Things to do in London today

Prepare for a feast for the eyes, but resist the urge to nibble! The sweetest festive event you’ll find, the Museum of Architecture’s edible exhibition tasks leading architects and designers to ditch their conventional building materials for dough bricks and sugar paste mortar to construct a miniature biscuit metropolis erected in King’s Cross’s Coal Drops Yard for the festive season. With a new theme each year, the exhibition aims to encourage innovation and future-forward city planning, and this year’s ‘Playful City’ theme has resulted in some really fun designs, from school buildings with slides between classrooms to candy-coloured climbing walls. As well as marvelling at all the confectionary craftsmanship on display, visitors can take part in a series of hands-on gingerbread house workshops where they’ll be able to construct a delicious souvenir to take home. 

Each year, Hyde Park gets transformed from pretty park to a dazzling, snow-covered, Alpine-themed, 350-acre festive funscape. One of the largest Christmas events in the UK, Winter Wonderland returns for its eighteenth year in 2025, and is expected to welcome around 2.5 million visitors over six magical weeks.  As you make your way around the space, you’ll find fairground rides, a child-friendly Santa Land (including a Santa’s Grotto, where presents lie in wait) and traditional Christmas markets where you’ll be able to buy gifts for all your loved ones, which has been freshly extended for 2025 with the addition of premium, artfully lit shopping spot Luminarie Lane. Other highlights include circus shows from Cirque Beserk, which take place three times each evening, and the biggest outdoor ice rink in the UK. Surrounding the park’s Victorian bandstand, the 1,795 square foot rink is sponsored by Mayfair’s new art museum Moco. Not only is it lit up by more than 100,000 lights, it’s also a rather cheerful shade of candyfloss pink in keeping with the museum’s logo. Continuing the chilly theme, there's also an ice sculpture exhibit that's been freshly reimagined as a 'Mystical, Mythical Fantasy World', a Real Ice Slide and ice sculpting workshops, after which you can warm yourself up later with frothing steins and steaming cups of mulled wine at the German-style Bavarian Village. ...

Every winter the Southbank Centre turns the banks of the Thames into a frosty wonderland, full of little wooden Alpine-style cabins selling gifts, warming drinks, and snacks. You’ll find huts serving up truffle burgers, duck wraps, mulled wine, Dutch pancakes, churros and many more tasty morsels to nibble on while you look through gifts, jewellery and decorations made by independent craft traders. Or, once you’re done browsing, snuggle up at pop-up king Jimmy Garcia’s riverside venue Fire And Fromage, where you can snaffle all you can eat raclette, sip on seriously decadent hot chocolates, and even toast your own marshmallows round a cosy fire pit.  When is Southbank Christmas Market open? The market opens at the start of November, and will stay open until Boxing Day, Friday, December 26, with a few pop-ups staying open slightly longer until the New Year. Do you need to buy a ticket? No, it's free to enter and have a wander. 

Somerset House’s annual ice rink pop-up has long been one of the city’s favourite festive traditions, with thousands of Londoners and tourists alike making it part of their celebrations each year, and for good reason. Gliding (or nervously shuffling) around the rink, gazing upon the surrounding Georgian architecture and the courtyard’s magnificent 40ft Christmas tree feels like you’ve skated onto a movie set, ready to be watched by families settling in for their post-turkey food coma.  There’s more to this rink than just skating, though. There are seasonal drinks and warming food options available from a rinkside chalet, alongside a Shelter Boutique with takeovers from sought-after brands including Oliver Bonas, All Saints and Nobody’s Child in the run-up to Christmas. And there also a variety of events to keep you entertained throughout the season, including the venue's famous Skate Lates, where you can soar round the rink to a DJ soundtrack. The line-up for 2025 includes trailblazing women-run radio station Foundation FM, NTS Radio host Ruf Dug and queer dance party Sue Veneers. How much does Skate at Somerset House cost? Ticket prices for Skate at Somerset House vary depending on what time you visit, with cheaper tickets at less popular times, and concessions available for kids. They start at £11 for super off-peak times, reaching £26 for the most in-demand slots. Booking for the 2025-2026 goes live on Friday September 26 or you can sign up to the presale here for early...

