Three things to book across the next month, from a live band under the Barbican stage to a 35mm print.
Written by Saunter See · Updated October 2026The best nights out in London right now have an argument in them. One takes Shakespeare's most quoted play and plays it against an album. One returns a film that was long suppressed, in the version its director meant. One gives a filmmaker his centenary at last.
None is a casual booking. Each rewards choosing the night, and reading a little before you sit down.
Radiohead's 2003 album and Hamlet turn out to share a mood: suspicion, surveillance and a head full of noise. This staging, co-created with Thom Yorke, who reworked the album for the stage, plays the songs live with a band in the room. Samuel Blenkin is Hamlet, Ami Tredrea is Ophelia, Paul Hilton is Claudius and the Ghost, and Claudia Harrison is Gertrude. It runs about an hour and forty minutes without an interval, which suits a play that should not let you leave. It had its world premiere in 2025 at Aviva Studios in Manchester, with the RSC, and now arrives at the Barbican Theatre, where it runs to 23 January.
Best for Anyone who has ever known every word of a record. Book the press-night week if you want the show settled in.
Ken Russell's 1971 film about possession and politics in a French convent town was cut, restricted and kept out of sight for decades. This 4K restoration, made from the original camera negative, returns it on 30 October in the cut Russell intended. It premiered at Cannes Classics, and a full Russell retrospective follows at BFI Southbank in July and August 2027. Go for the sets, the sound and the sheer nerve of it.
Best for A late screening with someone who has strong views about British cinema.
William Greaves was born in Harlem in 1926, and this centenary season is the most serious look at his work London has had. It includes his experimental landmark Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, with an introduction on 27 October and a panel on 7 November, and Souls of Sin and Miracle in Harlem on 35mm on 3 November. Lost Boundaries, in which Greaves acted, and an episode of Black Journal, the television series he helped steer, complete the picture.
Best for Pick one night and stay for the talk.
See · LondonA free-jazz orchestra in a Dalston room, English baroque in Marylebone and Handel under Wren's dome.
See · LondonNan Goldin at the Hayward, Amar Kanwar in Kensington Gardens and Ana Mendieta at Tate Modern.
See · LondonA Victorian meat market turned museum, a reading room beside the Globe and a house lit only by candles.
Opinion · LondonSimpson's in the Strand, Hawksmoor under the Midland Grand's arches and Bonheur on the old Le Gavroche site show why reopening beats building.
Opinion · LondonFrom the Eagle Bar at The Chancery Rosewood to Hawksmoor's Martini Bar at St Pancras, the hotel bar is still where London drinks best.
Lists · LondonFrom the American embassy on Grosvenor Square to the Whiteleys department store, a Bloomsbury terrace and the Victorian caterers' building at the Old Bailey.
London, edited down to what's worth your time.