Things to do in London today

A hat in the shape of an upside-down shoe; a dress resembling an inside-out human body; embroidered jackets covered with gorgeous pink roses, sparkling zodiac symbols and vibrant vegetables. Elsa Schiaparelli made clothes that were as surprising as they were beautiful. The V&A has plundered the well of ingenuity that is Maison Schiaparelli in its latest landmark fashion exhibition – the first British exhibition dedicated to the Italian designer, who rose to fame in Paris between the World Wars – and there are some real treasures to be found.  With over 400 objects, including 100 ensembles and 50 artworks (by the likes of Salvador Dalí, Picasso and Man Ray), as well as accessories, jewellery, photographs, perfumes and an excellent collection of buttons, Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art presents a deep dive into the fantastical and surreal world of the fashion house. Founded on Paris’ Place Vendôme in 1927, the exhibition spans the 1920s to the present day, showing glorious garments from Creative Director Daniel Roseberry, who has been at the helm since 2019.  Excitingly, many of Schiaparelli’s 20th-century creations appear astoundingly contemporary. Knits from 1927, some of the designer’s first works, are patterned with pretty bows that the TikTok girlies of today would die for. There’s also an incredible gold chainmail headdress which wouldn’t look amiss on Florence Pugh in Dune, or on a ‘medievalcore’ Pinterest board. A shirred form-fitting dress with a visible zip – a...

Once, Hampton Court Palace was the stamping ground of tyrannical Tudor king Henry VIII. It's unclear whether he would have enjoyed Easter egg hunts: perhaps he would have decapitated anyone who tried to make him trek round the garden before he could eat his sweetmeats. But don't let that stop you from enjoying an Easter adventure with a gorgeous Tudor backdrop this spring. As you hunt for the Lindt Gold Bunnies that are dotted throughout the historic grounds, you can learn all about the legendary figures who have made their mark throughout the decades of this London landmark. The trail takes around 90 minutes and is self-led. Once you've found all the Lindt Gold Bunny statues, you'll be rewarded with your very own edible gold bunny (or non-chocolate treat). Suitable for kids aged between 3 and 12.

For the past few years the Elephant Family, a wildlife conservation charity, has organised the Big Egg Hunt – a trail of giant eggs dotted throughout London, designed by some of the country’s foremost artists and designers. That’s not happening this Easter. Instead, there’s a parade of 21 colourful elephants over in Battersea Power Station. The elephants have been decorated by creatives such as Studio Phantasma and Patricia Collins. Download the art trail app and you can tick off each sculpture as you come across them, unlocking special offers from retailers at the site.  

Awaken your inner child by delving into enchanted lands, magical creatures and timeless tales at the British Library’s interactive family-friendly exhibition. All the bangers from your childhood will be explored – from Goldilocks, to Aladdin – through books, artworks, interactive displays, theatrical design, story sharing spaces, costumes and activities. Opening in time for the Easter holidays, Fairy Tales is ideal for passing a few hours with the little’uns. 

Did you know that the samurai believed gender and sexuality were fluid, and that they practically invented the concept of being non-binary? Because I certainly didn’t. This progressive view was one of many riveting – and surprising – things I learned at the blockbuster Samurai exhibition at the British Museum.  You don’t have to be a history buff to find Samurai intriguing – I’m not a medieval period obsessive, but like a lot of Zillenials I am a big fan of all things Japanese. This exhibition of treasures from Nihon, therefore, understandably appealed to me, and I suspect this will be the case for anyone who has spent hours trawling the internet for the perfect santoku knife or vintage Comme des Garçons jacket. There’s a lot crammed into the exhibition, which outlines the past 1,000 years through 280 objects and pieces of digital media, following the rise of the samurai from fierce mercenaries in the 1100s, through to their reign as an aristocratic social class from the 1600s to the 1800s. Examining the enduring legacy of the Japanese warriors in the present day, Samurai illustrates how the image of the noble fighter has been mythologised, altered and co-opted over the years, sometimes for nefarious means (as seen in a chilling Nazi pamphlet promoting the relations between Japan and Germany).  an incredible selection of ornate helmets resemble sculptures more than headgear Many of the artefacts on display are stunning – from intricately decorated partition screens, to...