There's arguably nowhere in London more Christmassy than Covent Garden's Piazza in December. Every year, the shopping district aims to outdo itself for sheer festive pizzaz. In 2025, the theme is 'The Theatre of Christmas', which means that there'll be decorations taking inspiration from the nearby playhouses and the performances in them. And of course, this year will also see the return of Covent Garden's 55ft Christmas tree, decked with 30,000 lights  Meanwhile, the roof of the Market Building is adorned with 40 gigantic bells, 12 giant baubles and 8 spinning mirror balls in a reprise of its oh-so-festive annual display. There'll also be pop-ups and events to enjoy as the season unfolds, including mulled wine stations and a Santa's sleigh photo op. 

Dreaming of a kitsch Christmas? New York’s famous Miracle on Ninth Street bar is popping up in London for its seventh year, ‘50s Christmas decorations, nostalgic accessories and creative new spins on beloved cocktail favourites in tow. Past years have seen the bar slinging the likes of a Snowball Old Fashioned or a Christmapoliton, which includes cranberry sauce and absinthe mist – a take on Christmas trimmings that’s not for the faint-hearted. If you’re failing to get into the Christmas spirit, this is one great place to find it.

What do an Enigma machine, an Apple AirTag and Lady Mountbatten’s silk underwear all have in common? Well, they’re all currently on display at the British Library’s riveting Secret Maps exhibition. Why are they all together? Because they all tell stories about how information is created, concealed, disseminated and controlled, via mapping. And that’s exactly what Secret Maps is all about.  Through more than 100 items, from hand-drawn naval charts gifted to Henry VIII, to Soviet Cold War-era cartographies, and modern-day satellite tracking technology (TL;DR: a whole lotta maps), the British Library illuminates how maps can be powerful political tools, create communities, and act as a form of protest.  It’s a dense, information-packed display with plenty of granular detail to get stuck into, so if you’re not, like, really into maps, then it may not be for you. But it’s sort of what you’d expect for an exhibition dedicated to maps hosted by the British Library. There are a few fun and interactive elements, too; visitors are invited to peer through secret spy holes, place their phones on a futuristic screen that tells them exactly how the tech overlords are mapping and harvesting their data (gulp), and find Wally in an original drawing from the children’s book.  For £20 you are guaranteed to see a lot of cool old shit The most compelling aspect of the exhibition is its anti-colonialist streak (other London museums could do with taking a leaf out of the British Library’s...

Escape the Oxford Street crowds with a detour into pretty Carnaby Street, which puts on memorable Christmas light displays each year. A revamp of last year’s ‘Into the Light’ display, 2025’s ‘All is Bright’ features giant cuboid Christmas crackers and stars illumin illuminated in bright neons by more than 60,000 LED lights, and apparently captures ‘the joy and optimism of the season while reflecting the creativity and vibrancy that make Soho unique’. Find more fabulous Christmas light displays in London

Backyard Cinema is back with a mega immersive cinema to give you all the festive feels. Roam through a fairylit winter forest and you'll find screenings of Christmas classics including Elf, Home Alone, Love Actually, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Holiday, The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, The Grinch, and It’s a Wonderful Life. Things begin in a Christmas cabaret room with live performances of festive classics and table service so you can enjoy seasonal refreshments. Then, you'll enter an enchanted forest, with real bark underfoot, surprise performances, themed bars and photo opportunities. Finally, you'll end up at the Forest Cinema, a retro-style cinema where snow flutters down before every screening. A trip to the movies really doesn't get more festive than this. 

A humongous light trail that takes over south west London’s 300-acre World Heritage Site botanic garden, Christmas at Kew has become a key date in London’s festive calendar since its first iteration in 2013. Visitors embarking on the 3km trail will get see the space lit up with dozens of larger-than-life illuminations, with both the venue’s glass houses and the trees that cover its grounds drenched in different hues. The whole thing is stunning, but don’t miss the lake, where you’ll catch reflections of the vibrant bulbs dancing on the water, taking the magical feeling to another level. For 2025, Kew’s iconic Great Pagoda will be adorned with festive lights for the very first time, too. Keep yourself toasty along the way with warming winter snacks from food vendors curated by Kerb, and make sure say hi to Father Christmas himself as you walk past.  How to get Christmas at Kew 2025 btickets  As the UK’s original festive light trail, tickets to this illuminated adventure tend to sell out fast. Keep an eye on Kew Garden’s booking page, which tells you what dates and times at each of the different entrances are available. If you’re willing to wait until the New Year, there are normally a decent number of tickets available for the first week of January. And if your desired dates are booked up, it’s worth checking back regularly for returns.  What are the prices and opening times? Tickets for non-members start at £27.50 for off-peak slots and £34 at peak times. Members can get...

