4 h. ago More rice, bigger chairs and reinforced toilets: sumo wrestling comes to London | Andy Bull

Royal Albert Hall to host Grand Sumo Tournament marking only the second time a full competition is held overseasThey play Major League Baseball at the Olympic Stadium, Tottenham’s ground is a second home for the National Football League, the National Basketball Association is staging a game at the 02 Arena next year, and South Africa just beat New Zealand in a rugby Test at Twickenham, but it’s been a long time since London has hosted anything on the scale of the Grand Sumo Tournament taking place at the Royal Albert Hall this week. Forty wrestlers have flown over from Japan to compete in it. That’s around six tons of elite athlete to be fed, watered, transported and supported.“We’ve actually had to source and buy new chairs which can take up to 200kg in weight,” says Matthew Todd, the Royal Albert Hall’s harassed director of programming. “Our usual standard is only 100kg.” They’ve also had to reinforce the toilets. “It’s the ones that are screwed into the wall which are the most ch...

Politics

4 h. ago More rice, bigger chairs and reinforced toilets: sumo wrestling comes to London

Royal Albert Hall to host Grand Sumo Tournament marking only the second time a full competition is held overseasThey play Major League Baseball at the Olympic Stadium, Tottenham’s ground is a second home for the National Football League, the National Basketball Association is staging a game at the 02 Arena next year, and South Africa just beat New Zealand in a rugby Test at Twickenham, but it’s been a long time since London has hosted anything on the scale of the Grand Sumo Tournament taking place at the Royal Albert Hall this week. Forty wrestlers have flown over from Japan to compete in it. That’s around six tons of elite athlete to be fed, watered, transported and supported.“We’ve actually had to source and buy new chairs which can take up to 200kg in weight,” says Matthew Todd, the Royal Albert Hall’s harassed director of programming. “Our usual standard is only 100kg.” They’ve also had to reinforce the toilets. “It’s the ones that are screwed into the wall which are the most ch...

Politics

18 h. ago Albert Herring review – ENO heralds new era with witty staging of Britten’s story of a mummy’s boy

Coliseum, LondonEnglish National Opera’s first shared production between London and Salford is a fluent and finely sung take on Britten’s 1947 comic opera. Antony McDonald’s lively staging gives the slender tale a sitcom feelThis is English National Opera’s first production shared between London and Greater Manchester – where the company has been obliged to plan to move its base, following Arts Council England’s diktat. The choice of a relatively small-scale opera – necessary in the circumstances – means it was never going to be the kind of show to announce the new era with a bang. Albert Herring is Britten’s 1947 work based on a slender 19th-century French story about a mummy’s boy suddenly finding freedom calls for only a small orchestra and no chorus, so the company won’t be heading en masse to Salford next week. It’s regular fare at music colleges thanks to its large and even cast, but this staging, surprisingly, is an ENO first.Billing Antony McDonald’s production as a semi-sta...

Politics

45 h. ago H is for Hawk review – Claire Foy is tremendously authentic in eccentric grief drama

London film festival: Foy convinces as a grieving academic who trains a goshawk in this film based on Helen Macdonald’s bestselling nature memoirCan training a goshawk cure grief? Or treat it, in some way? Will keeping it indoors – hooded so that it remains calm – and then taking it out hunting allow you to reconnect radically with nature in a way that prissy townies will never understand? Or is this just a domesticated festival of cruelty to both bird and prey and a symptom of serious depression? Philippa Lowthorpe’s intriguing, likably performed if slightly precious film – based on Helen Macdonald’s bestselling nature memoir from 2014 – addresses these questions, but can’t quite deliver the Hollywood redemption narrative that it appears to offer: the story of a woman in the depths of melancholy who is helped through the darkness and, we have to assume, out the other side, by her goshawk, whimsically named Mabel. (Macdonald used she/her pronouns at the time of publication and came ...

Events

50 h. ago All beliefs are welcome in London – we cannot allow extremists to divide us | Sadiq Khan

Attacks against Jewish and Muslim communities are on the rise, and some politicians are exacerbating tensions by appealing to our worst instinctsSadiq Khan is mayor of LondonFor the first time in three years, hate crime in England and Wales is on the rise. The latest statistics released by the Home Office, showing religiously motivated offences at a record level, are deeply disturbing. But for those who have witnessed some of the appalling scenes on our city’s streets in recent months, they will not be surprising.Over the past two years, Jewish people have faced a rising tide of antisemitism, and the heinous terrorist attack in Manchester on Yom Kippur was a terrible reminder of just how pervasive this poisonous form of hatred continues to be. Between January and June, the Community Security Trust reported more than 1,500 antisemitic incidents. A survey by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research found that 35% of Jewish people feel unsafe in the UK.Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London...