Southbank Centre's REPLAY: A Limitless Recycled Playground is a very fun place indeed. It was wildly popular with families last year, and now it's back for 2026 for under 12s to have an hour-long dose of interactive creative fun. Herd Theatre has colourful, interactive wonderland for kids to create and play in, full of with recycled materials ready for repurposing and making. The experience is accompanied by a score made of recycled sounds, as well as prompts to encourage kids and adults to play side by side.

Henry VIII’s former gaff is already one of the most splendid-looking buildings in London, but fill it with 10,000 tulips and you’ve got something mighty special to look at. Hampton Court Palace’s Tulip Festival is one of the biggest planted displays of the colouful flowers in the UK and is a good excuse to celebrate the start of spring. See the buds pouring out of the Tudor wine fountain and in floating tulip vases, and spot rare, historic and specialist varieties. There are also expert talks on the flowers and craft activities themed around them. The palace’s expert gardeners predict the displays will look at their best between April 11 and 26, though ‘Mother Nature always has the final say.’

After a five-year-long world tour, this blockbuster exhibition on the ancient Egyptians is finally arriving in London. Ramses and the Pharaoh’s Gold will display 180 priceless treasures on loan from the Supreme Council of Antiquities, of which the pinnacle is the coffin of Ramses II, giving Londoners the chance to see an original sarcophagus here in the Big Smoke. Other gems on show will include gold masks,  silver coffins, animal mummies, amulets, jewellery and colossal sculptures. Although superficially sounding quite similar to the recent Tutankhamun immersive exhibition, this one seems a lot more based around Ancient artefacts, with none of the fanciful CGI frippery that’s come into fashion in the world of international touring exhibitions the last couple of years.

After a successful first edition last year, we're getting a second helping of a festival that highlights one of the more unsung parts of our favourite movies, tv shows and games – the soundtracks. London Soundtrack Festival puts the scores front and centre, with a series of screenings, talks and performances celebrating the musicians who make fictional worlds sound so exciting, tense and emotional.  The genre-spanning programme takes place over the second weekend in April, spanning a mix of styles and genres. James Bond fans will be thrilled by Homegrown Heroes, a night of David Arnold scores and slick action movie sounds (Apr 9). There's also a masterclass on music for games, a talk on John Williams, and a screening of Brian de Palma’s Obsession (1976) (Apr 9) which will be introduced by Norma Herrmann, widow of the legendary composer Bernard Herrmann.

Pick your way through a huge mix of vintage stalls at Flea London. Each one will be selling a tightly curated mix of vintage fashion, statement jewellery, art, books, vinyl, cameras, cult design pieces, and one-off homeware finds, alongside independent designers, jewellers and emerging makers. The aim? To champion sustainability over fast fashion and get us all au fait with the art of reusing and repurposing. Once your bags are bursting, there’ll be artisan food traders on hand selling fresh pastries, drinks and other fare. 

This review is from 2022. Nemesis; hubris; redemption; headgear. Those are pretty much the main themes of Jon Klassen’s wonderous trilogy of picture books that kicked off in 2011 with the seminal I Want My Hat Back, in which a dopey bear wanders the forest looking for his missing red party hat, eventually clocking that it has been nicked by a rabbit, which it’s then very strongly implied that the bear goes on to kill and eat. Followed by This Is Not My Hat – in which a small fish soliloquises to the reader about how he’s definitely going to get away with stealing a big fish’s bowler hat – and We Found a Hat – in which two tortoise pals must decide what to do with a sombrero – the three books contain no shared characters or plot, but are linked by Klassen’s gloriously deadpan, almost woodcut-like drawings, sparse dialogue and bracingly morally ambiguous humour. The same qualities have also made the books tricky to adapt: the National did a sort of maximalist fantasia on I Want My Hat Back a few years ago that was a lot of fun but didn’t especially resemble the source material beyond the key plot beats. The basic problem is that a literal stage adaptation of I Want My Hat Back would only be about ten minutes long, and it’s difficult to see how you can convey Klassen’s distinctive visual style with human actors. But that was before there was a trilogy, and – crucially – before the pandemic. This stage version of the three books started life as a lockdown project for designer...

