino, some to gambol in the Living Room discothèque. Late arrivals who had missed dinner stopped off on the first floor for a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, shepherd's pie, muffins and coffee, all for a modest ten shillings. The serious gamblers stayed; it would be 4:30 in the morning before last bets were called.

We won't say it's exactly like that every night, but the in crowd, the tony jet setters and indigenous as well as visiting showbiz talent have made the Club unofficial headquarters--a place, as they say, to see and be seen.

• • •

If on your first evening in the city you don't feel up to the disco-casino circuit or The Playboy Club, you might want to sample one of the less strenuous (but equally rewarding) joys of London--the pub crawl. Since London pubs are governed by licensing laws of inscrutable intransigence, you should embark as soon after dinner as possible. You can make the crawl à deux or alone; if unaccompanied, you can be reasonably assured of encountering a suitable female companion before too long. You should also rent a car rather than rely on taxis.

The fascination that public houses have exerted over Englishmen for the past seven or eight centuries has no counterpart. The warmth and glow of a log fire in the grate of an old inn holds a magic all its own; the mood of pacific serenity evoked in an evening at a sturdy little pub knows no equal. As the servant boy in Shakespeare's Henry V put it: "Would I were in an alehouse in London! I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety."

In the 620 square miles that comprise Greater London, there are some 7000 pubs, most of which fall into distinct categories, and many of which combine several: historical, literary, working-class, local, musical, waterfront, sporting, white-collar and tourist. Beyond these are pubs for the consciously avant-garde, Hampstead pubs (popular among smooth young men on the make) and pubs for newspapermen, opera singers, policemen, longshoremen and Sherlock Holmes fans. Having read this, you will probably be able to tell your date more about London pubs than she knows herself, but depend on her to remind you of their hours of business, which are 11 A.M. to 3 P.M. and 5:30 P.M. to 11 P.M., except in certain pubs--such as those in The City--which close even earlier. Licensing hours on Sunday evening are 7 to 10:30.

In and around London's docks and markets are pubs (such as the Nag's Head, in Covent Garden) that open from 6:30 to 9 on weekday mornings, and although these are technically for the relief of porters and market merchants, we have occasionally stopped in ourself returning from a hard day's night at the casinos.

Among the older pubs you might care to visit is The Guinea, in Mayfair's Bruton Place, which dates from 1423 and is licensed to serve dinner until 12:30 A.M. Nearby are the Henry Holland, newly built, with Charrington's Best Bitter--latter-day equivalent of "the genuine stunning" that befuddled David Copperfield--on tap; Shepherds Tavern, with excellent English and French cooking and a public telephone housed in the Royal Sedan Chair once used by George II's family; and the Rose and Crown, Park Lane's only pub, formerly the last stop for condemned prisoners on their gloomy trek to Tyburn.

Just behind Hyde Park Corner stands The Grenadier, a favorite of young army officers, their girlfriends and racecar drivers, a grouping unusual enough to produce a few memorable hours. The City Barge, located on the banks of the Thames going toward Chichester, is another pub crawler's delight best savored in the spring and summer. English journalists congregate at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese during the day; evenings, their frequent haunt is El Vino's (both are located in Fleet Street). Actors gather at the Salisbury, St. Martin's Lane; politicians often down their bitter at St. Stephens Tavern, close by the House of Commons; and BBC executives will be found at the Dover Castle, in Weymouth Mews.

Away from the sophisticated environs of Mayfair and eastward on the river front is the Prospect of Whitby, one of London's most popular pubs, and best visited in the winter months. It was built in the year the pilgrims left for the New World and in rowdier days was a site for bare-knuckle bouts and cockfighting. Before that, the infamous "Hanging" Judge Jeffreys paid an occasional call to watch the bodies of mutinous seamen swinging from the gallows along Execution Dock.

Closer to the city is Ye Olde Red Lion, linked to England's most ubiquitous highwayman, Dick Turpin, who accidentally shot one of his cronies at the Lion in 1739, mistaking him for a gendarme. Turpin kept his getaway gear--a great mare called Black Bess--stabled in the pub, and the key to Bess' stall still hangs on the wall. Turpin's pistol and the leg irons he wore at Newgate Jail are at a Hampstead pub called the Spaniard's, one of his other hangouts, reputed to have been built in--and named for--the year of the Spanish Armada. This was one of Dickens' favorite pubs and was the setting for the rollicking tea party he described in the Pickwick Papers. Other literary figures who dropped in to seek the muse include Lamb, Shelley, Keats and, most recently, Beatle John Lennon.

