Hey DILFs!

This weekend I’m heading to see Horrible Histories: Barmy Britain. I’ll tell you all about it next week, but it’s only playing until 31 August – so I thought I’d give you a heads-up now, in case you fancy booking before I’ve had a chance to tell you whether it’s any good.

Barmy Britain is based on the magnificent Horrible Histories TV series, itself based on Terry Deary’s books – and you’ll spot Horrible Histories again further down this newsletter, because they seem to have their fingerprints all over London at the moment. And that’s fine by me: they introduced one of my sons to the story of Helen of Troy by turning it into an inner-city melodrama, and for that they have my eternal gratitude. They also taught him about various ancient Greek ideas via a Come Dine With Me spoof. The parody went entirely over his head, but the philosophy seems to have stuck. 

The stage show keeps things closer to home, concentrating entirely on the bonkersness and gruesomeness that Britain has produced over the centuries.

The hosts whizz through stories about William the Conqueror, King John and his Magna Carta, Guy Fawkes, Boudicca, Dick Turpin and more – all told through sketches, puppetry, songs, poo jokes and actual poo. Or something pretending to be poo.

As with the TV show, there are lots of pastiches that parents will definitely get – such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and The Only Way is Essex – which should keep us suitably entertained between the copious amounts of defecation.

Of course, all of this is based on press releases and reviews from previous years. I’ll report back next week – although I’m already about 99.9% certain I’m going to love it, so you may not want to wait for my official verdict before booking. 

Here’s the link to book: https://theapollotheatre.co.uk/tickets/horrible-histories-barmy-britain-the-best-bits/ 

And now for everything else you can do this weekend…

Enjoy!

Jeff xx

Imagining Animals at the Tower of London
Daily until 31 August (excluding 25 August), 11:00–16:00
Tower of London, EC3N 4AB
Free with admission (adults £37, 5–15s £18.50, under-5s free)
Age guidance: suitable for all

Do you remember when Barack Obama gave Queen Elizabeth II an iPod loaded with a personally selected playlist? Some commenters thought it was fabulously inappropriate, while others believed it to be a breath of fresh air – something useful and meaningful rather than, for example, the ornate model of a Dhow sailing vessel given to the Queen by The Amir of Qatar in 2022, or the goodie bag of Spiderman gifts the Countess of Wessex received in 2019.

Most could agree that, whether appropriate or not, it was definitely funny to give an 82-year-old monarch an MP3 player pre-loaded with Broadway showtunes and footage of Obama’s inauguration.

Oh, how easily shocked we’ve become.

If only we had a Royal Gifts Register back in the 1200s – because then we’d realise that, as ridiculous as it might seem to give the Duke of Cambridge a portable battery, it’s nothing compared with the THREE LIONS given to Henry III by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in 1235. Or the POLAR BEAR he received from King Haakon IV of Norway in 1252. Or the ELEPHANT Louis IX of France lumbered him with in 1255.

And that’s basically how the Tower of London ended up with its own zoo: people kept giving the King animals. The royal menagerie grew and grew over the centuries, eventually housing everything from tigers and monkeys to zebras, alligators and kangaroos, and opening up to ordinary visitors along the way. It lasted for more than 600 years, until the Duke of Wellington decided that a royal fortress probably didn’t need quite so many wild animals – or the crowds of people coming to gawp at them. Most of the royal collection was moved to the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park – now London Zoo – from 1831, and the last remaining animals finally left the Tower in 1835.

And now, 191 years later, the animals are back... ish. 

For just 12 days, the Tower is being taken over by a new menagerie – only this time, the animals are enormous puppets. There’s no timetable or designated performance area: as you explore the Tower, you might stumble across a bear wandering through the parade ground, butterflies fluttering past, a giant snake slithering around the grounds, or any number of other creatures appearing and disappearing without warning.

There are 30 puppeteers, dancers and musicians involved altogether, with live music, movement and sound accompanying the animals as they roam. Some are based on creatures that really did live in the Royal Menagerie, while others have absolutely no historical excuse for being there.

There are a couple of things you can actually plan for: at around 13:00 and 15:15, families can join a beetle dance on the South Lawn, while shortly afterwards everyone gathers outside the Crown Jewels to collectively “imagine a big animal”. I have absolutely no idea what that means, but I’m intrigued.

Otherwise, the idea is to wander around the Tower as normal – seeing the Crown Jewels, White Tower and everything else – and wait to see what crosses your path.