As a schoolchild in the late ‘90s I swear to god I saw a production of The Tempest  – I think at Malvern Theatre – that mostly consisted of Prospero and his villainous brother Antonio playing chess together, while the rest of the play kind of happened around them.  It was so weird that I now occasionally doubt it actually happened. But also I’m pretty sure it did as I remember it so clearly. And Tim Crouch’s new production of The Tempest brought it to mind: I think it might baffle a lot of people, but I doubt any of them will forget it in a hurry. We’re in a junk-cluttered study of some sort, presumably on the nameless island that Crouch’s Prospero and his daughter Miranda (Sophie Steer) were exiled to by his sister Antonia (a gender swap, obvs). Their unearthly servants Caliban and Ariel are there too, though whether there’s anything supernatural about them is questionable: Naomi Wirthner’s Ariel is a colourfully dressed older lady with NHS specs and a penchant for knitting; Faizal Abdullah’s Caliban is an affable guy in a Gascoigne shirt who occasionally drifts into passages of Malay.  They appear to be acting out The Tempest. That is to say, they’re using objects in the study to recreate the usual start of the play, which follows Antonia’s ship as it wrecks during the titular storm. Everyone is going through their lines with varying degrees of enthusiasm: Steer’s deliciously gauche Miranda flings herself in with total abandon; Ariel and Caliban seem benignly happy to go...

London’s playful homegrown circus company Revel Puck returns with its biggest show to date, which kicks off a 200-date UK tour with an Easter hols stint in the Olympic Park. This show is called A Glimmer Daze Gambit and follows a naive duo desperate to join the circus, but essentially what you need to know is that it’s 100 minutes of circus thrills, from acrobats both local and international. 

It’s difficult to pinpoint why the moment Paddington walks on stage at the start of his new musical is quite so moving.  Spoiler alert: ‘Paddington’ is a small woman (Arti Shah) in a bear costume (by Tahra Zafar), with a regular-sized man (James Hameed) doing the voice and remote controlling the facial expressions from backstage. Which doesn’t sound groundbreaking but it’s enough to make us believe that Paddington is really in the room with us. Which is surely the point of the endeavor. He’s not the Paddington of the films: he looks different, more teddy-like, and Hameed’s voice is much younger and more boyish than Ben Whishaw’s. He looks more like the Paddington of Michael Bond’s books, but he’s not really him either, on account of all the singing he does and how much more wordy that makes him. He is a new Paddington. But he is, fundamentally, Paddington, right there in the room with us. Does that make it a good performance? I mean sure, he’s a triple threat: adorable, polite and also a bear. The normal rules for a musical theatre lead are suspended here. But Hameed can sing well, and there’s enough expression in both face and body for Paddington to feel genuinely alive to us. Shah doesn’t really dance, but a couple of elaborately choreographed sequences in which our hero pings around causing chaos are impressively physical. Main attraction aside, a fine creative team led by director Luke Sheppard has created a very enjoyable show indeed. It’s by and large a stage...

This is fun: the Unicorn Theatre joins forces with the RSC for a 90 minute version of Shakespeare’s beloved comedy, aimed at ages seven plus. To what extent it’ll feel different to a ‘regular’ production is TBC: you still get a good chunk of Bard in 90 minutes,and the plot synopsis suggests the faeries, lovers and Mechanicals are all present and correct. But certainly it should be a great place to get the wee ones started on our national poet. Rachel Bagshaw and Robin Belfield co-direct a production of a text edited down by Belfield.

This review is from 2022. My Neighbour Totoro is now running at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in the West End with a mostly new cast. Studio Ghibli’s 1988 cartoon masterpiece My Neighbour Totoro is a stunningly beautiful, devastatingly charming film, in which not a huge amount happens per se.  It follows two young sisters who move to the countryside with their dad and basically get up to a lot of extremely normal things… while also fleetingly encountering a succession of astounding otherworldly creatures, most notably Totoro, a gigantic furry woodland spirit, and the Cat Bus, a cat that is also a bus (or a bus that is also a cat, whatever). Its most iconic scene involves young heroines Mei and Satsuki waiting at a bus stop, and Totoro shuffling up behind them, chuckling at their umbrella (a new concept to him) and then hopping on his unearthly public transport. So if you’re going to adapt it for the stage you’re going to have to absolutely nail the puppets you use to portray Totoro and co.  The RSC absolutely understood the brief here, although you’ll have to take my word for it, as for this first ever stage adaption – by Tom Morton-Smith, overseen by legendary Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi – the company hasn’t allowed a single publicity photo of a single puppet (bar some chickens) to be released.  Nonetheless, the puppets – designed by Basil Twist, assembled by Jim Henson's Creature Workshop – are fucking spectacular. They have to be fucking spectacular because that’s the...

