Greta Bellamacina’s My London: a secret library and a bar with student union prices

A secret library, the best book shops and a bar with student union prices: poet and actor Greta Bellamacina knows all the best spots for embracing London’s literary side. Here, she names her favourite spots and shares some hidden gems.

I live in the countryside in Kent, with my husband Robert and our children Lorca, Lucian and Ersilia. I grew up in north London, so the countryside is new for me. I come into town most days. My train comes into Victoria, so Pimlico has become my new London village. On Upper Tachbrook Street I have my dry cleaner, my cobbler and the fabulous Italian café Ben Venuti, which has become my local.

I like the rooms at the Chelsea Arts Club; it feels like staying at a long-lost aunt’s house. It’s timeless and somehow unpretentious — and the bar has student union prices.

On Camden Road, opposite the skate park. We had no money and we decorated the flat with things we found on the street.

The Holly Bush pub in Hampstead. It’s at the top of the hill, with hardly any phone reception. The ceilings are really low and there is always a fire burning. There isn’t much space, so you have no choice but to huddle together. It’s the perfect spot for a winter date, because when you step back outside the view of London in the mist is always heart-stopping.

Hatchards on Piccadilly for the wonderful rare books curated by Richard, who sits on the top floor at his very public desk and welcomes you with new books and gossip. Choosing Keeping, in Seven Dials, for thank-you cards and stationery. The antique dealers on Flask Walk in Hampstead for the occasional piece of furniture. Retromania in Pimlico for vintage; it’s quite a special shop as it’s also a Fara charity shop and nothing is too expensive. And I love Santa Maria Novella in the Piccadilly Arcade for the lily water and the pomegranate soap.

Sentimentally, I love Lemonia in Primrose Hill; we went there throughout my childhood. We recently took the children for a late Sunday lunch of calamari, hummus and cheese saganaki. Our waiter had been there since I was a child and the room never changes. It always feels like a homecoming.

I would like one continuous long dinner table that runs down all of the roads in London and I would invite everyone to dinner. I would put microphones in the trees and speakers in the streets to amplify the bird song.

Virginia Woolf — I used to live next to her house in Fitzroy Square. I would walk past every day and think about her there, writing behind the window.

I love a middle-of-the day cinema screening, maybe at the Prince Charles Cinema or the Curzon Soho. I also love a theatre restaurant; my favourite is J Sheekey. You can feel the ghosts of the West End stage in the booths.

Tights, hundreds of them. I tend not to wear trousers, so I have drawers and drawers full of red, white and lacy tights.

The London Library — it looks like a townhouse from the front but inside it’s a maze of books, with desks that look out on to St James’s. I go there to write and to think.

I’ve been all over the place this year. I was just in Madrid filming Florian Zeller’s new movie Bunker, alongside Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, then I went to Wales to make a sitcom called The Golden Valley. Now I am working on my new non-fiction poetry and prose novel, Incarnadine, and finishing my masters at Cambridge.

My husband, artist Robert Montgomery — he has a quiet optimism in everything he makes and believes in the goodness of strangers.

I collect the paper camellias that come free with the bags when you buy a Chanel lipstick. I stick them on my dressing room mirror.

The warped window of St Martin-in-the Fields church in Trafalgar Square, by Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshiary. It’s as though God or a saint melted the classical window.

Greta Bellamacina’s poetry collection, Who Will Make the Fire, is out now (Cheerio, £12.99) She is also a model at Viva London