Just off Tottenham Court Road, at 47 Rathbone Street, is the Duke of York, a bewildering but comfortable establishment full of old postcards, naval hat-bands, pinups and neckties. The last time we were there, a real film star was in residence, a great Dane named Colonel, who once played the title role in The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Ye Olde Wrestlers Tavern, in High-gate, is said to stand over a tunnel used by Turpin to escape from the omnipresent Bow Street Runners, prototypes of the modern bobby. Local wags, possibly fed up with seeing Turpin relics sanctifying every pub wall in the locality, say the tunnel leads to Jack Straw's Castle, a pub two or three miles away, in Hampstead. The Wrestlers, incidentally, holds a ceremony known as "swearing on the horns" that is generally observed the first Friday in October. It's a complicated ritual in which the loser has to buy a round of drinks and kiss the best-looking girl in the room.

If you crave the big, amplified sound, seek out The Castle, at Tooting Broadway, South London's brashest musical pub, which draws all the sharpest local lasses. If you find the tin-panic Tin-Pan Alley sound of The Castle too piercing, drive farther south to Fair Green, Mitcham, and stop in at either the Cricketers or at the adjacent pub on Cricket Green, overlooking a beautifully manicured cricket pitch. During the summer, this is one of the most idyllic spots in London.

For Dixieland jazz, try The Plough, Stockwell, or the Hampton Court, near Elephant and Castle, a district known to Londoners as The Elephant. At the Lilliput, Bermondsey, and the George and Dragon, Acton, there's modern jazz (London's coolest jazz sounds are heard at Ronnie Scott's Club, in Frith Street). It's advisable to check with all pubs by phone before making the rounds, because of crazy-quilt schedules.

Pubs are mainly for drinking, but if the pangs of hunger begin to strike, most any of them will be able to serve you the substance of Empire: a tankard of ale, a banger sausage or two, port-fed stilton and fresh-baked crusty bread, all for a little more than a dollar.

Few London pubs can serve a cocktail to American prescription, and if man-hattans and martinis are your métier, better stick to the hotel bars or the clubs. It is both difficult and unreasonable to avoid brew in London, but those who insist on making the effort will find that the city's winehouses--Henekeys, Short's, Finch's and Yates--serve both grape and spirits in generous and inexpensive measure.

A host of cabaret night clubs offer the visitor to London, in addition to entertainment and reasonably priced food and drink, dancing partners who will provide most any degree of togetherness you want--for a price, of course. Among them are Murray's Cabaret Club, the Stork Club, the Astor, the Georgian and Churchills.

Between the discothèque and night-club circuits and the London pub scene, you will have covered the most fertile precincts in London's amatory acreage. While it is at least possible that you might have dropped a few quid at the casinos or a few shillings at darts during your pub crawl, it is mathematically unlikely that you will not have encountered and suitably impressed a lady of your liking en route. Having accomplished this, you can forget about working up a line of blarney when it gets close to the wishing hour; it's not necessary in London, and your charming companion will be the first to tell you so. Chances are she lives on the other side of town with her flatmates, so a retirement for drinks at your digs is in order.

If by some freak of circumstance you've completed a tour of London's night scene and still find yourself unaccompanied, you may wish to make your way back to late-night Soho; even with a date, it's too good to miss. From the open door of a coffeehouse you will hear dialects of half a dozen European and Asian countries. Horns blare, electric rock pierces the night, burlesque barkers hail passersby, while a strikingly young girl stands in a doorway, half smiles and inclines her head to an upper-story window.

