Where Do You Go? with Nina-Sophia Miralles

The author and editor tells us about dog cocktails, unusual vegetables and year-round ice rinks

Every now and again we like to ask people for their personal take on London. We get them to tell us the places in the city that they turn to for different reasons: the spots that excite them, inspire them, make them feel calm, happy or just make them want to spend money. We call it ‘Where do you go?’

For May’s edition of WDYG? we spoke to Nina-Sophia Miralles (above), the editor and founder of the magazine, LONDNR, who talked to us about setting up a magazine at 22 with no plan, how she managed through the pandemic (while writing a book and being pregnant) and where she shops for cheap paperbacks and expensive stationery.

P.S. You can find all the previous editions of WDYG? right here.

Who are you?

My name is Nina-Sophia Miralles, and I’m an author and editor. I founded LONDNR magazine, a print and digital culture publication that aims to support creatives in our capital, and tells beautiful stories you won’t find elsewhere. I also write non-fiction books, most recently GLOSSY: The Inside Story of Vogue.

Why should we trust you?

I’m that rare thing: a Londoner born and bred. But apart from that, I truly love London, I even started a magazine inspired by this city. If I can’t talk about London, I don’t know who can!

You started LONDNR in 2015. What prompted you to do a crazy thing like start yet another publication about London?

That’s a good question! To be honest, I didn’t think about anything like target audiences and competitors or any of those things that people normally think about when they set up a business. I didn’t have a clue! I was 22 years old and I just knew that I didn’t want to work in law, which was what my graduate job was, and I wanted to try and do something creative. I didn’t set it up with the view to it becoming a long-term thing, so I’ve gone at it backwards really, answering those questions as I’ve gone along.

I started LONDNR when BuzzFeed was in its prime and listicles were really popular, and if you were waiting at a bus stop and wanted to read something short, all you’d be able to find was something very trite or facile. I wanted something that had short articles that were really well written and that contained something of substance. I didn’t want to educate people but it had to contain something that maybe they hadn’t come across before, just so it didn’t leave them with that empty feeling you get from reading a clickbait article.

I set out to build something that was really well crafted and informative; that didn’t have a million pop-ups videos playing and distracting adverts everywhere. I love literature and I love reading, so I wanted this to be a clean experience that was all about the text rather than about…Oh, I don't know… some chocolate bar that we really need you look at!

I guess that being so naive when I started out did allow me to do what I thought was right, rather than what I was supposed to do as a business. Then I had to go back and turn it into a business but still with those policies and principles in place. Which is not easy, but is kind of fun in a challenging way. And I’m still here!

You are still here. And you got through the pandemic too. That can’t have been easy.

This is the second iteration of the magazine in many ways. When we started out it was just with the website, and we also used to put on a lot of events for writers. During Covid we had to pause everything because it didn’t make sense to move those events online, plus I was sick of everything being online and I didn’t want to add to that. Also, I was busy writing a book and then I got pregnant! I thought it was best to park LONDNR and, really, I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to bring it back.

But the government introduced some schemes to help creative businesses during the pandemic and once I’d handed in my manuscript, I gave it a shot to see if I could repurpose LONDNR for this new world, as it were. I also thought it was important to try because so many things to do with culture were disappearing.

In the end I think I just refused to shut down because of Covid. If we shut things down, I wanted to be for a real reason. In the end I think I just didn’t want to give in to the pandemic.

How would you pitch LONDNR to people who’ve never read it?

Each issue of the print magazine takes a cultural conversation and tries to explore it in every way imaginable except the one you might expect. So we’ll never talk about things that have been in the news, and we don’t talk about celebrities or politics.

We try to offer stories that are much less obvious, that we really have to dig for and that are inspiring in some kind of novel way, or we try and be a bit playful with it. For example, when we did our surveillance issue back in January, we included an interview with a street photographer who turns people watching into art. Because that’s a kind of surveillance.

Basically, if you’re sick of hearing the same thing everywhere, and being marketed to and reading things that are just edited press releases, then may I suggest LONDNR?!

What’s next? You said you didn't have a plan originally, but do you have some ambitions now that you’ve made it through a pandemic?

Oh yeah! I’ve come so far; I can’t not have a plan now.

My plan, if I can continue to get support from people like the Arts Council and the National Lottery, is to overtake some of the - let’s call them ‘less respected’ - free magazines and become the one that they give out on the Tube.

I want people to encounter it and have a reason to put their phone away while they’re commuting or something like that. I think there is space for what we’re producing because our articles aren’t part of the news cycle and because people are getting really sick of shallow, churned out content, I think there is a real hunger for something of quality. And also, because so many magazines shut down during Covid, there is a gap in the market for free, hardcopy magazines

In terms of content, I’m really interested in religion and spirituality at the moment. I feel like a lot people are thinking about those things, but also feel silly for talking about them. But because of the state the world is in right now, people are starting to look at certain rituals that they may never have looked at before. I think there’s some really curious trends emerging that I want to dig into.

Okay, on to the usual questions… Where do you go and always end up spending too much money?

The bar at the Connaught. Image via Instagram.

I spend too much money everywhere. It’s the curse of London. At my going rate, I might as well walk around making paper planes out of twenty notes and sending them whizzing into every store I pass. 

However, there’s a couple of places where I spend too much and it’s actually worth it. First up: charity bookshops. My favourite currently is the Oxfam in Greenwich centre. There you can find mysterious and obscure books by the armload, that creak when you turn the pages. They frequently cost £1.50 and turn you into a semi-willing expert on the Etruscans or Jacobean verse. I found a signed copy by a famous poet in there (judging by the price they didn’t know how much that was worth!) and some out-of-print books that are proving invaluable research for my next book.

Secondly, for stationery, I go to Smythson. This is a ridiculously unnecessary luxury but getting my leatherbound diary with the thin blue pages is my start-of-the-year ritual. The diary is just so classic and it makes me feel put-together every time I get it out. When you spend half your life tearing around the city with strands of hair stuck to your lipstick, this is important.

Thirdly, cocktail bars. The cocktails in London are GOOD. The Martini Bar at The Connaught (above) if it’s a special occasion. Reverend J Simpson if you want kookie ingredients in an intimate atmosphere. And weirdly, for the best margarita I’ve found to date, Barkney Wick in Hackney Wick, it’s a doggy daycare that turns into a bar at night.

Where do you go that can never close down, because if it does you might cry?

Sarastro’s, the opera-themed Mediterranean restaurant in Covent Garden. Smothered in ivy, most people miss it. But when you go in, you’ll find a madcap gold and red velvet interior with satin heels hanging off chandeliers and little balconies up tiny stairs where there have tables. For a phenomenally low price you can have a 3-course set meal and every Thursday they have live Motown classics being sung by the ever-jovial Colin Roy.

Where do you go to cheer yourself up?

Image by Can Pac Swire. Used user CC licence BY-NC 2.0.

I go to Burlington Arcade (above) and look at the second-hand antique jewellery in the windows. I’m a real magpie in that the beauty of jewels thrills and soothes me, even if I can never afford it. The V&A jewellery galleries are great for this too, but increasingly I’ve found them overcrowded.

Where do you go to impress someone?