The ianVisits guide to May's unusual events, tours, lectures and exhibitions happening around London.
Sunday 20th May
The cemetery runs guided history and heritage walks every month throughout the summer.
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The Rickmansworth Festival celebrates canals, the community and the environment.
All Day
Rickmansworth
Come celebrate our 400th year - it will be a great party for all the family celebrating the very heart of Enfield.
11am to 7pm
Enfield Town
Free
Bringing a fun slice of the countryside to the heart of the largest green space in the City of London
11am to 3pm
City of London
Learn how to make a range of home made natural and skin nourishing hand-cremes, lip balms, soaps and furniture polish using plant and vegetable oils with beeswax.
1pm to 5pm
Bow
Open day at the school's large managed gardens.
1pm to 5pm
South Croydon
A chance to go onto the barges moored near Tower Bridge and see their mini-gardens and look around.
2pm to 5pm
Southwark
Florence Schechter discusses why she chose to set up the world’s first bricks and mortar vagina museum and the strange reactions she’s received along the way.
3pm to 4:30pm
Holborn
More London events on Sunday 20th May
Monday 21st May
Joshua B. Freeman will discuss the history of the large-scale factory as a physical presence and economic and social institution
6:30pm to 8pm
Holborn
More London events on Monday 21st May
Tuesday 22nd May
Scotscape give a talk on the importance of living walls and their benefits to employee health and wellbeing.
10:30am to 11:30am
Clerkenwell
What is it, who can receive it and what does it allow you to do? This talk given by Murray Craig, Clerk of the Chamberlains Court, will explore the history of this intriguing ceremony.
2:30pm to 3:30pm
Clerkenwell
The lecture will consist of tabletop demos of such toys, together with simple, robust modelling of what is going on. The theme that emerges is singularity.
6pm to 7pm
Barbican
Burial, cremation, being eaten by vultures, being dissolved in lime: what are the good and bad things about the options for dealing with our bodies after death?
7pm to 8:30pm
Leytonstone
More London events on Tuesday 22nd May
Wednesday 23rd May
Free
30th annual competition to celebrate the best in pewter making - one day exhibition of the winning entries.
10am to 5pm
City of London
Philip looks at some of the most fantastical and futurist buildings of their time and considers the reasons they were not built.
12pm to 12:50pm
Clerkenwell
Professor Wilson will examine the causes, conduct and consequences of the Thirty Years’ War, Europe’s most destructive conflict prior to the two 20th-century world wars.
1pm to 2pm
Barbican
£8.00
In this talk, Michael Gandy looks at how to trace Quakers in your family and how to learn more about the lives they led.
2pm to 3pm
Clerkenwell
This lecture will use examples of how the public may be misled and consider the implications of such misunderstanding.
6pm to 7pm
Barbican
£6.50
An event celebrating the progress in improving London's public realm.
6:15pm to 8:15pm
Clerkenwell
More London events on Wednesday 23rd May
Thursday 24th May
Moor Park Mansion is a Grade I listed Palladian mansion set within over 300 hundred acres in Hertfordshire.
Starts at 10am
Rickmansworth
A drop-in workshop with culinary, medicinal and wild herbs. Make your own blends to taste during the session.
11am to 3pm
Clerkenwell
Rob Kayne explains how the street names in Soho tell us about its history.
2pm to 3pm
Clerkenwell
Free
Come and explore how female-led independent publishing, from zines to subverted magazines and art books, is setting new standards for more progressive media.
6:30pm to 8pm
Euston
More London events on Thursday 24th May
Friday 25th May
A panel of experts will explore the cultural backgrounds behind some of our ‘pleasant vices’ – alcohol, sugar, chocolate, caffeine and aphrodisiacs – in relation to the British Museum’s collection and beyond.
Starts at 12am
Russell Square
It’s Feeding Time at the Natural History Museum, with an exploration of the food we eat, past present and future, as well as the incredible feeding strategies observed in the animal kingdom.
