The best audiobooks June 2026 has to offer, from Maggie O'Farrell's Land to Obama and Gladwell's Reconstruction. Fifteen picks, one month.
June 4, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Last updated: 4 June 2026
By Tristan · Arts, exhibitions and creative culture
This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.
This article contains affiliate or referral links. If you click through and sign up I may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you. It does not affect my editorial view.
Cool Factor
★★★★☆
4 out of 5
Welcome to our Tuner film review, where a piano tuner with painfully sensitive ears discovers his gift works just as well on safes as it does on Steinways. On paper it sounds like a gimmick. In practice, Tuner is one of the warmest, most likeable crime dramas to reach UK cinemas this year, and it confirms what a lot of us suspected after The White Lotus: Leo Woodall is a proper film star.
The short version of this Tuner film review is simple. The performances are lovely, the New York setting glows, and the script has real wit. After a patient opening, the film also winds the tension surprisingly tight. So read on for the full verdict, and why it lands at a confident four out of five rather than the very top of our scale.
Read moreMay 31, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Last updated: 31 May 2026
By Tristan · Arts, exhibitions and creative culture
This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.
This article contains affiliate or referral links. If you click through and sign up I may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you. It does not affect my editorial view.
Cool Factor: 5/5
I went to Flare-Up at Goldsmiths CCA on a hot day in late May, and I left certain it is one of the shows everyone should see this year. This Flare-Up Goldsmiths CCA review is my first-hand account of the most ambitious group show on illness, disability, neurodivergence and Deafness that a London institution has yet staged. Nineteen artists. One former Victorian bathhouse, its galleries carved out of the old water tanks and plant rooms. A premise built on the flare itself: the symptom that intensifies, the burst of light, the surge of sound.
Curated by Natasha Hoare and Mariana Lemos, Flare-Up runs from 21 May to 16 August 2026 at Goldsmiths CCA in New Cross, and entry is free throughout. What follows is what I actually saw and felt walking the galleries, a short explainer on crip art for anyone new to the term, the works that floored me, an honest account of what did not quite land, and why it still earns a full Ice cold score from me.
Read moreMay 24, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Last updated: 23 May 2026
By Tristan · Arts, exhibitions and creative culture
This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.
This article contains affiliate or referral links. If you click through and sign up I may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you. It does not affect my editorial view.
Cool Factor: 4/5
Some shows you walk through. This one you stand inside. Our Christo Air review covers the moment a lost 1968 idea finally turns real, suspended just above your head in a Mayfair gallery. Christo: Air opened at Gagosian on Grosvenor Hill on 21 May 2026, and it centres on a single, glowing cloud that the artist never lived to see built. Below, we unpack what genuinely works, what falls a little short, and whether this Christo Air review lands the show among the capital's must-see exhibitions this summer.
Read moreMay 23, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Last updated: 23 May 2026
By Tristan · Arts, exhibitions and creative culture
This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.
This article contains affiliate or referral links. If you click through and sign up I may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you. It does not affect my editorial view.
This Stubbs Portrait of a Horse review follows a slow afternoon spent in Room 1 of the National Gallery, where one of British painting's rarest masterpieces is on free display until 31 May 2026. Indeed, this is a small show with a huge centrepiece. Above all, it offers a once-in-a-generation chance to see Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham, a 1762 portrait that has only ever appeared in public once before. So if British painting, animal art, or sheer ambition on canvas interests you in any way, do not skip this one.
Cool Factor: 4/5
Read moreMay 20, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Last updated: 10 May 2026
By Tristan · Arts, exhibitions and creative culture
The Henry Moore Kew Gardens exhibition has finally arrived properly, and it is the show his work has always deserved. From 9 May 2026, thirty of Moore's monumental bronzes sit across Kew's 320 acres. This is the largest open-air Moore exhibition ever staged. Honestly, the sculptures look as though they grew there. So the gardens feel different because of them.
This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.
This article contains affiliate or referral links. If you click through and sign up I may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you. It does not affect my editorial view.
Cool Factor: 5/5
Read moreMay 19, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Last updated: 19 May 2026
By Tristan · Arts, exhibitions and creative culture
This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.
This article contains affiliate or referral links. If you click through and sign up I may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you. It does not affect my editorial view.
This Olivia Guillot Glasshouse review covers in between blinks, the debut London solo show from a French-British painter who has spent the last year on the Tracey Emin Artist Residency in Margate. The work is loud, confident and unmistakably alive. It is also, quite plainly, the start of something rather than the finished thing. So if you want to back a young painter early, this small Soho room is a good place to begin.
Cool Factor: 4/5
Read moreMay 18, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Last updated: 10 May 2026
By Tristan · Arts, exhibitions and creative culture
This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice. This post contains a small number of affiliate links in the related-content section at the bottom, none of which influence the review itself.
Cool Factor: 5/5 Ice cold
The Milly Thompson Aroma Venus show at Amanda Wilkinson Gallery is, hands down, the warmest, wittiest, most quietly furious thing I have walked into in London this year. It is also posthumous, so going in I was a bit nervous. I needn't have been. Aroma Venus is exactly the kind of glamorous, slippery, unapologetic exhibition Milly would have hung herself, and it left me beaming and slightly teary on Farringdon Road. If you have a free afternoon before 23 May 2026, just go.
Read moreMay 16, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Last updated: 16 May 2026
By Tristan · Arts, exhibitions and creative culture
This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.
Cool Factor: 2/5
This Sherlock Holmes Open Air Theatre production opened the 2026 Regent's Park season on 2 May, and runs until 6 June. We went in with high hopes, given the venue, the source material and the talent involved. Sadly, we left disappointed. The show is camp, overlong and far too dependent on the Cumberbatch BBC series and the Robert Downey Jr films for its character work. The setting still dazzles. The production, regrettably, does not.
Read moreMay 15, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Last updated: 15 May 2026
By Tristan · Arts, exhibitions and creative culture
This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.
Five names, one Mayfair townhouse, and a quietly precise group hang. This David Zwirner London review covers Flavin, Judd, McCracken, Ryman, Sandback, on view at 24 Grafton Street until 22 May 2026. Although the artists are familiar, the way David Zwirner has threaded them together is genuinely fresh. So if you've ever wondered what colour itself can do as a material, this is the show to see.
Cool Factor: 4/5
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