National Gallery: Guided Tours & Talks ★★★★★ FREE


The National Gallery is one of the big ten for tourists and an oasis for locals. There's nothing nicer than to stop in the National Gallery on a gloomy day and soak up a bit of culture. In the summer, we tend to leave it to the tourists, but there are some great free lectures that can lure us in and always repay the investment on time that could have been spent in the sun. The Lunch Time talks are terrific introductions to exhibitions or interesting looks at specific  artists or paintings. The Ten Minute talks offer a quick insight into  a particular work. The free tours will make sure you get the most from your visit.

Reviewed by J.C.

 Our Score:  ☆☆☆☆☆ 

WHEN, WHERE, GETTING THERE:

Daily Tours (60 mins) -
Mon - Fri:  2 pm - 3 pm

Lunch Time Talks (45 mins) 
Usually Mon & Wed: 1 pm, sometimes other days 

Ten Minute Talks (10 mins)
Mon - Fri: 4 pm - 4:10 pm

Trafalgar Square
Nearest tube: Charing Cross Road
Map & Location: Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN, UK

Most Popular

St. Martin in-the-fields: Lunchtime Concerts ★★★★ FREE

Image
Maybe the best musical value in London. The lunchtime concerts at St. Martin's are always a wonderful way to escape the hustle and bustle that is London and the sensory overload that is Trafalgar Square. This is a beautiful setting with great acoustics, and a church pew hard enough to make sure you don't nod off. Reviewed by J.C.  Our score:    ☆☆☆☆  WHEN, WHERE, GETTING THERE: Mon & Fri: 1 pm - 1:45 pm ( occasionally Tues & Thurs)  St. Martin in-the-fields, Trafalgar Square Nearest tube: Charing Cross https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/whats-on
Full Details »

Knocking on the Wall ★★★★ Finborough Theatre | Oct 31 - Nov 25, 2023

Image
Henry David Thoreau wrote that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” and these three short plays by Ena Lamont Stewart provide a graphic reflection of Thoreau's incisive aphorism. The revival of the three works by Scotland's preeminent female playwright is an opportunity to appreciate both some beautifully etched characterisations and powerful insights into isolation and the challenges of human connection. The first play, "Towards Evening," presents the fraught relationship of an elderly brother and sister who have decided to live together in their later years. Their mutual incomprehension as they strive to overcome the barriers of their upbringing, the imposition of gender roles and differing educational backgrounds are brilliantly rendered by Robert Hands and Janette Foggo. They capture all the nuances of the siblings' tentative reaching out for emotional support across the barrier of the years and their secrets. The second play "Walkies Time f
Full Details »

Mates in Chelsea ★★★ Royal Court Theatre | Nov 3 - Dec 16, 2023

Image
Tug has run up a lot of debts and his mother informs him that he'll have to sell the ancestral castle in order to deal with the situation. It's a dilemma that leads to a lot of silliness and some serious commentary on the state of contemporary British society. While the first act of Rory Mullarkey's new comedy starts on a bit of a wobbly note, the laughs soon start to roll in as Tug (Laurie Kynaston) and his mate, Charlie, played by George Fouracres begin to trade quips in a manner reminiscent of Wilde's Algernon and Jack. Their dialogue is counterpointed by the comments of Mrs Hanratty (Amy Booth-Steel) the Lenin-loving, but consummate housekeeper who recalls J.B. Priestley's prescient Jeeves. The mood is further established and becomes enjoyably familiar when Lady Agrippina (equal parts Nero's mother and Lady Bracknell) appears on the scene. Fenella Woolgar does a splendid job of conjuring up the dowager viscountess and wrings the most from all of her lines. T
Full Details »

Discover Liotard & The Lavergne Family Breakfast ★★★★★ The National Gallery | Until March 3, 2024 (Free Entry)

Image
This exquisite, small exhibition will be every art lover's cup of tea. Jean-Etienne Liotard is an 18th century artist more celebrated in his time than he is today, but this delightful look at his work should be an important step in rectifying this situation. Liotard worked in a variety of media from oils to ceramics, but his crowning achievement was in pastels. He was a master of this extremely fragile medium, and the central point of the current exhibition is an excellent opportunity to compare and contrast his representation of the same subject, The Lavergne Family Breakfast , in both pastels and in oil. For the first time in almost 250 years, Liotard's masterpieces come together and are placed side by side. The pastel version was acquired by The National Gallery in 2019 and the oil, which was painted almost twenty years later, has been lent from a private collection. Contrasting the two representations highlights how the two media can be employed to deal with volume, tone an
Full Details »

The Mongol Khan ★★★★ London Coliseum | Nov 17 - Dec 2, 2023

Image
The Mongol Khan is a genre-defying spectacle that incorporates song, dance, puppetry and drama. Created by Mongolia's leading playwright the epic story tells the tragic tale of a leader who is deceived by his wily counsellor into thinking that the latter's son is actually Khan's heir, while the true son is being ignored. Westerners will probably be thinking of Shakespeare's Lear and Iago but there's a dash of The Comedy of Errors , and also a hint of Oedipus Rex . With a cast of over seventy, there are some amazing costumes, spellbinding choreography and clever special effects. It all adds up to an evening that really takes one back to the origins of theatre when people expected a feast of entertainment for their money and would have felt cheated by the contemporary predilection for two acts squeezed into about two hours. In fact, the current production has apparently been abridged for Western tastes and this does take away a bit from the majesty of the piece. Its
Full Details »

