There are seemingly no lengths to which the British Museum will not go to make sure that as many people as possible visit the current sell-out exhibition of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Tomorrow morning the museum joins forces with the Mumsnet Academy to allow parents with young children to enjoy the show whilst making as much noise as they want to! For £12.50 an adult can take under 16s in for free, will get t ...

It's the ultimate romance. A young officer named Gatsby, falls in love with a beautiful rich girl and she loves him too, but they lose touch during the first world war. Not knowing where he is or even if he survived, she marries a rich suitor. Money is everything, or so Gatsby thinks when he rediscovers her. He determines to rewrite the last five years of separation by becoming rich himself and winning back ...

The lives and loves of the people of Pompeii and Herculaneum are elegantly displayed in this moving collection of artefacts and frescos - the first such major exhibition to be held in London for almost 40 years. As we enter the ancients’ world, we enter their homes. The circular reading room at the British Museum has been cleverly partitioned to give the experience of walking through a typical aspirational ...

This adaptation of Hemingway’s famous novel about the lost generation who survived WWI bristles with lust and spiritual longing. Ex-pat American writers Jake Barnes and Robert Cohn are soaking up the excesses of post war Paris with matey abandon when the irresistible Lady Brett Ashley turns up, newly divorced and looking for excitement. It’s hard to convey bullfighting backdrop on stage, particularly one as ...

There were moments when it seemed like the latest Quentin Tarantino film. Every time a new character appeared on the set, I had to mentally brace myself for their lurid, untimely and above all bloody death. At one point it was literally raining blood. But then, this is Macbeth. And if history is to be believed, that’s what life was like. Blood and battle were the norm for the ruling classes when the real Ma ...

As the nation celebrates the 25th anniversary of Comic Relief, we discover a new kind of clowning which delivers a new kind of slapstick. The kind that makes you sit up and think. The innovative Social Clowns have developed the art of putting serious issues in the spotlight. ‘Sometimes people don’t really want to talk about stuff, they find it scary or difficult. We see our job as breaking down barriers. We ...

Carne Griffiths' fascinating style is the product of a classical training followed by the twelve years he spent working at the longest-established gold wire embroidery firm in the world. There, after graduating from Maidstone college in 1995, he worked his way up from apprentice to chief creative director and his work was featured on catwalk collections for famous couturiers and theatre designers. But then ...

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is exactly that. Harold, a staid and quite frankly boring man, receives a letter from Queenie  Henessey, a former colleague at the same brewery where he worked almost all his life and whom he has not seen nor heard from for over 20 years. She is dying of cancer. He writes a short note in reply, but when he goes to post his letter he decides instead to take it to her in ...

'I think someone in their 50s being childlike becomes a little sad' said Rowan Atkinson, explaining why he has chosen to perform in a play for the first time in 25 years, taking the title role in Quartermaine's Terms, Simon Gray's 1981 tragi-comedy which hits the West End next week. Quartermaine is an affable sort. Somewhat vague and definitely an outsider, he is nevertheless a far cry from Mr Bean, the gau ...

The name of this show always makes me laugh. Here is a musical about a couple who do nothing apart from fight, argue, cheat and defy one another. Any sort of reconciliation is going to take a lot more than a kiss. And if the infuriated Lilli does pucker up, how long will it last as she and her egotistical ex-husband vye for the limelight in every sense. The plot turns on a group of actors who are touring th ...