I wonder if the reason John le Carré never allowed his novels to be adapted for the stage was the fear they'd get turned into the sort of trashy touring potboilers that crisscross the country in numbers but never make it to the scrutiny of the West End. It was presumably his death in 2020 that allowed a stage version of his breakthrough The Spy Who Came in from the Cold to finally go ahead. But I’d say his estate was right to give the nod: the story is in safe hands with playwright David Eldridge and director Jeremy Herrin, whose adaptation settles in at the West End after scoring good notices in Chichester. This is a slick and yes, maybe slightly MOR adaptation of Le Carre’s taut, brutal espionage yarn. But it’s a very good one, and Eldridge deftly crafts an intensely interior world, with us seeing the action unfold as much from within jaded spy protagonist Alec Leamas’s head as without. Herrin’s production goes heavy on the noir, and with good reason. Rory Keenan is magnificently grumpy and rumpled as Leamas, a hardbitten British spy in Cold War Berlin who ‘comes in from the cold’ – that is to say, is brought home – after his last informer is executed by Hans-Dieter Mundt, a ruthless counterintelligence agent who has systematically dismantled the British spy apparatus in East Germany. (It is slightly disconcerting that Keenan speaks in his natural Dublin accent, although you soon get used to it). But there is a long game at work: returning to The Circus (a fictionalised...

It’s hard to know if the creative team behind this wildly misguided immersive theatre adaptation of Douglas Adams’s satirical sci-fi classic loves the source material too much or not at all.  On the one hand, its incorporation of elements of the less well-known book So Long and Thanks for all the Fish suggest a deeper familiarity with the novel series and a desire to not simply do a straight retelling of the OG Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which has been famously already done via radio, novel, video game, TV series, film and various cult theatre shows (albeit none of this very recently). On the other hand, it seems to have been made by people who don’t get Adams’ humour, characters or why people like the first book, and uses the romance plot from So Long… to create a far more saccharine story than Adams himself did. The writer and co-creator is one Arvind Ethan David, a former Adams protege. So I assume he’s a fan. But this play hardly makes a case for his mentor’s brilliance. It begins (mostly) harmlessly enough. The first scene is set in the pub which – in the Adams telling – hapless Englishman Arthur Dent is dragged to by his eccentric friend Ford Prefect, on a very specific mission to drink six pints of bitter ahead of ‘hitchhiking’ aboard a spaceship belonging to the Vogons, the incredibly tedious alien race about to blow Earth up to build a galactic bypass. This all gets a bit immersive theatre’d up. There are novelty cocktails. There is audience interaction. We...

Alfie (Clive Owen) is dying of cancer. Julie (Saskia Reeves) is not. A couple since their twenties, their lives are about to diverge dramatically, though precisely how dramatically is up for grabs. David Eldridge’s new play begins with a physically ailing Alfie telling Julie he wants to stop treatment, before proceeding to splurge all manner of wild thoughts, theories and plans about his imminent death.  End follows Eldridge’s Beginning and Middle at the National Theatre. I’m not sure I’d call them his mid-life-crisis trilogy. But certainly in sum they are about as rigorous an interrogation of middle age as exists in the British theatrical canon. The fizzy, sexy smash Beginning was about the rush of first attraction between a 38-year-old and a divorced 42-year-old. Middle was about a slightly older couple stuck in the rut of a predictable long-term marriage.  With their handsome-looking north London house, Alfie and Julie are initially coded as the sort of monied older couple that has popped up in English theatre for centuries. The fact they’re actually just 59 comes as a slight surprise (Owen and Reeves are actually a few years older), but it’s their cultural references that feel the most startling. It soon transpires that Alfie was a big time acid house DJ, a subject he basically never stops talking about; there’s something disconcerting about thinking of that generation as ‘old’ now. End is not about Gen X dying out en masse: it’s kind of a point of the play that Julie...