Nutcracker ★★★★ Southbank Centre’s Tuff Nutt Jazz Club | Until January 6, 2024

Image
Time to create a new Christmas tradition! This updated, jazz version of Tchaikovsky's classic ballet is definitely worth adding to the annual entertainment list. In Drew McOnie's contemporary interpretation Clara becomes Clive, and his youthful imagination is much more engaged by a sugar plum fairy doll than by his father's gift of an action man figure. Distressed by his father's incomprehension of his preferences, Clive falls asleep, and it is then that he encounters an enchanted realm which allows him to escape and to experience life outside the stifling simplification of the binary quotidian reality. McOnie's charming tale inventively blends classic and modern dance movement and is beautifully underpinned by Cassie Kinoshi's lively reimagining of the Tchaikovsky score. While the energy and power of the ensemble is quite impressive it is the fluidity and prowess that Mark Samaras brings to the role of Clive that is quite mesmerising. His virtuosity is only ma
Full Details »

Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick ★★★★★ Charing Cross Theatre | Nov 23, 2023 - Jan 13, 2024

Image
Sleeping Beauty Takes A Prick ticks all the pantomime boxes. There's a singalong, the audience gets to shout advice and the outrageous double entendres come thick and fast. Add some silly songs, sweets tossed out, an over-the-top dame whose wardrobe is quite wondrous and you have the total package. Writers Jon Bradfield and Martin Hooper don't miss a trick in this LGBTQ+ ode to the genre. The plot is a wild riff on the story of Sleeping Beauty with a gay prince who is cursed not to have sex until he is twenty-one. His wicked uncle takes over his kingdom of Slutvia for one hundred years while the prince and his mother sleep in a spaceship which has brought the prince's alien lover to earth. While many of the prince's problems are caused by his rather inept, lesbian fairy protector, his interfering mother who has her own love life problems doesn't help much. These people have complicated lives, and it all adds up to a raunchy, riotous adult panto that never misses a
Full Details »

The Time Traveller’s Wife: The Musical ★★★ Apollo Theatre | Oct 7, 2023 - Mar 30, 2024

Image
Every relationship faces challenges. But what if your partner were popping backward and forward in time, and showing up naked when he appeared? This could be a real deal breaker! The premise of this romcom is a lot of fun and the staging of the show is quite amazing as Henry makes various appearances at different points in Clare's life. One of the issues, however, is that time travel demands a strict consistency around how the concept is played out, and this becomes confusing, to the point of distracting, in this musical adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's best-selling novel. Sometimes Henry can tailor his actions based on what he knows the future to be and sometimes he seems unable to anticipate the consequences of his actions. On occasion Henry can affect the future based on his foreknowledge and then at other times he can't. Is post mortem time travel really a possibility? Unfortunately, such inconsistencies around the central premise can take the audience out of the stor
Full Details »

Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen ★★★★★ Bush Theatre | Until December 23, 2023

Image
Comedy as catharsis! From the moment he comes on stage and constantly repeats his age, we see that The Comedian is obsessed by the passage of time and its inevitable result. His signature joke betrays the obsession with death that underlies so much of his humour, and even as he uses sex, drugs and laughter to escape his morose fear, it is ever present. Ironically, he shares this prescription to assuage his pain with a doctor friend, but then, someone enters his life who suffers from cataplexy, a condition which the stranger says means that he could actually die from laughing. The Comedian's modus vivendi is challenged, and he must come to realise that what he is actually fleeing is not the inescapability of time and death, but the realities of life and love. Marcelo Dos Santos has written an insightful, and sometimes brilliant, show that explores the dark sources of comedy and exposes how a painfully self-aware, yet equally self-deceptive, individual can transmute fear into humour
Full Details »

The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Frans Hals ★★★★★ The National Gallery | Until January 21, 2024

Image
One looks at Frans Hals' portraits and immediately begins to speculate about the sitter's character. In his picture Jasper Schade (1645) looks sensitive, but a bit on the arrogant side. In another work, the anonymous young woman (c. 1658) appears sweet, but not too practical. In an instant, we feel we know these people, and we recognise them as kindred spirits. Even when the poses are formal, the artist ensures that the personality shines through. This extraordinary exhibition, which is next scheduled to move to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, has borrowings from most major holders of Hals' work and includes, perhaps, his best known piece, The Laughing Cavalier (1624), which has not left The Wallace Collection since it opened in 1900. Divided into six galleries: Early Work, Portraiture into Art, Invented Characters, Family Ties, Up Close and Late Work, the show provides an unparalleled look at the work of a painter who was admired by artists as diverse as Whistler and Van Go
Full Details »

The City Life Magazine | Reviews & Ratings