4 January, 2024
Glass act
Two Temple Place was built from 1892 as the London office of William Waldorf Astor, then the world's richest man. Today this extraordinary building hosts annual exhibitions taken from Britain's best regional museums and galleries. This year's show, The Glass Heart, explores the UK's glassmaking history from 1850 to the present day. Strong yet fragile, glass is a challenging material, but in the hands of a master craftsman can be transformed into dazzling works of art. To 21 April.
Star vehicle
Sarah Jessica Parker makes her West End debut opposite Matthew Broderick in Neil Simon's classic bittersweet comedy, Plaza Suite, for a strictly limited season from 15 January to 31 March at the Art Deco Savoy Theatre. The play features three different stories, each of which takes place in Suite 719 at New York's legendary Plaza Hotel, with Broderick and Parker leading the cast in the London transfer after a sell-out run on Broadway, directed Tony Award winner John Benjamin Hickey.
Paper tigers
This month offers the last chance to see Impressionists on Paper at the Royal Academy, which closes on 10 March. This perfectly sized show boasts work by all the major Impressionists, with wonderful pictures by Degas, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot and Toulouse-Lautrec. Including many fragile and rarely-seen marvels from private collections as well as major museums around the world, it shows how brilliantly the Impressionists used the medium of paper - Lautrec's portraits and Degas' coloured backgrounds are especially striking.
Plaster palace
The quiet suburbs of Twickenham are an unlikely setting for a Gothic castle, but Strawberry Hill House is as unlikely a piece of architectural fantasy as its waspish, eccentric builder, the 18th-century writer Horace Walpole, who almost single-handedly created the genre of Gothic horror. Begun in the 1750s, Strawberry Hill is a deliciously gimcrack (and very atmospheric) confection which had a huge influence on British architecture, and the lovingly restored house gives a wonderful insight into an extraordinary man.