🎮 12 things to do in London this weekend with the kids (1–2 November)

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Big news!

If you’re in need of a reason to visit an Angus Steakhouse anytime soon (and I wouldn’t blame you, because it’s without a doubt the best steakhouse in London), you can now pair it with a trip to Leicester Square’s very first ice rink. I’m not sure which is more likely – that your kid breaks a tooth on the ice or on the absolutely delicious tough steak – but it’ll be worth the risk for such an exciting day out.

Skate Leicester Square (tagline: “Get your skates on in the West End”; so much for originality) opens this weekend. I’ve walked past the construction a few times and, I’ll admit, it does look… fine. Especially for a part of London that normally feels like punishment. The rink is ringed by Christmas market stalls, plus a bar serving hot chocolate and mulled wine for your post-skate thaw.

It’s no Somerset House or Natural History Museum, but what it lacks in style and magic it makes up for in relative cheapness: £15.50 for adults and £11.50 for under-12s. (By comparison, Somerset House will set you back £22 for adults and £12.50 for under-13s, while the Natural History Museum rink is… gone forever.)

So, swings and roundabouts. And a juicy Angus Steakhouse steak to round off the day.

If you’re not up for ice skating, here are some other marvellous things you can get up to this weekend. Enjoy!

Jeff xx

1: Travel through a U-rated afterlife with puppet-like characters, mariachi Radiohead and Ice Cube as a deity

The Book of Life (U)
Friday–Sunday, 11:00
The Garden Cinema, 39-41 Parker Street, WC2B 5PQ
Pay what you can
Age guidance: certificate “U”

The Book of Life is basically Coco, but more bonkers.

The plot goes like this: Manolo is supposed to be a macho bullfighter, but all he really wants to do is play guitar. He’s in a love triangle with his childhood friends María and Joaquín, which would be complicated enough without two gods of the underworld placing bets on who’ll win María’s heart. Cue divine meddling, a trip through the afterlife, and Manolo proving that love (and the right song) can get you out of almost anything.

I haven’t even started on the weird bits. To name just a few: the characters look like wooden puppets brought to life; there’s a god voiced by Ice Cube who speaks in modern slang; and the soundtrack includes mariachi covers of Radiohead’s Creep, Elvis’s Can’t Help Falling in Love and Mumford & Sons’ I Will Wait. It’s colourful and chaotic, and it occasionally feels like five different movies glued together. But I mean that in the best possible way.

First released in 2014, The Book of Life is screening at the Garden Cinema this weekend so that, in their words, “the smaller beings in our audience can enjoy a mildly macabre film of their own”. It’s U-rated, not too creepy, and a totally under-appreciated gem of its time that you can now enjoy together. And if you get tickets for the Friday screening, there are prizes for the best Halloween costume.

More information: https://www.thegardencinema.co.uk/film/the-book-of-life/

While you’re there…

👍️ It’s been forever since I mentioned Novelty Automation – an amusement arcade of satirical game machines. There’s an “expressive photo booth”, an “interactive divorce” and a “small hadron collider”, which are massive highlights for everyone who goes. Our favourite was probably the game where you assumed the role of an Amazon worker – collecting products from shelves as quickly as possible, and trying to achieve your zero-hours contract. It was also fun to fly a drone around a celebrity house, snapping photos of the people inside.

New arcade games are introduced regularly, and the website contains super-fun information and videos about how each one was made. (For example, see how the Expressive Photobook was made here.)

2: Learn how engineers build obstacle courses, then design your own giant version that actually works

Let’s Engineer Together
Saturday 1 November, 14:00–15:15
The Royal Institution of Great Britain, 21 Albemarle Street, W1S 4BS
Adults £17.27, under-17s £11.02
Age guidance: suitable for all

If there’s one thing my kids need help with, it’s building a working obstacle course. Their attempts are always horrendous: cushions balanced like unstable stepping stones, chairs jammed together into “tunnels” that collapse after two seconds, and tables enlisted for stunts that should come with a health warning. We’ve had more injuries from these improvised death traps than you’d get falling out of a tree.

Which is why I’m gutted I can’t make it to this “interactive talk” where kids learn how engineers design, build and test their creations – and then get to use those same ideas to build an obstacle course that actually holds together.

The organisers promise that “You’ll leave inspired and ready to make your own inventions at home,” which sounds brilliant, but be prepared to mourn the loss of your living room for a while.

The session is led by Shini Somara – a mechanical engineer, broadcaster and author who’s written STEM books for kids, presented for the BBC and PBS, and somehow still finds time to run Brunel University’s engineering programme. For parents, that’s reassuring (this isn’t just random obstacle chaos). For kids, it’s exciting: a proper inventor showing them how it’s done.

More information: https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/lets-engineer-together-family

3: See how a dropout with a camera became fashion’s favourite photographer and Hollywood’s confidant

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World
Saturday 10:30–21:00, Sunday 10:30–18:00 (and daily until 11 January)
National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, WC2H 0HE
Adults £23, 12–18s £11.50, under-12s free

Some people can turn their hand to anything and somehow end up world-class at it. I am not one of those people. My greatest achievement is a failsafe trick for putting in contact lenses the right way round, and even that will be obsolete once everyone has x-ray laser vision beamed directly into their skulls.