Find out more: https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/whats-on/imagining-animals/ 

👍️ Tower Bridge is right there – and you can go up it, lie down on the transparent floor and take a photo using the mirrored ceiling above you. When we went, it was UNBELIEVABLE how many visitors wouldn’t even set foot on the glass floor – and they squealed in shock when we did it. Wusses. There’s much more to do as part of the Tower Bridge experience, but the glass floor is the highlight – even if you just watch others “bravely risking their lives” when stepping on it. 

👍️ There’s a hotel nearby called CitizenM, which has a huge, fantastic lobby that children seem to love. There are comfy seats everywhere, fun-looking books and magazines, and it’s generally just a great place to hang out. The lobby serves coffees and various snacks.

👍️ Over the river, across Tower Bridge, is Shad Thames – one of the most beautiful streets in London (check out some photos here). There are plenty of places to eat and get a drink here, and there’s also a Shad Thames Trail if you want to dig into the genuinely interesting history of the place.

Childhood in War
Daily until 28 February 2027, 10:00–18:00
Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, SE1 6HZ
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all

I became a bit of a WWII buff as an nine-year-old. There was a newspaper supplement series about WWII and I collected them all in a transparent plastic folder, reading the information over and over. I took them to school one day and tried to get my teachers interested in my collection, but they seemed a bit embarrassed for me. (I think that’s because the supplement series was from the Daily Mail. Don’t judge: it’s not like I got to choose the family newspaper.)

More amenable to my teachers was Goodnight Mister Tom, which I read exactly 24 times, and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, which clocked up at least a dozen reads. There were lots of other books I read too – all historical fiction of sorts, following children who grew up in that era.

Those books still hold up today, and I’ve kept my own copies from childhood because I'm hoping my own kids will want to read them. But WWII is inevitably more distant for them than it was for me: my grandparents were children during the war and lived through post-war rationing; their grandparents grew up with colour TV and Findus Crispy Pancakes. So I’m hoping this exhibition might finally get them interested in WWII without me having to bang on about it.

Childhood in War is the Ronseal of exhibition names. Its aim is to look at how war affects childhood and children – not just WWII, but many of the wars we’ve had the misfortune to experience up until now.

An awful lot of ground is covered – often through reconstructed environments including a Second World War bedroom, a Cold War living room and kitchen, a wartime classroom, and a full-size railway carriage recreating the experience of evacuation. There are also objects that belonged to evacuated children, including teddy bears and letters begging their parents to bring them home.

There’s propaganda aimed at children and their parents, spanning conflicts from more than a century ago right up to Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. There are pamphlets telling guardians of evacuated children how to deal with bedwetting, and advice on how to read a schoolbook when the power supply is interrupted.

From what I can tell, there aren’t designated spaces for the different wars: they’re all kind of intermingled. And that’s arguably by design – to show us how children are always children, regardless of the conflict or the era. The children’s own words drive that home too: letters and messages from WWII, Afghanistan and Ukraine often sound remarkably similar, despite being written decades apart.

The information panels are often placed at a child-friendly height and written in a way that’s easy for children to understand. Some reviewers reckon they may have overcorrected here – that is, it can get a bit boring. But there are plenty of gut punches too – not least the cuddly toys children took with them when they were evacuated from their homes.

Find out more: https://www.iwm.org.uk/events/childhood-in-war 

👍️ If you can handle a bit more “war stuff”, there’s loads more to see. The First World War Galleries have more than 1,300 objects, plus a recreated trench you can walk through, while the Second World War Galleries are packed with uniforms, weapons, personal belongings, photographs and wartime equipment. They also contain lots of personal stories that make everything feel a lot more real. For over-14s, there’s the Holocaust Galleries, which use photographs, letters, belongings and other objects to tell the stories of individual people who lived through it.

Ertza Dance – Otempodiz
Saturday 22 August, 13:00 and 15:00
Bell Square, Hounslow High Street, TW3 3HH
FREE – no booking required
Age guidance: suitable for all

There’s a book called The Culture Map by Erin Meyer, about all the ways people from different cultures can look at exactly the same thing and see it completely differently.

Take addresses. In China, they traditionally work from the biggest thing to the smallest: province, city, district, block, house. In the West, we do the opposite. And in one experiment Meyer discusses, Americans and Japanese people were asked to photograph someone: the Americans tended to zoom in on the person’s face, while the Japanese stood further back and included much more of their surroundings.