Politics

51 h. ago ‘A palette unlike anything in the west’: Ben Okri, Yinka Shonibare and more on how Nigerian art revived Britain’s cultural landscape

To mark a new exhibition at Tate Modern, leading British-Nigerian cultural figures trace the impact of their heritage on their work, and consider its growing influence on the world stageSome primal energy was unleashed among Nigerian artists in the years leading up to independence. The century-long reign of colonialism was nearing its end and the people of Nigeria, with its over 300 tribes, its ebullient energy, were poised for a new future in which they would determine the shape and context of their lives.And the people who most articulated that double position, that paradox of modernity and tradition, were artists in all their stripes. Artists across the country, in constant dialogue with one another, created works that evoked their traditions but in a contemporary context. Artists such as Yusuf Grillo in the north, Bruce Onobrakpeya from the midwest, Ben Enwonwu from the east and Twins Seven Seven from the west were remaking the dream of art in a rigorously Nigerian context. The ...

Politics

53 h. ago Head of Frieze London art fair hopes for ‘Barbenheimer moment’ with Paris rival

Simon Fox plays down talk of competition with Art Basel Paris, insisting both cities can thrive despite market slumpThe chief executive of Frieze London has dismissed the idea his fair is in a battle with Art Basel Paris, claiming the two events could create a “Barbenheimer moment” for collectors this October – despite the art market being in a severe slump.Simon Fox told the Guardian that the fair, which opens on Wednesday, can benefit from having strong competition on its doorstep and replicate the mutual success of Barbie and Oppenheimer at the box office in 2023. Continue reading...

Politics

57 h. ago Watch: ‘Woah!’ Dramatic moment cargo plane suffers tail strike at London Heathrow

Watch: ‘Woah!’ Dramatic moment cargo plane suffers tail strike at London Heathrow  Stuff

Events

60 h. ago Accident: EAT Leipzig A306 at London on Oct 12th 2025, tail strike and balked landing

Accident: EAT Leipzig A306 at London on Oct 12th 2025, tail strike and balked landing  The Aviation Herald

Events

69 h. ago How many fans are attending Jets vs Broncos in Week 6 London game today, Oct. 12?

How many fans are attending Jets vs Broncos in Week 6 London game today, Oct. 12?  Bolavip

Sport

3 d. ago Live from London: Postcards with Israel Idonije | Saturday, Oct. 11

Live from London: Postcards with Israel Idonije | Saturday, Oct. 11  Chicago Bears Official Website

Politics

3 d. ago ‘London has turned into something crazy’: is the city in the grip of a crime wave?

Perception of runaway crime partly blamed for ‘driving away the super-rich’ but in reality some high-profile offences such as watch theft are falling‘Snatch theft’: the unstoppable rise of phone theftLondon is no longer a safe place to live, at least in the eyes of some of its richest residents – and the 47th president of the United States.“I think he’s done a terrible job,” Donald Trump said during his state visit to the UK last month, in his latest broadside at London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan. “Crime in London is through the roof.” Continue reading...

Events

4 d. ago Robbie Williams review – tiny Camden gig offers blinding star wattage – and a surprising new song about Morrissey

Dingwalls, LondonPreviewing new album Britpop to an audience of 600, the star promises ‘no stadium bravado’ and delivers droll new songs alongside stripped-back oldiesWhat do you do if you’re a superstar who has pulled well over a million people to a stadium tour? If you’re as contrary as Robbie Williams, you play a gig in a shoebox. This late-night show at the 600-capacity Dingwalls, the smallest venue of his career to date, is a rum event. It was originally a launch evening for a new album, Britpop, now postponed to February. Williams makes no bones about why. “It’s because of Taylor Swift,” he admits, in a week where her new album The Life of a Showgirl is outselling the rest of the UK Top 20 put together. “I could pretend it’s not, but it is. It’s selfish. I want a 16th No 1 album.”Bounding on stage just as the pubs are closing, a grinning Williams clearly relishes the intimate environment. “I’m not doing all that stadium bravado and pointing,” he vows, launching into a full, st...