The latest show from immersive dining specialists The Lost Estate is intended as a trip back to 1850s Paris – specifically Montmatre and the legendary Le Chat Noir club that birthed cabaret as we understand it. There is a plot, which revolves around proprietor Rodolphe Salis summoning the four greatest entertainers of the era to create an audacious new revue. And there’s classic French food, including coq au vin, chartreuse de legumes, and more. There are varying grades on fanciness with the dining, although they all revolve around a three hour show and attendant three course banquet.

Feature: I went to the new Punchdrunk show and I’m not allowed to review it but here are some things I can tell you about it anyway Punchdrunk’s Felix Barrett on Lander 23: ‘it’s high stakes, high adrenaline’. Post 2022’s The Burnt City, immersive theatre legends Punchdrunk seem genuinely liberated by apparently ditching the mask-based format that’s defined most of their previous body of work. Viola’s Room (2024) was a focussed and unnerving hourlong plunge into a twisted fairytale; and Lander 23 is something completely different again, being a ‘stealth based exploration game’ based on ‘videogame mechanics’ that will see audiences deployed in teams of four onto an alien planet to try and find out the fate of the titular landing vehicle, which has disappeared mysteriously. This all feels very new and indeed, in acknowledgement of this the show is billed as ‘early access’, that is to say it’s effectively a work-in-progress for now (and there won’t be reviews, or at least not during this period). Exactly what will happen in it is vague beyond the above synopsis. What we do know is that Lander 23 will run to about 90 minutes, that it’s based on videogames, that it’s possible to ‘die’ in it (you’ll come back to life though), and that the set will be a ‘modded’ version of the Trojan cityscape from The Burnt City. You also have to technically see it in groups of four, meaning tickets are only purchasable in pairs, although if you want to come down solo you can ring the box office...

Even if you have literally never wanted to be part of the crew of a spaceship you’ll probably have a fun time at Parabolic Theatre’s Bridge Command, an immersive theatre show slash team-bonding exercise slash LARPer paradise that sees you and your fellow contestants take command of the, uh, bridge of a spaceship and undertake a variety of missions that run the gamut from diplomacy to warfare. Occupying the spot in the Vauxhall arches that formerly hosted renowned gay sauna Chariots, Bridge Command is not a slick, cutting-edge vision of the future, and presumably budgetary limitations are part of this. But that’s fine: it very much has its roots in a wobbly sets golden age of sci-fi, with the earlier iterations of Star Trek looming particularly large. After donning our military jumpsuits, we are ‘teleported’ into the depths of space and onto an Earth battleship that will form our base of operations. There is a background scenario here, wherein humans fled a polluted Earth, found a magic element in the depths of space, went back home to fix Earth, only a load of colonists stayed behind and set up new galactic dominions, and we’re out there looking for more of the magic element. It’s best not to think too hard about it, but at the same time the performers throw themselves into it with impressive conviction - I was particularly delighted when the person operating the teleporter earnestly fielded questions relating to my phobia of teleporters.  Following said teleportation...

The big question with adapting The Hunger Games for the stage is that is it not totally nuts to adapt The Hunger Games for the stage? A substantial proportion of Suzanne Collins’s smash 2008 YA novel is set during the titular Games, which are a sort of gladiatorial reality TV contest in which heavily armed teens murder each other until there’s only one left,  Historically this sort of thing is not theatre’s strength. A cheeky duel, absolutely. But a half-hour plus nonstop combat sequence featuring 24 fighters and multiple sub-locations is… tricky. And to their credit, director Matthew Dunster and a top-notch creative team do a pretty damn good job of finding a way forward, deploying aerial work, pyro, video screens, some tightly drilled choreography, the odd song and a highly mobile, rapidly changing set from Miriam Buether to create a sequence that’s coherent and gripping, even if it’s hard to really hand on heart say this is as effective a representation as in the beloved Jennifer Lawrence film (as much as anything, without close ups it’s tricky to follow who all the minor characters are). But it’s solid, and I found it hard not to admire the quixotic but skilled attempt to translate something so action-packed to the stage. A hybrid of The Running Man and The Devil Wears Prada Dunster is not a subtle director, and in many ways that suits Collins’s novel. He picks out the themes of class oppression between the gaudy dandies of the Capitol and dirt poor folk of District 12...

