Islington escorts across N1, arranged around the curtain on Upper Street

An evening set by a curtain

The Almeida is a hundred yards up Almeida Street from the top end of Upper Street, a small house where the stage sits close enough that a whisper carries and the interval queue is short enough to be worth joining. The Union Chapel on Compton Terrace is five minutes from Highbury and Islington station, a working church that holds concerts under its rose window with the congregation's pews still in place, and it sounds like nothing else in the city. The Estorick Collection occupies a Georgian house on Canonbury Square, ten minutes from the same station, and holds the best gathering of modern Italian painting in the country in rooms that are frequently almost empty.

What all three do to an evening is fix an hour and leave the rest loose. Send the curtain time to the desk and say whether you would rather eat before or after it. Dinner at nine on Upper Street is normal rather than late, which is the single most useful fact about this neighbourhood, and it means a three hour booking around a show does not have to end in a scramble.

Where the rooms actually are

Only one hotel on this page is properly on Upper Street. It stands at N1 0UY, at the bottom where the street bends towards the gyratory, and it is the room most guests mean when they say they are staying in Islington. N1C 4TB is a curved Victorian building beside the platforms at King's Cross, about ten minutes from here by bus and a good deal more on foot.

South of the gyratory the postcode changes and so does the character. EC1M 5RJ and its townhouse at EC1V 4JJ are both in Clerkenwell rather than Islington, twelve to fifteen minutes' walk down St John Street, and they suit a guest who wants somewhere small and a little theatrical rather than somewhere large. Companions visit all of them, and private flats and the terraced houses off Canonbury Square besides. We have no arrangement with any hotel, and none is needed.

Give the desk a building name and a street. The squares up here repeat themselves in a way that maps do not warn you about, and a companion who knows which corner of Canonbury she is aiming for arrives on the hour rather than five minutes after it.

Three stations, none of them next door

Islington is oddly served for a district this central. Angel, on the Northern line, is about seven minutes' walk from the middle of Upper Street and has the longest escalator on the network waiting at the far end of it. Essex Road, five minutes east, is a National Rail platform running up towards Highbury and beyond, useful and easy to forget. Highbury and Islington, nine minutes north at the top of the hill, is the one that actually connects: the Victoria line, the London Overground and National Rail services all meet there.

Walking the length of Upper Street from Highbury Corner to Angel takes about twenty five minutes and passes everything, which is why so many evenings here end on foot. Buses run all night along the same line. A car in from the middle of town is twenty minutes on a quiet evening and considerably worse whenever the gyratory at Angel is in a mood.

The kind of evening people book

Long ones, mostly. Islington guests tend to want an evening with a shape rather than an hour with a start time: something at seven thirty, a table at nine, and a walk down the street afterwards while the restaurants are still busy. Residential bookings are more common here than hotel bookings, which is unusual in this network and entirely to do with the number of people who actually live in N1.

Give the desk a curtain time when there is one and a rough finishing hour when there is not. Three hours at £700 is the natural shape for a show and a table after it. If you have nothing booked, say so and ask: somebody on the desk will know what is on at the chapel this week.

Companions working N1

Bianka, Milena and Tina are anchored in Islington itself. Bianka builds her evenings around the Almeida and eats late on Upper Street afterwards. Milena starts at the Estorick in Canonbury Square when the light is still good and walks down to dinner. Tina works concert nights at the Union Chapel and will suggest the twenty five minute walk south as part of the evening rather than the end of it.

Ten minutes down the hill in Angel, Molly, Cindy and Violetta take N1 bookings on the same terms and reach most Islington addresses faster than a car would. The rest of the list travels in, most of them within half an hour of the top of Upper Street.

Next door to N1

Downhill and south, Angel is the same high street under a different name and a different mood, ten minutes on foot. North east, the Piccadilly and Victoria interchange at Finsbury Park is two stops and opens up Green Lanes. West, Camden Town is fifteen minutes by bus across the top of the Regent's Canal. South west, the platforms at Kings Cross are ten minutes and put a mainline arrival within reach of an Islington table.