6 March, 2024
Blooming marvellous
Built for Cardinal Wolsey, expropriated by Henry VIII and
expanded by Sir Christopher Wren, Hampton Court is the British
Versailles and one of the great historic palaces of Europe. Set in
a 750-acre park, it has a famous maze and 60 acres of gardens,
which from 15 April to 6 May will be transformed into a riot of
colour, as 100,000 bulbs come into bloom for the Hampton Court
Tulip Festival - likely to be at their best in mid-April.
Face off
Celebrated for her portrayal of Shiv Roy in HBO's smash hit Succession, Sarah Snook returns to the London stage for a remarkable one-woman performance of Oscar Wilde's unsettling parable of age and beauty, The Portrait of Dorian Gray. In Kip Williams' brilliantly inventive adaptation, Snook plays a total of 26 different characters, with the help of some dazzling technical wizardry including stage cameras and video screens. This strictly limited run is at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until 11 May.
Mind music
John Lennon called her 'the world's most famous unknown artist', and Yoko Ono has often suffered from being in Lennon's shadow, yet a major new retrospective at Tate Modern demonstrates just how individual an artist she continues to be. Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind (until 1 September) is a huge and absorbing show, with over 200 works including poetry, film, photography, music, installations and participatory works, and reveals Ono's importance as a pioneering conceptual artist and peace activist.
Animal spirits
One of the oddest and most atmospheric museums in London has recently reopened after a year-long refurbishment. The Grant Museum of Zoology was first established in 1828, and it still retains the feeling of a slightly spooky Victorian museum, with floor-to-ceiling display cases packed with skeletons and stuffed animals. It includes some 68,000 specimens, including long-extinct species, as well as examples of cutting-edge research exploring the human impacts on biodiversity, and is free to visit weekly from Tuesday to Saturday.