Analogue photographer Sam Laurnence Cunnane travels across Europe by van for long periods of time to find subtly beautiful scenes and capture his ‘floating eye’ images. The titular work of his Hayward Gallery exhibition, for example, depicts a stretch of newly tarmacked road that appears as a deep blue river. This show will mark the Irish photographer’s London debut and is the fifth exhibition in the RC Foundation Project Space Exhibition Series, which highlights a new generation of international artists. 

Get a glimpse of the hidden lives of queer people in midcentury New York at this intimate exhibition. Before homosexuality was legalised, Donna Gottschalk photographed the people she described as ‘brave and defiant warriors’ for daring to live openly as themselves, and take part in the emerging lesbian, trans and gay rights movements. This Photographers Gallery exhibition of her work puts her images in conversation with texts by writer Hélène Giannecchini, who is decades her junior, creating an intergenerational dialogue charting changing times. 

Once again you can expect to see remarkable feats of astrophotography at the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition. It’s a chance to see magical views of both our own night sky and of galaxies far, far away. The winning spacey visions come from dozens of professional and amateur snappers in various categories including ‘Planets, Comets and Asteroids’, ‘Stars and Nebulae’, ‘Galaxies’ and ‘Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year’ for under-16s. Soar down to Greenwich to see the winners from 2025's competition on display. 

There’s a double bill going on at the Hayward Gallery, and the theme is fabrics: whether it’s what we wear or the fabric of life itself. One ticket gains entry to two companion exhibitions – designed to be experienced one after the other, both shows are riffs on a similar theme.   First up is Chinese sculpture artist Yin Xiuzhen’s Heart to Heart, an ode to used clothes by the Chinese sculpture artist. She describes clothing as a ‘second skin’ which collects the essence of every wearer. A garment, then, becomes a tapestry of all the bodies it’s clothed. Memory is embedded into matter. This effect magnifies with the size of her installations.  Xiuzhen’s ‘Portable Cities’ series is a tribute to how every suitcase is a home, especially since many of us live out of our bags on the move. Unfolding over an airport luggage carousel stitched together using black and white clothes, suitcases contain different cities made out of the garments of its citizens. Hovering above is a gigantic aeroplane, similarly fashioned together. Suitcases, trunks, and other storage receptacles reappear throughout the show; to Xiuzhen ‘home is no longer a fixed address but a collection of belongings packed and ready for transport.’ In the next room is ‘Collective Subconscious (Blue)’: a minibus cut in half and elongated into something resembling a caterpillar. Four-hundred pieces of clothing stitched together and stretched over a metal frame make up the body of this vehicle. As you peer in through the...

Pictorialism îs known as the first international art photography movement and this exhibition will take curious minds inside the scene, exploring how it developed around the world between the 1880s and 1960s.

‘Fun’ is a quality which seems to be all too frequently forgotten by curatorial teams. But it certainly takes pride of place at the Saatchi Gallery’s The Long Now, an expansive, nine- room retrospective which aims to both celebrate its past and reiterate its commitment to championing innovation in the present and future. The show is curated by Philippa Adams, who previously served as the gallery’s Senior Director for over 20 years, and is divided into spaces dedicated to key themes which have underpinned its exhibitions over the last four decades. Abstraction, landscapes, AI and technology, and climate change are all given their own rooms. They’re populated with works, old and new, by artists with whom the gallery shares a long-running history, as well as commissions from emerging artists.A reinvention of the wheel, conceptually speaking, it may not be, but it’s a bona fide feast for the eyes. Across two floors, each room has been curated and installed with care to ensure every piece in the room can shine - no space feels overstuffed. Adams has clearly given careful consideration to how the works will complement each other, both in terms of colour and scale, which enhances the viewing experience and makes you want to linger in every room. It’s a rarity that you find yourself at an exhibition where you genuinely don’t know where to look. However, starting from the very first room, dedicated to mark making and boasting Rannva Kunoy’s marvellous, luminescent,...