Cecil Beaton, on the other hand, was one of those people. He didn’t even finish his degree – that thing we’re all told is the absolute minimum proof of usefulness in the modern world – and yet he became one of the most celebrated photographers of the twentieth century. Then, when he’d had his fill of that, he glided into set and costume design, won Oscars for it, and moonlighted as a war photographer.

This exhibition wisely sticks to just one of Beaton’s talents – photography – because if it tried to cram in all the others, visitors would leave in a jealous rage. Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World brings together more than 200 photographs, letters and sketches, tracing his rise from photographing the Bright Young Things – drama-hungry 1920s socialites who treated attention-seeking as a full-time job – to glossy fashion spreads and glittering Hollywood icons in the post-war years.

On the walls you’ll find the roll-call of 20th-century fame – Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando doing their best smouldering – alongside the Queen and Princess Margaret, who were definitely not smouldering because can you imagine?? No one wants to see royal grandmas being sexy.

Alongside the movie stars and monarchs, there are also portraits of artists including Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Salvador Dalí – because Beaton’s circle spanned pretty much every kind of fame going. No offence to my own friends, but wow did he know some cool people.

Anyway. All this glamour has made me realise I should probably empty the dishwasher.

More information: https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2025/cecil-beaton/

While you’re there…

👍️ So this is a weird one. There’s a pub called the Sherlock Holmes, which you’d expect to be on Baker Street but it isn’t: it’s on Northumberland Avenue. It looks like any other pub, but if you head upstairs you’ll see that the dining room contains a life-size recreation of Holmes and Watson’s 221B Baker Street apartment – complete with pipe, violin, chemistry kit and bullet-scarred “VR” on the wall.

The set was originally built as part of the 1951 Festival of Britain, and when the festival ended, the entire exhibit was moved into what was then the Northumberland Arms. In 1957, the pub was renamed the Sherlock Holmes.

4: Play quizzes, puzzles and challenges on your phone in a comedy game show for the whole family

WiFi Wars
Saturday 1 November, 15:00 and 19:00
artsdepot, 5 Nether Street, Tally Ho Corner, N12 0GA
£13.75 per person
Age guidance: 6+

Here’s a line that’s depressingly guaranteed to work with your kids: “If you get your socks and shoes and jumper and coat on now, and if you do a wee without me asking twice… we can go to a show where you’ll be allowed to mess around with a smartphone for an entire hour and possibly win prizes.”

To be fair to WiFi Wars, this isn’t just screen time – it’s a full-on comedy game show where everyone in the audience is roped into playing quizzes, puzzles and daft challenges that count as “quality family time” in 2025.

It’s hosted by Steve McNeil (of Go 8 Bit fame) and Rob Sedgebeer, who keep the whole thing moving while gleefully exposing just how competitive families can get. Just make sure your device is fully charged – nothing ruins family bonding faster than a low-battery warning at level three.

More information: https://www.artsdepot.co.uk/event/wifi-wars-3/

While you’re there…

👍️ Clowntown isn’t far away. Setting aside the lack of clowns, it’s exactly what you imagine: a huge indoor play space with soft play, ball ponds, slides, toddler areas, arcades and sensory zones.

5: Experience live pop-up performances, digital experiments and interactive works across Somerset House

Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies
Saturday 10:00–20:00, Sunday 10:00–18:00 (and Tuesday–Sunday until 22 February)
Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
Adults £21.50, 12–16s £19, 6–11s £10, under-6s free

Did you ever see that Radiohead video for Lotus Flower – the one where Thom Yorke looked like he was spasming rather than dancing? It became an instant internet moment with a “Dancing Thom Yorke” meme, endless remixes and a trending hashtag (#thomdance) that even Yorke admitted gave him a “massive kick” (despite having been mortified on seeing the video himself).

The most surprising thing about the video? What looked like malcoordinated flailing was, in fact, choreographed. By a man named Wayne McGregor. The same man who was hired as “movement director” for the Yule Ball scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And the same man who choreographed Chroma for the Royal Ballet – a work set to The White Stripes and Joby Talbot, now considered a modern classic.

So no, this is not a man you can pigeonhole. Because OH MY GOSHING GOODNESS: he also choreographed ABBA Voyage.

And now you can experience his genius up close at Somerset House, where Infinite Bodies takes over the Embankment Galleries. Instead of a standard “look at some costumes behind glass” set-up, it’s an immersive mix of installations, performances and digital experiments from across his 30-year career – movement, technology and art colliding – with the bonus possibility of McGregor’s own dancers appearing unannounced to bring it all to life right in front of you. The project even spills out to Stone Nest in the West End – because once you’ve choreographed Radiohead and ABBA, a single gallery probably feels a bit cramped.

Alongside the installations, you’ll find talks, workshops and music – the sort of extras that make it feel less like an exhibition and more like an event. It all sounds utterly insane, and I just hope it’s half as good as it seems.

