Things to do in London today

‘Titanic: The Exhibition’ will take visitors on a journey through the commissioning of the ship, and the huge publicity surrounding its first crossing of the Atlantic, bound for New York. Along with firsthand testimonies and objects, there will be detailed recreations of the ship’s interiors, based on contemporary photographs and the input of Titanic experts. It’s also a chance to see some of the actual artefacts from the ship, many never displayed before in the UK, and experience the disaster at first hand (in a good way). 

The various lockdowns of the last year have shown us that without pubs, London could never be its chatty, chaotic and slightly tipsy self. There are thousands here and they come in many forms: your old man boozers with crap carpets permanently sticky from decades of spilled beer, your craft-beer hipster hotspots, your questionably soundtracked 3am blurs and more. Our 100 best pubs list exists to celebrate London’s taprooms in their many guises. From the perfect pubs for drinking alone to the best boozers for giant yorkshire puddings – get stuck in, spot your local and maybe find a new favourite.

Francis Bacon’s art is a physical experience. It assaults you, it leers off the walls at you. Every figure in this exhibition is twisted and contorted, every face is screaming, every orifice is bleeding. It’s claustrophobic, violent, and properly overpowering. And it’s totally brilliant. Bacon is one of the great masters of twentieth-century art, and this exhibition focuses on the influence of animal figures on his painting. It turns out that the brutality of the animal kingdom pulses through the veins of almost everything he did. This is a huge, daunting, breathtaking show, filled with violence and blood. It leaves you uncomfortable, physically affected by what you’ve seen. Bacon makes you lose faith in humanity, in our morality and culture and superiority. You can dress it up any way you like, but in the end, we’re all just animals.

Explore the impact Caribbean people have made on transportation in London at London Transport Museum. 'Legacies: London Transport's Caribbean Workforce' features stories from Caribbean people who worked for what is now Transport for London, many of whom came to London in the postwar years in search of a better life. The exhibit highlights the triumps and challenges they experienced, and the major influence that London’s Caribbean communities have had on the city’s culture, particularly highlighting events like Notting Hill Carnival and recent Tube station art campaigns.

Yes, it’s pretty darn cold out there. Sure, the trees are fairly bare. But we’re lucky to have some amazing parks and green spaces in London, and walking around in them is genuinely one of life’s great joys. Dig out your cosiest scarf, pack a flask of hot tea and head out there for a bracing stroll!

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Did the unnamed protagonist of ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ really fight terrible extradimensional monsters as a 12-year-old, accompanied by his irrepressible, otherworldly friend Lettie Hempstock? Or is the much older version of him we meet at the beginning of this play just using the fantasy stories he loved to process a miserable, lonely, even abusive childhood? You can read Joel Horwood’s superlative National Theatre adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s 2013 fantasy novel any way you like. This show is big, strange, sad and truly beautiful, a pretty dazzling achievement that sees the NT go toe-to-toe with the fantasy worlds crafted on film and TV and pretty much come out on top.

Whether you’re a visitor, a daytripper or a tourist in your own hometown, there are certain iconic London attractions that you simply have to visit. These museums, galleries, monuments and parks are part of the city’s fabric – to experience them is to uncover a patch of the capital's culture and history. But where to begin? We’ve pulled together a list of the 50 best attractions in London for you to start ticking off your bucket list.

This epic show about the world’s most famous stone circle will go down as a landmark exhibition in the British Museum’s impressive history thanks to its imaginative sweep, emotional generosity and the sheer stash of treasures it assembles from ancient Europe (430 objects, mostly unseen in London before). There are too many treasures to describe. But Stonehenge is clearly depicted here as so much more than a circle of stones for fake druid solstice parties; it’s a vortex and lens at the centre of thousands of years and tracks of migration, pilgrimage, quests, spiritual meaning and exchange. The human, emotional landscape and the mystical experience are equally conveyed in a way that’s personal, enriching and genuinely wondrous. Unmissable.

London might well be the world’s greatest city for top nosh, but it’s also expensive enough that most of us can’t eat out as much as we’d like to. But never fear! Everything in this list has been priced at £10 a head or less to eat in or takeaway, but many of them will have you well-fed for a fiver. And variety is the name of the game – so expect London staples like fish and chips or pie and mash, but also the best banh mi, patties, gozleme, shawarma, steamed buns, lahmacun and more. Not only will visiting these places give you the kind of buzz only a bargain bite can deliver, but you can also relish in the fact that you’re supporting small London businesses as they bounce back post-pandemic. Winner winner, chicken dinner!