6pm to 10pm
South Kensington
More London events on Friday 25th May
Saturday 26th May
Join John Outram, arguably Britain's most original architectural thinker, as he discusses Postmodernism, his “stylistically nameless” practice and his lost masterpiece - Harp Heating HQ
3pm to 4pm
Holborn
More London events on Saturday 26th May
Sunday 27th May
Discover the rare plants and insects living among the secluded chalk grassland of Hutchinson's Bank nature reserve
11am to 3pm
Croydon
An opportunity to get up close and personal with archaeology at Fulham Palace, and learn more about the rich and varied history of this ancient site.
1pm to 2pm
Fulham
View Tate’s mansion Park Hill and explore the historic garden, including the Pulhamite grotto, Victorian folly, lake and temple.
Starts at 2pm
Streatham
More London events on Sunday 27th May
Monday 28th May
No events are listed for today. Sorry.
More London events on Monday 28th May
Tuesday 29th May
Free
The 358th Oak Apple Day to commemorate the anniversary of the day that King Charles II returned to London.
All Day
This lecture seeks to shed light rather than heat, by assessing just how odd (different, exceptional, peculiar) Sparta really might have been.
1pm to 2pm
Barbican
Free
Lester Hillman, an infrastructure planner, explores the colourful story.
2pm to 3pm
City of London
Computers are changing warfare profoundly because military strategy has always been geographically based but there are no borders in cyberspace.
6pm to 7pm
Barbican
This talk will analyze the emergence of French rescue networks during WWII
6:30pm to 8pm
Russell Square
A talk about the M.I.5 London Reception Centre, located in the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building on Wandsworth Common during WW2.
Starts at 6:30pm
Battersea
Ealing Civic Society's next lecture will be to update on the progress of the development so far.
Starts at 7:30pm
Ealing
More London events on Tuesday 29th May
Wednesday 30th May
Free
A lunchtime conversation with a particle physicist about her work in Antarctica looking for neutrinos – the building blocks of the universe.
1pm to 2pm
Camden
£13.24
Ensonglopedia of Science sees Hinton present a song about science for every letter of the alphabet – expect atoms, big bangs, cells, DNA and plenty more.
Starts at 2pm
South Kensington
What is Russia’s place in the world now? And what does the turbulence of the last 25 years tell us about where it is heading?
6pm to 7pm
Barbican
A very rare opportunity to join the capital's chronicler of the counterculture Barry Miles in conversation with historian Frank Rynne on the London life of the beat writer William Burroughs.
Starts at 6:30pm
Soho
Free
This month's Science Museum Lates will be exploring the history of the domestic sphere, the innovations that changed it and how the space we inhabit in our youth influences our adult lives.
6:45pm to 10pm
South Kensington
More London events on Wednesday 30th May
Thursday 31st May
£26.79
A rum tasting event aboard Francis Drake's ship, The Golden Hinde. Chance to explore rums at this historical venue.
All Day
Southwark
As part of London History Day, we are opening the doors to The National Archives’ repositories and offering you the chance to go behind the scenes.
10am to 11am
Richmond
The London Metropolitan Archives team will introduce you to some of the wonderful collections which tell the amazing stories of women and power in the capital
10:30am to 4pm
Clerkenwell
A lecture exploring the rich visual history of London’s street name plates
6:30pm to 8:30pm
City of London
A talk on the origins and evolution of plastics over the first 100 years, from ivory substitute to the Tupperware Burp
7pm to 10pm
Homerton
Find out more about this family and the collections in this talk by Judy Aitken, curator.
7pm to 8:30pm
Southwark
£10.00
Hear the previously untold, newly researched story of young Oscar's career in Victorian England and post-Civil War America from Oxford University's Michèle Mendelssohn, as she reveals his adventures on both sides of the pond.
7:15pm to 8:30pm
Camden