Are you looking for something fuzzy to warm your heart this Christmastime? Then boy does the National Theatre have the show for you.  Katy Rudd’s seamless production is adapted by playwright Kendall Feaver from the Noel Streatfeild children’s novel of the same name. It follows the story of the three Fossil sisters: Pauline (Nina Cassells), Petrova (Sienna Arif-Knights) and Posy (Scarlett Monahan) who are adopted by the eccentric explorer and palaeontologist Great Uncle Matthew, aka Gum (Justin Salinger). After Gum goes missing on one of his many, many expeditions, the girls are looked after by his steadfastly loyal niece Sylvia, aka Garnie (Anoushka Lucas) and the matronly Miss Guthridge, aka Nana, played by the charming Lesley Nicol with a drawling West Country accent.  Set in the 1930s, the five women live in a tumbledown house filled with fossils on the Cromwell Road in Chelsea, until they realise they are desperately running out of money and assemble a motley crew of lodgers to take up rooms. There’s the stern but kind-hearted English professor Doctor Jakes (Pandora Colin), glamorous dance teacher Theo Dane (Nadine Higgin), and the bumbling car repair man Jai Saran (Raj Bajaj). After being booted out of every state school in the area, the girls are enrolled in the Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training, where luckily Dane is the teacher. Here they discover their passions for acting, ballet and er… being a mechanic. The whole plot is basically implausible –...

See our ★★★★★ review of All My Sons here Belgian super director Ivo van Hove got his big English-language break with 2014’s astounding production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, and a couple of years later lucky New Yorkers got a deluxe production of The Crucible that scored warm reviews (maddeningly it never played here despite its largely British and Irish cast). Since then, Van Hove’s career has gone into overdrive and he’s famous dedicated a lot of time to making stage adaptations of classic films, to mercurial effect.  It would be entirely misunderstanding Van Hove to imagine that he’s returning to the safety of Miller as a result of last year’s colossal West End flop Opening Night. But there will certainly be those glad he’d doing so as he tackles the US playwright’s first big hit, All My Sons.  Set in 1943, the drama concerns Joe Keller, an upstanding pillar of the local community whose business partner has been found guilty of selling faulty parts to the US Airforce. Joe has escaped any blame. But should he have? Van Hove has assembled a proper A-grade cast here, with US star Bryan Cranston – who led the director’s 2017 hit Network –  as Joe, with the wondrous Marianne Jean-Baptiste as his wife Kate and Paapa Essiedu as their son Chris. 

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 on 0208 191 1431. One half of the group will advise the other half what to do over radio, with roles swapping during the course of...

‘Merry and tragical. Tedious and brief’ is how the play with a play staged at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is described. While nobody could accuse this co-production between the Globe and Headlong as being tedious, it otherwise feels like it could have otherwise been patterned off that contradictory description. Brief is easy: the show – co-directed by Holly Race Roughan and Naeem Hayat – is a miraculously short two hours and ten minutes, something largely achieved by embracing the indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse’s lack of set change opportunities and sort of collapsing all the scenes together. Max Johns’s set is a pure white affair – a nod to it being winter (there’s a little snowman at the top), but also sterile and inorganic, more suggestive of the palace sequences that bookend the play than the magical Athenian woods in which most of the action occurs. Do the characters actually leave the palace? Is it even a palace? There is the suggestion that this is all happening in an asylum: it’s not an especially clear suggestion, but it certainly somewhat accounts for both the set and how genuinely deranged Michael Marcus’s Theseus and Hedydd Dylan’s Hippolyta appear to be, with fairy king and queen Oberon and Titania (who Marcus and Dyland also play) seemingly their mellower alternate personalities.  It’s certainly merry: perhaps the most successful innovation here is turning the light relief rude mechanicals into the serving staff at Theseus and Hippolyta’s feast at...

Though it would be pushing it to say Tom Morris directs Othello as a comedy, he certainly wrings more laughs than usual out of Shakespeare’s great tragedy. To be fair I don’t think I’d appreciated the extent to which other productions must try to avoid audience giggles every time a character describes the villainous Iago –  the greatest snake in English literature – as ‘honest’. Morris just cheerily milks it, and the result is a lighter-than-usual take on the play. Not out-and-out hilarious, but with a glossiness that speaks of a desire to go easy on a West End audience.  The title role is played by David Harewood, who returns to the part 28 years after he was the first Black actor to star as the doomed Moorish general at the National Theatre. His new Othello is a precise, confident, seemingly unflappable man who shows little sign of jealousy or doubt for a long time. But his extreme rationalism proves his downfall: once Toby Jones’s Iago presents ‘proof’ of Othello’s wife Desdemona (Caitlin FitzGerald) being unfaithful, her husband simply accepts it, something that speaks as much of misogyny as insecurity or insanity.  Jones is a thoroughly entertaining Iago, who tackles Shakespeare's elegant verse with a coarse vigour that helps explain why the other characters like him so much: he comes across as plainspoken, dowe to earth, and funny.  Why does he want to destroy Othello? Being overlooked for a promotion in favour of Luke Treadway’s dashing Cassio is the initial...

