Last updated on December 28th, 2023Move over Henry VIII: you’ve had your day. There’s a new dawn at Hampton Court Palace, and it’s Queen Anne’s turn to be in the limelight. Thanks to Yorgos Lanthimos’s baroque tour de force: The Favourite, Queen Anne is finally, and deservedly, taking centre stage in British history. Winner of…
15 reasons to visit Bankside
Last updated on December 28th, 2023Bankside was once a cacophonous pleasure zone with brothels, bear-baiting, gaming dens and four Tudor theatres: The Globe, The Rose, the Swan and the Hope. Shakespeare and Dickens lived here. Samuel Pepys watched the Great Fire light up the London sky from here in 1666. So, if you’re visiting London,…
Prince and Patron at Buckingham Palace
Last updated on March 9th, 2019It’s hard to pick a favourite at Prince and Patron, Buckingham Palace, an exhibition marking the 70th birthday of His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. The 100 works which have been stuffed into the Palace’s Ball Supper Room were personally chosen by the Prince from the Royal Collection, the…
A Tour of Turner’s House in London
Last updated on May 15th, 2022Most people I speak to don’t know about Turner’s house in Twickenham. You won’t see his famous seascapes in Sandycombe Lodge, his west London home in the borough of Richmond-upon-Thames, but you will be in the presence of the only three-dimensional work of art Joseph Mallord William Turner’sleft behind: the…
Sex, Lies and Paint – Picasso 1932 at Tate Modern
Last updated on December 28th, 2023Pablo Picasso’s output in 1932 was so prolific that Tate Modern was unable to list all of these in the seven-page chronology for its formidable new exhibition, Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy, which opened today. I am greeted by a quote when I enter the first room: “the work…
Charles I at the Royal Academy
Last updated on April 22nd, 2018Drum roll please, I am about to tell you about an exhibition worth curtsying for, a show fit for royalty. It has pomp, it has circumstance, and its hero is the bad boy of the British royal family, the king who takes the prize for being the first, and last,…
Floating Palaces at the V&A
Last updated on September 1st, 2018Ocean Liners: Speed and Style at the Victoria and Albert museum is an exhibition with some serious swagger. You might want to dress up for this one, as it’s all about the glitz and the glamour of the golden age of travel, and it might leave you feeling, well, a…
Afternoon Tea at the Houses of Parliament
Last updated on February 3rd, 2020The Palace of Westminster, or Houses of Parliament as it’s commonly referred to, is one of London’s ultimate tourist hot spots, even if Big Ben is hibernating for the next three years whilst he gets a makeover. When I first arrived in London in the late 1980s, I would count…
King of Bling: Charles II at the Queen’s Gallery
Last updated on September 13th, 2018The English weren’t as partial to the chopping of a royal head as the French were, but the story of this exhibition starts with the trial of Charles I, the ill-fated king whose head was to be severed from his body on the 30 January 1649. Fast forward to 1660…
Art Review – Modigliani at Tate Modern
Last updated on April 22nd, 2018I am doing something remarkable. I am a voyeur in an artist’s studio in Paris – in Montparnasse to be exact – for a full six and a half minutes. But, I am actually in London. I am gazing out of Amedeo Modigliani’s studio window, towards the smoky chimney tops…