More information: https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/wayne-mcgregor-infinite-bodies

While you’re there…

👍️ Want to see how 19th-century London dealt with men peeing in alleyways? Head to Clifford’s Inn Passage, a little cut-through off Fleet Street that was once notorious for drunken detours.

So much urine hit the walls here that the brickwork started to corrode, so “urine deflectors” were installed: long strips of angled metal designed to funnel the stream into the gutter. The gentlemen of the time were NOT happy, since more often than not, their pee ended up splashing straight back onto their shoes.

👍️ Pose for a picture outside 10 Downing Street. I mean 10 Adam Street. The doors look identical, so you may as well try to fool as many people as you can.

6–12: More, more, more, more, more, more! (Including some events that are available during half-term week)

Judith Kerr's Mog the Forgetful Cat
Wednesday 29 October–Sunday 2 November, 11:00 and 14:00
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
£16–£29 per person
Age guidance: 3+

“Mog is a very forgetful cat. She forgets that she has a cat flap, she forgets that she’s already eaten her supper, and she forgets that cats don’t have eggs for breakfast every day. Bother that cat!

But Mog’s forgetfulness can come in handy…

Come along for the ride as she catches a burglar, gatecrashes a cat show, goes to the V.E.T. and gets to eat lots and lots of eggs.

Based on the bestselling Mog picture book series by Judith Kerr, published by HarperCollins Children’s Books, and adapted for the stage by The Wardrobe Ensemble.”

Hare and Tortoise
Saturday 1 November, 11:00 and 14:00
Half Moon Young People’s Theatre, 43 White Horse Road, London E1 0ND
£9 per person
Age guidance: 3+

“Two unlikely friends – the speedy, confident Hare and the calm, steady Tortoise – meet for the greatest race on Earth. A race filled with suspense, surprises and a nail-biting, medal-winning finish. Ready… Steady… Is it time to GO?

This playful and imaginative adaptation of Aesop’s classic fable is brimming with fun, live music, unforgettable songs and delightful characters who learn that slow and steady wins the race.

The story unfolds across the seasons – from the blossoming days of spring, through the fun of summer, to the icy sparkle of winter.

Guided by our storyteller, this heartwarming tale explores patience, friendship, and what it means to grow up.”

Family Film Week at Barbican
Until Sunday 2 November, various times (see website)
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
Adults £5, under-18s £2.50
Age guidance: varies (see individual film listings)

“The place to be this October half-term, with a week full of film screenings and activities designed to inspire and delight your little ones.

See gorgeous animations, from independent gems rich with stories from around the world to the most talked about films right now. Introduce the family to your favourite classics and a chance to see the biggest films you might have missed.”

Halloween at Kew
Until 2 November, sessions between 16:00 and 22:00 (last time slot entry at 20:30)
Adults £18.50–£22, 4–15s £13–£16, under-4s free
Kew Gardens, Kew, TW9 3AE
Age guidance: suitable for all

“Discover a thrilling after dark Halloween trail full of hidden surprises.

As night falls over the Gardens, explore one of London’s best Halloween events with this eerie illuminated trail.

Watch out for tricks in the forgotten fairground and beware the monsters lurking in Frankenstein’s laboratory. As you wind through the haunted woods, be careful of giant spiders waiting in creepy cobwebs, ghastly ghouls and wicked witches.”

Family Disco Halloween Special
Sunday 2 November, 11:00–12:30 and 14:30–16:00
Big Penny Social, 1 Priestley Way, E17 6AL
£7 per person (under-3s free)

“Dress up and join the family fun this Halloween with our resident party starters, duo Ray & CC, as they bring you the coolest disco in town. Bubbles, interactive games, prizes and singalongs - all to a playlist of their favourite tunes that kids AND parents will want to boogie to with some spooky tunes thrown in.”

The Wrong Trousers / A Grand Day Out: Wallace & Gromit with Live Brass Band
Sunday 2 November, 14:00 (The Wrong Trousers) and 16:00 (A Grand Day Out)
Woolwich Works, The Fireworks Factory, 11 No. 1 Street, SE18 6HD
£16.50 per ticket per film (15% discount if buying tickets for both films)
Age guidance: suitable for all

“Join the renowned Fairey Band for not one, but two unforgettable musical adventures with Wallace and Gromit! This special Sunday afternoon presents a delightful double feature celebrating our favorite cheese-loving inventor and his loyal canine companion.

The Wrong Trousers: Experience a selection of upbeat, crowd-pleasing musical favorites performed by the Fairey Band, followed by Julian Nott's complete musical score accompanying Wallace and Gromit's hilarious and suspenseful encounter with the mysterious penguin lodger.

A Grand Day Out: The show opens with spectacular space-themed music celebrating humanity's fascination with the cosmos, including Richard Strauss's "Also sprach Zarathustra" (AKA 2001 a Space Odyssey) alongside legendary compositions by John Williams. The performance culminates with Julian Nott's complete score to "A Grand Day Out," following our heroes on their charming expedition to the moon.