Until the Street Offenses Act several years back, prostitution openly flourished in London; in Soho, where the sidewalks were littered with ladies on the make, it formed the major local industry--and the principal tourist attraction. While the bobbies lowered the boom on street soliciting, they left the red light burning brightly on prostitution per se. Soho's reputation for open vice has declined; but the girls simply moved indoors and began a unique point-of-sale advertising campaign to regain their lost trade. The bulletin boards of local news agents and tobacconists suddenly blossomed with postcards offering such seemingly innocuous goods and services as "French chest, 42", for sale"; "Ballroom lessons, 24 hours a day"; "Plastic Raincoats repaired, ask for Doris or Molly"; and the now-classic newspaper ad--"Erection and Demolition," followed by a lady's telephone number-- which somehow slipped into the very proper Daily Telegraph. The ingenious miscreant was discovered when an unsuspecting clergyman complained to the paper's editor after he had telephoned to have his garden shed removed.

Eventually the vice squad cracked down on the ads, too, but with a leniency that suggests its heart wasn't in it. Most professionals still advertise on notice boards outside back-street shops, and it's a fair bet that almost every handwritten ad containing the words "tuition," "French" or "Swedish translation" will lead the curious to whatever reward he seeks. In Soho itself (and Shepherd Market and Bloomsbury), many a doorway bears the penciled card, "Model, Second Floor Up."

Soho bookshops are equally candid about the vicarious sex they provide. Readily available is genuine pornography --hard-, medium- and soft-core--in the form of books, photographs and films. U.S. Customs inspectors take a dim view of those who attempt to bring such merchandise back to the States, an attitude that sharply contrasts with the unhypo-critical openness with which pornography is displayed, discussed and distributed on the streets of Soho.

Burlesque, London style, is really something else. Walk around Soho and take your pick of any one of a dozen flesh festivals, where the featherless birds shed traditions and a great deal more in a tinselly atmosphere of pop and circumstance. If you need an excuse to visit--and why should you?--you can say you want to observe the audience. Unlike American devotees of the striptease, Englishmen do not whistle while the action is under way, but nod approvingly, clap with restrained enthusiasm after each act and carry on with the evening crossword puzzle when the lights go up. If you watched only the audience, you might think you were in the west stands at Wimbledon. Because the licensing of burlesque houses seems to date from the days when Shakespeare was doing bawdy bits at the old Globe, first-time visitors pay a nominal membership fee--after which they get in for the dollar or two admission.

Having seen (and possibly sampled) the best of Soho, you are probably ready to return to your hotel, perhaps for a final drink à deux--and a recuperative rest to prepare you for another day on the town. Perhaps it will be the inevitable rainy day--coupled with the urge to see the classic sights, rather than immediately continuing your quest for excitement. In this event, the conventional tourist attractions London offers should not be missed. The Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, No. 10 Downing Street, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace and the Changing of the Guard, the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square, the Tate Gallery, the British Museum, music at Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden--all provide stunning insights into England's traditions and national character. Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum is camp of a high order. The basement is a series of tableaux of the world's most remembered murders, and upstairs the personages in wax range from Napoleon to the Beatles.

England is now the world's leading movie capital, at least in quality, so don't be surprised if you happen upon such first-rank directors as Tony Richardson, Bryan Forbes or Richard Lester shooting exterior footage.

A profitable afternoon might be spent doing business with a turf accountant at one of London's many betting shops. In season, the horses run at Sandown, Kempton and Alexandra parks, and four evenings a week greyhounds race at White City or Wembley stadiums. Of all sports distinctly English, soccer is the easiest to fathom and the most exciting to watch. Most of London's famous landmarks and diversions are readily reachable by double-decker bus, not a bad way to rubberneck en route to where you're bound. Take a subway if you're in a hurry. London's transport system is clean, efficient and cheap, although it's best to stay clear of it during rush hours. Cabs are plentiful and moderately priced.

For those more acquisitive than inquisitive, colorful and bargain-stocked street markets flourish each weekend in Petticoat Lane, Portobello Road and Brixton Market, where you can pick up antique bric-a-brac (and the occasional rare find) at a fraction of what you would pay in the States. Visit one with a date, dress casually, and if your palate is adventurous, sample the jellied eels or the cockles, with vinegar and pepper, that are staples of the eateries round about these purlieus.