The works of US playwright Rajiv Joseph have occasionally been seen in the UK: most notably Jamie Lloyd directed his play Guards at the Taj, which had a seperate revival at the Orange Tree last year. Joseph’s biggest domestic hit, though, is 2009’s Pulitzer-nominated Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, which went on to transfer to Broadway in 2011, with the late, great Robin Williams in the role of the titular fast-talking tiger. Following the bewildered beast as he attempts to adjust to unexpected events in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, the dark, somewhat supernatural comedy clearly had its roots in the actual aftermath of the Second Iraq War and the US occupation that was still winding down when the play debuted. Presumably concern as to the play’s topicality may have partially explained why there has been no UK production since, but it feels likely that not actually being about a current situation may prove quite liberating, especially in the hands of this production’s director, mischievous surrealist Omar Elerian. There’s no star on the ludicrous scale of Williams, but David Threlfall is a decent name for the tiger, and there’s a juicy supporting cast that includes big name Arinzé Kene, who has presumably been sweet talked by Elerian – who directed his massively acclaimed play Misty – into the relatively supporting role of US marine Kev.

  At the National Theatre last Christmas, Max Webster’s vividly queer take on Oscar Wilde’s magnum opus felt quite a lot like The Ncuti Gatwa Show. Back on stage for the first time since he hit the big time, the Doctor Who actor’s stupendously arch take on dashing young protagonist Algernon Montcrieff had an ultra-knowing quality that defined the production. It’s very, very obvious that in Webster’s take, Algenon and his cousin-slash-BFF Jack are meant to be closeted gay men (it begins with a dragged up Algie writhing away at a grand piano, and doesn’t get noticiably straighter). But whereas Gatwa’s sardonically adult interpretation of Algernon seemed very aware of his own sexuality, that’s not necessarily the case in the West End cast. Gatwa’s replacement is fellow Russell T Davies alumnus Ollie Alexander, and he plays Algie with a waspish dandyishness that feels childish, not adult, a little boy roleplaying his whirlwind romance with Jessica Whitehurst’s bolshy Cicily. Likewise, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett‘s Jack is basically a gigantic overgrown puppy, wagging his tail in delight at the attentions of Kitty Hawthorn’s Gwendolyn, but with zero sexual intent.  All four ‘lovers’ go about their relationships with the breezy silliness of a group of primary schoolers playing mummies and daddies. Webster’s interpretation amps up Wilde’s wit by unburdening it of any need for us to believe in the romance. Indeed, the contrived plotting – Bunburying, the women only being into guys...

Video games are the medium for Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. The young artist uses them to ‘imaginatively archive and empower Black Trans stories’ - this isn’t just point-and-shoot, slack-jawed gaming for the sake of it, this is one of contemporary society’s most important cultural forms being used to give voice to marginalised identities. 

If you’re a non-disabled person, you may never have given any proper thought to the many ways in which the world is designed without regard for the needs of disabled members of our society.  Described as ‘both a celebration and a call to action’, this V&A exhibition seeks to rectify that, exploring the social history of design and disability from the 1940s to the present. Opening in summer 2025, it promises to highlight the contributions made by disabled, Deaf, and neurodiverse communities to art, design, fashion, photography and architecture, as well as outlining how design can be made more inclusive and accessible in the future.   

To the layperson, high-fashion shows can be a source of confusion. Why would anyone spend thousands on a dress constructed entirely of razor blades, or a pair of decrepit shoes that have been deliberately sullied or even torched? Well, because sometimes creating unwearable garments is actually the point, thank you very much. And that’s exactly what the Barbican’s latest fashion exhibition illustrates.  From the controversial £1,400 Balenciaga destroyed trainers, to Jordanluca’s pee-soaked jeans, and dresses that have been pulled out of bogs, Dirty Looks peers at the muckier side of fashion design. Don’t expect immaculate gowns displayed solemnly in glass cases. This isn’t a historical look at haute couture, or a glossy advert for a fashion house concealed inside a gallery show. The exhibition, featuring more than 120 garments from designers including Maison Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood and Issey Miyake, takes a clever thematic approach to the philosophy of dirt within fashion, showing how ideas around industrialisation, colonisation, the body, and waste, can be illustrated on the runway.  One particularly icky room is dedicated to bodily fluids, showing artificially sweat and period-stained garb, others to food stains, pieces made with rubbish and to trompe l’oeil faux-grimy clothing.Stand-out pieces include a torn and muddy lace dress from Alexander McQueen’s controversial ‘Highland Rape’ collection, a creepy Miss Havisham-esque Comme des Garçons...