Politics

6 d. ago Wayne Thiebaud review – staggering still lifes to make your mouth water

Courtauld Gallery, LondonThe pop pioneer’s paintings of sweets and cakes offer up a succulent and incredibly moreish slice of a long-lost American dreamYou’re not allowed to lick paintings in museums, which is cruel when you’re faced with something as mouthwateringly tempting as Wayne Thiebaud’s art. The American pop pioneer dedicated his long career to cakes, sweets and gumball machines, a visual world of treats and candies laid out in American diners and on deli counters, tempting viewers to commit the ultimate crime and take a big, juicy bite.But he didn’t just paint for the sake of getting you salivating. His work (here at the Courtauld in his first ever UK museum show) is both an ultraserious take on the material history of painting, a sort of update on the long legacy of the still life, and a deep dive into burgeoning consumerism and the capitalistic euphoria of the mass-produced, mid-century American dream. Continue reading...

Politics

7 d. ago Nicole Scherzinger review – raunchy gags and dazzling stylistic zigzags

Royal Albert Hall, London Riding high off Tony and Olivier wins, the Pussycat Doll turned theatre star showcases her astonishingly versatile singing chops and a standup’s gift for chaotic humourAs an impatient slow-clap echoes around west London’s iconic Royal Albert Hall – the star is running 45 minutes late – a seemingly nonplussed Nicole Scherzinger suddenly appears in spotlight, drenched in sparkly diamonds. Having built a career out of overcoming obstacles – breaking out of the shackles of both a girlband (the 55m-selling Pussycat Dolls) and various TV talent show judging panels – a little polite animosity isn’t going to rain on her parade. Later, during a rendition of Maybe This Time from Cabaret, just as hope overcomes despair, she introduces the crowd to her friends “Lawrence and Tony”, AKA the awards she won for her rapturously-received turn in Sunset Boulevard.Billed as An Evening with Nicole Scherzinger, tonight’s aim is to fuse all of her career tangents. Split into two ...

Politics

7 d. ago Lynne Ramsay’s passion, Jim Jarmusch’s star turn and knives come out again: Peter Bradshaw’s London film festival picks

Among this year’s must-sees Jennifer Lawrence brings gothic steam, Daniel Craig takes a new case and a constellation of luminaries get cosmicRian Johnson’s whodunnit Knives Out franchise with Daniel Craig as the eccentric Southern detective Benoit Blanc put some fizz into the London film festival a couple of years ago when the second film in the series was included. Now the threequel is the festival’s opening gala: Josh O’Connor is the principled young priest who finds himself in the frame when his fierce clerical superior is whacked – and Benoit has to find out the truth. Continue reading...

Culture

9 d. ago Thousands of UK Jews gather in London to mark 2nd anniversary of Oct. 7 Hamas attack

Thousands of UK Jews gather in London to mark 2nd anniversary of Oct. 7 Hamas attack  The Times of Israel

Events

1 week ago Police make almost 500 arrests at Palestine Action protest in London

Officers arrest activists at silent vigil in support of banned organisation, as demos go ahead despite PM’s pleasPolice have arrested almost 500 people in London at what organisers hoped would be the biggest demonstration so far against a ban on the proscribed organisation Palestine Action.Officers began arresting demonstrators at the silent vigil in support of the group, which has been classed by the UK government as a terror organisation since July this year. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago Police make more than 440 arrests at Palestine Action protest in London

Officers arrest activists at silent vigil in support of banned organisation, as demos go ahead despite PM’s pleasPolice have made more than 440 arrests in London at what organisers hoped would be the biggest demonstration so far against a ban on the proscribed organisation Palestine Action.Officers began arresting demonstrators at the silent vigil in support of the group, which has been classed by the UK government as a terror organisation since July this year. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago Police make arrests at Palestine Action protest as demo goes ahead despite PM’s pleas

Officers start arresting activists at silent vigil in support of banned organisationPolice have made more than a 100 arrests in Trafalgar Square at what organisers hoped would be the biggest demonstration so far against a ban on the proscribed organisation Palestine Action.Police began arresting demonstrators at the silent vigil in support of the group, which has been classed by the UK government as a terror organisation since July this year. Continue reading...

Events