It’s hard to know if Italian Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna was issuing a doom-laden warning or just a doe-eyed love letter to history. Because written into the nine sprawling canvases of his ‘Triumphs of Caesar’ (six of which are on show here while their gallery in Hampton Court Palace is being renovated) is all the glory and power of Ancient Rome, but its eventual collapse too. It starts, like any good procession, with a load of geezers with trumpets, parping to herald the arrival of victorious Caesar. As they blare, a Black soldier in gorgeous, gilded armour looks back, leading you to the next panel where statues of gods are paraded on carts. Then come the spoils of war, with mounds of seized weapons and armour piled high, then come vases and sacrificial animals, riders on elephant-back, men struggling to carry the loot that symbolises their victory. The final panel, Caesar himself bringing up the rear, remains in Hampton Court, so there is no conclusion here, just a steady, unstoppable stream of glory and rejoicing.  The paintings are faded and damaged, and have been so badly lit that you can only see them properly from a distance and at an angle. But still, they remain breathtaking in their sweeping, chaotic beauty.  Partly, this massive work is a celebration of the glories of the classical world and its brilliance, seen from the other side of some very dark ages. But along with its rise, you can’t help but also think of Rome's demise, of what would eventually...

‘Nigerian Modernism’ celebrates the achievements of Nigerian artists working on either side of a decade of independence from British colonial rule in 1960. As well as traversing networks in the country’s locales of Zaria, Ibadan, Lagos and Enugu, it also looks further afield to London, Munich and Paris, exploring how artistic collectives fused Nigerian, African and European techniques and traditions in their multidimensional works.

‘Exuberance’ is the word of the day at the opening of The Picture Comes First, Rose Wylie’s marvellous retrospective at the Royal Academy. It is referenced in the press materials, and emphasised repeatedly by the show’s curator and the gallery staff on hand to answer questions. After a stroll through the galleries, it is not hard to see why. Though hugely varied in their subject matter – ranging from the Blitz to Nicole Kidman – Wylie’s paintings are unified by a joyful and vibrant energy which beams out from all of them. The RA’s high ceilings and grand interiors act as a brilliant canvas for the artist’s large-scale, often child-like works. The 91-year-old Wylie is the first female painter to have a full retrospective in the space, a fact the institution has shouted proudly about, though on many levels it seems rather shameful given its 250+ year residency in Burlington House. Nevertheless, it only adds to Wylie’s credentials as a trailblazing feminist artist.  Wylie’s paintings are unified by a joyful and vibrant energy The worlds of fashion, entertainment and celebrity are frequent sources of inspiration for the painter. In Lilith and Gucci Boy, she depicts Lilith, the supposed first wife of Adam (of Garden of Eden fame), who left him as she refused to be subservient. In a standout piece, she paints the character adjacent to an attendee of a Gucci fashion show, and labels her ‘the first feminist’. A series of four paintings that depict Nicole Kidman posing on a red...

There’s an undeniable bliss that comes from being next to a large body of water, and this cold London winter has left me craving a day trip to the seaside. However, my desire for escape was sated by visiting Seurat and the Sea at the Courtauld Gallery, where I wandered through quiet coastal towns and had the shore all to myself.  French painter Georges Seurat was dead by 31, but in fewer than 50 canvases he left an indelible mark on art history. By applying thousands of dots and dashes of pure colour right next to each other, he pioneered the technique of Pointillism, which in turn birthed Neo-Impressionism. The aim of this psychedelic morse-code was that the eye, rather than the brush, would blend colours together to create the image.  Though renowned for his scenes of leisuring Parisians such as Bathers at Asnières and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, more than half of Seurat’s output (and the subject of this show) is stoic visions of the sea from towns along the northern French coast. Seeing as I’ve always found Seurat’s rendering of people somewhat flat and uninspiring, thankfully, these paintings are devoid of people – the only human presence being the boats punctuating the horizon. This heightens the sense of serenity as you trace the geometric silhouettes of ports and harbours mingling with the carefree contours of the surrounding coast. Pointillism really lends itself to seascapes, the unblended paint shimmering under the gallery spotlights like sunlight over the...