The Anmatyerr artist Emily Kam Kngwarray only took up painting during the last decade of her life. Making up for lost time, she produced thousands of paintings in the years leading up to her death in 1996. She worked frenetically, changing her style multiple times. This, her first major European solo exhibition, presents just a sliver of her oeuvre. It’s an impressive introduction to a visionary artist and, to those unfamiliar with Aboriginal art, a new way of understanding art. Naturally, this show needs more exposition than most. It requires European audiences to let go of their art-historical baggage. For example, the colourful works on show here aren’t straightforwardly representational but it would be wrong to call them abstract. Rather than leave us to experience Kngwarray’s work on the familiar-but-inaccurate terms that define western art, the exhibition takes two rooms to provide a potted education on Aboriginal art and life and the artist’s place within it. Dreaming, for example, is an important religio-cultural term that pervades the exhibition, connecting Aboriginal Peoples with their ancestors through the land. This show needs more exposition than most The exhibition finds confident form in its third room, where more than a dozen large-scale acrylic paintings, all replete with coloured dots, surround a procession of batik prints on silk that hang from the ceiling. Interconnectedness is less a feature of these works than an underpinning of them. In each of the...

It’s not that long ago that British art bigwigs Gilbert & George grew so frustrated with what they saw as a lack of attention from the UK’s art institutions that they set up their very own museum dedicated to themselves. That big whinge seems a bit premature now that the Hayward is giving them a big exhibition looking at their work since the turn of the millennium, a period that has seen them satirising everything from hope and fear to sex and religion.

Every year, Tate Modern teams up with Hyundai for the Hyundai Commission – a chance for one artist to share an exciting new work in the museum’s iconic Turbine Hall. The chosen masterpiece that will be on display in 2025 will be announced in the coming months, but previous selections for the coveted spot include Mire Lee, Anicka Yi, El Anatsui, Superflex, Abraham Cruzvillegas, among others.

Get a dose of hip hop history at Somerset House this autumn, where the first major solo exhibition from British photographer Jennie Baptiste will be displayed. Having photographed everyone from NAS, to Jay Z, Estelle and Biggie Smalls, Baptiste’s work spanning the last three decades has been at the forefront of R&B, hip hop, fashion and youth culture, as she documented the influence of Black British communities on culture and art from the 1990s to today.   

Kerry James Marshall is an artist with a singular vision. He has become arguably the most important living American painter over the past few decades, with an ultra-distinctive body of work that celebrates the Black figure in an otherwise very ‘Western’ painting tradition. This big, ambitious show will be a joyful celebration of his lush, colourful approach to painting.

F Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that there are no second acts in American lives. The novelist might have changed his tune if he’d happened across a young model called Lee Miller back in the New York of the late 1920s.Even back then, in her pixie-cropped fashionista era, the New Yorker must have exuded an unquenchable thirst for discovery and reinvention. Fast forward 30 or so years and she’d been a muse for Man Ray and the Surrealist movement, starred in films, become a famous photographer, decamped to Paris, Cairo and London, traversed war-torn Europe as a daredevil journalist and finally, haunted by the conflict, holed in a cosy corner of Sussex to host arty parties and pioneer avant garde recipes like ‘onion upside down cake’ and ‘marshmallow Coca-Cola ice cream’. She died fêted as a celebrity chef. Second act? She had a folio’s worth.  All of those eras are up on the Tate Britain’s walls for the duration of the gallery’s blockbuster exhibition. Dividing Miller’s extraordinary career chronologically, it’s a time-travelling experience as well as a showcase of her technical and compositional skills. ‘Before the Camera’, shows her as a beautiful young model in NYC in 1926, the daughter of a keen amateur photographer. Walk through a dozen or so rooms and there she is, in Hitler’s bathtub, world-famous and hollowed out, returning to self-portraiture to capture a shattered continent in one image.   If the shimmery black-and-white portraits she took – from a playful Charlie...

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...