The theory is that Chinese and other East Asian cultures tend to start with the overall context and work inwards; Western cultures tend to start with the individual thing and work outwards.

And then there’s time. Because apparently we can’t even agree on how that works.

Otempodiz, a dance performance coming to Bell Square this Saturday, is based on the idea that in the West, we treat time as something to be counted, measured, planned, organised, bought and sold. We’re always checking it, arranging things around it, trying to save it – and complaining that we don’t have enough of it.

In many African cultures, the show's creators say, it’s completely different. Time is something people live rather than measure; something they have or make rather than something that’s constantly running out. As the line behind the show puts it: “You have the watches, but we have the time.”

So how do you turn all that into a dance? In Otempodiz, two acrobatic performers use dance and acrobatics to explore their different relationships with time – and work out how to meet somewhere in the middle.

It sounds dangerously highbrow for something I’m recommending you take your children to, but there is a lot of throwing people around. And while understanding the idea behind it will probably add something to the experience, it clearly doesn’t matter if your kids don’t notice any of that: they can just enjoy watching two incredibly talented performers tumble, chase each other around and somehow flow from one impossible-looking movement into the next. My body does not do this.

Best of all, it’s completely free and there’s no need to book.

Something to be aware of: Bell Square says the show lasts 55 minutes and describes the performers as an acrobat and a juggler. Everywhere else I can find says it lasts 25 minutes, and the footage I’ve watched doesn’t appear to involve any juggling. I’ve asked Bell Square for clarification, but for now I’d allow 55 minutes and consider any juggling a bonus.

Find out more: https://www.bellsquarelondon.com/ertza-otempodiz 

👍️ “The George” is the 11th most common pub name in the UK, so there’s absolutely nothing remarkable about finding one in Hounslow. Except this particular George pub doesn’t serve cheese ploughman’s, pies or Sunday roasts. It serves Georgian food. As in Georgia. As in the country. I have no idea whether they opened a Georgian restaurant and worked backwards from the pun, but I desperately hope they did. (The food looks incredible, by the way.)

Horrible Histories at Ramses and the Pharaohs' Gold: The Exhibition
Until 13 September, 11:00, 13:00 and 15:00
Battersea Power Station, 2 Circus Road East, SW11 8DQ
Adults £32.95, 5–15s £16.95, under-5s free
Age guidance: 5+

When I wrote about the Ramses and the Pharaohs’ Gold exhibition, it hadn’t yet opened in London – so all I had to go on were press releases and reviews of the same exhibition in other countries.

I’ve since been, and I reckon I got it pretty much spot on. It really is loaded with objects from Ramses’ empire: coffins, statues, jewellery and burial goods created thousands of years ago, many of which have travelled outside of Egypt for the very first time.

There are also large-scale projections of battles and immersive galleries, but the most impressive bit is Ramses’ own coffin – the actual wooden sarcophagus that once held his mummified body.

The problem, though, is that there’s not really a thread weaving it all together – especially as much of the exhibition consists of random royal treasures from later Egyptian rulers. It’s all fascinating if you’re a pint-sized Egyptologist or a grown-up with the patience to read an information board, but for children who are used to museums designed around them – like the Young V&A or Wonderlab – this place is just a bit more of a hard sell.

Unfortunately for Ramses, he’s trying to impress London children during the summer holidays. And these people have OPTIONS – which means the actual 3,000-year-old coffin of Ramses II just isn't going to cut it.

So the organisers have basically done the exhibition equivalent of bringing Beyoncé on as your wedding singer: they've got Horrible Histories involved for a special live tour. Slam friggin’ dunk.

The Horrible Histories tour involves being guided through the galleries by a man who pretends to be Ramses. There’s lots of typical HH humour as Ramsesn't (as I’m calling him) tells you some disgusting facts about death and decay, shows you what happens in the Afterlife, and introduces you to a real-life Pharaoh (or Faux-raoh, according to me). Then after the tour, there’s a live performance with audience participation and something called the Mummy Rap – and I cannot overstate how much I want to see the Mummy Rap.

As is becoming tradition, I haven’t been to this one either yet, but I – like you – need to get a wriggle on. It’s open for just over one more week. So if you want to see Ramsesn't before he returns to the Afterlife, you know what to do.