Finally, there are the vast department stores, the unobtrusive Savile Row tailors and the thousands of shops that line every fashionable street, stocked with merchandise of staggering variety in both quantity and quality. At Fortnum & Mason, in Piccadilly, the clerks wear frock coats and striped pants. Londoners have shopped here for gourmet foods for almost three centuries, amid the glitter of chandeliers and the hush of deep-pile carpet. The store has three excellent restaurants, and also stocks Fortnum's legendary shooting sticks, picnic hampers, china and crystal. Service is exemplary.

For the first-time visitor to London, the surest way of locating the finest stores is to go to the bookstore of Her Majesty's Stationery Office (in Kingsway, at the end of the Strand) and purchase the list of Royal Warrant Holders, all of whom represent establishments that have provided at least three years of impeccable service to the Crown. Few stores are likely to give you cause for complaint, however, and whether or not you restrict yourself to Warrant Holders, you will be received courteously.

While London's large stores offer all the conventional amenities, there are quite a few establishments that provide more bizarre essentials, such as Wilkinson's, the sword and razor people, who can make you a custom-fitted bulletproof vest. Savory & Moore will sell you hangover cures; Henry Potter offers military drums, flutes, bugles and pipes; Selfridges specializes in haggis; Pytram's features life-sized model elephants; and Bentley's, of Swallow Street, will equip you with canned kangaroo soup.

You can buy antique musical automata from S. F. Sunley; handmade cigarettes from Morland, of James Bond fame; rare books from Foyle's or Hat-chards; custom shotguns from Purdey or Cogswell & Harrison; hats from Lock's; model ships as well as armor and other military trappings from E. Fairclough; pipes from Dunhill's; tools from Asprey's (a fitted chest in walnut will set you back $490); toys from Hamleys; tweeds from Hunt & Winterbotham; handmade umbrellas from Swaine Adeney Brigg; new and secondhand London taxis from S. Morris ($300 to $4500); snuff from Fribourg & Treyer; silk ties from Harvie & Hudson; custom shirts from Turnbull and Asser; and Savile Row suits from Anderson & Sheppard, Henry Poole, Hawkes, Gieves and J. C. Wells. When buying a suit, incidentally, remember that it takes about three weeks to make one on Savile Row, and choose a cloth that won't be too heavy for State-side central heating. The current "in" tailor is Doug Hayward, of the firm Major Hayward Ltd., who makes suits for Michael Caine, Terence Stamp and John Osborne, among others. Custom shoes can be ordered at Maxwell's, starting around $70, and Les Leston sells wood-rim steering wheels and auto-rally equipment. At the British Drama League you can buy records of British and American dialects and the Scotch House can fit you out in any tartan to which you lay claim.

After you've succumbed to the temptations of London's fantastic shopping, there's much to lure you beyond the city limits as well, whether it be to a tryst at a country inn in the adjacent counties of Sussex, Hampshire, Berkshire or Hertfordshire, or a visit to an old ancestral seat. If time permits, you should drive out to the west country, to the granite moors of Cornwall, where tidal creeks, hedge-lined lanes, lichen-covered churches, tiny villages and black-rock cliffs spawned legends of King Arthur. The remains of his Sixth Century castle still stand. Drive across the county into Devonshire, through the medieval town of Exeter and into Dorsetshire (renowned for its local lobster and Blue Vinny cheese), before stopping for a night at an inn in the tiny seafront village of Lyme Regis. If you feel like it, walk along the beach to Charmouth and pick 50,000,000-year-old fossils from the crumbling cliffs; then drive on eastward to London via the cathedral city of Salisbury, with a detour to Stonehenge.

Then on to Reading and through the Thames Valley via Windsor Castle and Runnymede, where King John signed the Magna Charta in 1215.

Wherever you travel, London will draw you back--to its compelling excitement and multitudinous diversions. You will never see all there is to see, because there is simply too much; and each season of the year presents a different city-- with a new panoply of attractions. In large measure, London's special mood-- part metropolis and part hamlet--is due to the unique nature of its 8,000,000 inhabitants, who refuse to succumb to the regimented drudgery that sometimes frustrates urban dwellers elsewhere. As a result, London is a city both serene and vital, immensely sophisticated yet unashamedly sexy, highly civilized but not oppressive. When it's time to leave, you'll have no regrets, because you know you'll be back; one good turn about London obviously deserves another.

And there's also the swinging scene inside...The London Playboy Club