Find out more: http://fever.pxf.io/OYEmNP 

Arts Emergency: Explore
Saturday 22 August, from 14:00
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
FREE – no ticket required
Age guidance: suitable for all (“After 9pm the content may be more suitable for adults”)

Brooklyn Beckham epitomises the adage “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” He doesn’t know about photographing elephants or making a sandwich from scratch, but he does know his footballer father, his Spice Girl/fashion designer mother, his legendary musician godfather (Elton John), and his VERY rich father-in-law (Nelson Peltz) – so he can try and fail at a gazillion careers (while somehow making money from them all) without ever having to work out how to get his foot in the door.

And good for him: I’d do exactly the same. But it would also be nice if the people who actually know what they’re doing occasionally got a shot too.

And that’s pretty much the idea behind Arts Emergency. It was set up by comedian Josie Long and activist Neil Griffiths as an “Alternative Old Boys’ Network” for the arts – a way of giving young people who want to work in creative industries, but don’t have well-connected parents, some well-connected people of their own.

If you’re 16 and want to become a filmmaker, writer, musician or whatever else, but nobody in your family has the faintest idea how you actually become one, Arts Emergency can match you with someone who does. There’s one-to-one mentoring, introductions, work opportunities and a whole network of people working in the creative industries who can help with all the useful stuff that Brooklyn Beckham presumably gets over Sunday lunch.

And that brings us to the Southbank Centre, which has handed over two days of its summer programme to members of Arts Emergency’s Young Community – young people who’ve come through the charity and are now getting paid to curate actual events at one of the biggest arts venues in the country.

They’ve spent the summer working with a professional producer, scouting performers and putting together the line-up.

The brief was to explore the “spirit of youth”, and they’ve gone BIG: there are DJs, line dancing, Afro-Latin salsa, live music and a pop-up photobooth, plus artist Camille Dawson is creating an enormous collective diary filled with visitors’ most embarrassing, joyful, unexpected and generally formative memories of growing up.

I love the whole thing. Arts Emergency helps young people get the sort of connections they weren’t born with, and now some of them are being paid to take over the Southbank Centre for a weekend. Basically: all the benefits of nepotism, with considerably less nepotism.

Find out more: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/arts-emergency-explore/ 

👍️ The Arts Emergency lot are back on Sunday too, this time with five hours of free open-air comedy from 13:00. The line-up hasn't been announced yet, so keep an eye out here.

This section now brings together both new events I don’t have room to expand on and selected older ones from past newsletters that are still running. If you see a “(see my write-up here)”, that’s your cue to click through and rediscover whatever Past Me felt strongly enough to write about.

Jeeves and Wooster in “Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves”
Until 4 September, various start times (matinees on some dates only)
St Paul’s Church (aka The Actors’ Church), Bedford Street, WC2E 9ED
Adults £26, under-16s £21
Age guidance: 7+

The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Until 30 August, 11:00 and/or 14:00 and/or 16:00
Little Angel Theatre, 14 Dagmar Passage, N1 2DN
Adults £15.50, under-17s £13.50
Age guidance: 6+

ZOG – Live on Stage (see my write-up here)
Daily until 23 August, 10:30 and/or 13:00 and/or 15:30
Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, SW1X 9DQ
£19.50–£29.50 per person
Age guidance: 3+

Electric Summer (see my write-up here)
Daily until 31 August, 10:00–22:00
The Coaling Jetty, Battersea Power Station Pier, SW8 4NR
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all

Kaspar: Prince of Cats (see my write-up here)
Until 29 August, various start times
St Paul’s Church (aka The Actors’ Church), Bedford Street, WC2E 9ED
Adults £20, under-16s £18 (including booking fees) BUUUUUT I’ve spotted much cheaper tickets via Groupon. Remember to use the code TOGETHER for even more money off. You love me, I know.)
Age guidance: 3+

Miffy Afternoon Tea (see my write-up here)
Wednesday–Sunday until 31 August, 11:30, 13:30, 15:30 and 17:30
Cutter & Squidge, 20 Brewer Street, W1F 0SJ
Adults £45, children £25

Summer Sounds Music Festival
Daily until 23 August, various performance start times (Family Sunday performances 13:00–18:00)
Coal Drops Yard, Stable Street, N1C 4DQ
FREE

Anansi the Spider
Until 6 September, 10:30 and 14:00 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays; 10:15 on Saturdays
Picnic Lawn, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, The Regent's Park, Inner Circle, NW1 4NU
Adults £18, under-18s £15
Age guidance: 4+ (under-4s are permitted but everyone aged 2 and over must have their own ticket)

Blub
Thursday–Sunday until 23 August, 10:30, 12:30 and 15:30
Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, SW19 1SB
Adult + child £28.50 (including booking fee)
Age guidance: 6–18 months

Brainiac Live (see my write-up here)
Until 30 August, 11:30 and/or 14:30
Garrick Theatre, 2 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0HH
£19.50–£36 per person
Age guidance: 5+

Dinosaur World Live (see my write-up here)
Until 6 September, 11:00 and/or 14:00
Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre, 3 Fulton Road, Wembley, HA9 0SP
£10–£27 per person
Age guidance: 3+ (but see warning below)

Uniqlo Tate Play: Lina Lapelytė, Serendipity Island (see my write-up here)
Daily until 31 August, 10:30–18:00
Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all

Story Street x the LEGO Group (see my write-up here)
Until 31 August, 11:00–16:00
Discover Children’s Story Centre, 383–387 High Street, E15 4QZ
Free with admission (adults and children aged 1+ £11, children aged 0–1 free)
Age guidance: suitable for all

The Enormous Crocodile (see my write-up here)
Until 22 August, various start times (see website)
Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, Lyric Square, King Street, W6 0QL
£15–£25 per person
Age guidance: 3+

The Comedy About Spies
Until 26 September, 14:30 and/or 19:30
Adelphi Theatre, Strand, WC2R 0NS
£20–£145 (tickets for a family of 4 from £80)
Age guidance: 10+

Cats (see my write-up here)
Until 19 September, 14:00 and/or 19:45
Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, The Regent's Park, Inner Circle, NW1 4NU
£15–£97.50 per person
Age guidance: 5+

Summer in the Park 2026 (see my write-up here)
Until 30 August, various times depending on the activity
Brent Cross Town Pavilion, 145 Claremont Road, NW2 1FE
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all

The Gruffalo (see my write-up here)
Until 6 September, various start times (see website)
Lyric Theatre, 29 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 7ES
£10–£29.50 per person
Age guidance: 3+

The Timewalk Exhibition – An Immersive Journey Through Civilisations (see my write-up here)
Until 30 September, various timeslots throughout each day
Immerse LDN, Excel Waterfront, ExCel, E16 1XL
Adults £31.50, 4–15s £25, under-4s free (no ticket needed)
Age guidance: suitable for all

M.C. Escher: The Exhibition (see my write-up here)
Daily until 6 September, entry slots throughout the day
Embankment Galleries, Somerset House, Strand, WC2R 1LA
Adults £24.50, 4–12s £15.50, under-4s free (family tickets are also available)
Age guidance: suitable for all

Frida: The Making of an Icon (see my write-up here)
Until 3 January, 2027, 10:00–18:00 (until 21:00 on Fridays and Saturdays)
Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG
Adults £25, 12–18s £4.37, under-12s free

House of Dreamers (see my write-up here)
Daily until 30 September, timeslots throughout the day
Immerse LDN, Excel Waterfront, ExCel, E16 1XL
Adults £28.90, 3–12s £23.90, under-3s free
Age guidance: suitable for all

Jeppe Hein: Appearing Rooms (see my write-up here)
Wednesday–Sunday until 31 August, 10:00–21:00
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
Free – just show up
Age guidance: suitable for all

Summer Exhibition 2026 (see my write-up here)
Tuesday–Sunday until 23 August, 10:00–18:00 (Fridays until 21:00)
Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1J 0BD
Adults £23, under-16s free

King’s Cross Pétanque (see my write-up here)
Until Wednesday 30 September, 09:00–21:00
Pancras Square, King's Cross, N1C 4AG
FREE – just turn up
Age guidance: suitable for all

1996: 30 years on (see my write-up here)
Mondays–Saturdays until 19 September, 09:30–various closing times depending on the day
Barbican Music Library, Barbican Library, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
FREE – no booking required
Age guidance: suitable for all

Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait (see my write-up here)
Daily until 6 September, 10:30–18:00 (Friday and Saturday until 21:00)
National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, WC2H 0HE
Adults £27, under-26s £5, under-12s free

Beano Havoc at Hampton Court Palace
Wednesday–Sunday until 23 August, 10:00–17:30
Hampton Court Palace, East Molesey, KT8 9AU
Free with palace admission (adults £32, children 5–15 £16, children 0–4 free)