Top image: Mick Jones and Paul Simonon backstage in London, 1977. Photo by Syd Shelton

We bring you our guide to living well in the world’s capitals, from exhibitions to cinema, food, drink, fashion, music and beyond. Just call it culture and take it, it’s yours.

LONDON, FRIDAY 20th NOVEMBER – SUNDAY 22nd NOVEMBER 2015

Let’s talk about sex, baby
If you haven’t heard about Gasper Noe’s latest film Love, you need to get your ears cleaned out. The film is literally everywhere right now, mainly due to it’s sexual themes and erotic scenes – including a straight-on ejaculation shot meant to make the most of the 3D form. Cinema’s favourite French agent provocateur is pushing the boundaries and challenging our definition of love.

Beneath all the conservative gasps, here is a delicate film embracing life’s greatest mystery, love. Through the highs and the lows – and every other position imaginable… – Noe is asking us to confront our own insecurities through his uniquely captivating aesthetic.

Love 3D, 135 mins. Out this weekend at selected cinemas. 

Take the stage
Seemingly possessed Kim House flings herself around the stage, like Iggy incarnate; all snake hipped and wild eyed. Clad in a wardrobe boasting numerous eclectic catsuits, wild wigs and plenty of nipple tape, the frontwoman and performance artist puts on quite the show.

Hailing from the land of Burger/Lolipop Records, House and her band, The Created,  are creating quite the ear-ringing buzz. With their unique blend of full throttle garage rock they are bringing a flavour of SoCal thrash to British shores this weekend, ready to cause havoc at The Shacklewell Arms. Prepare to get sweaty.

Kim and The Created play at the Shacklewell Arms on Sunday 22nd November, tickets here

Monet or Moet
Shakespeare once claimed, “Good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used.”

So many artists, from across all art forms exemplified Shakespeare’s words. Samuel Coleridge, Francis Bacon, Brendan Behan, Truman Capote, Hank Williams, Dylan Thomas, Vincent Van Gogh, Winston Churchill, Jim Morrison were all legendary drinkers. JG Ballard said that a large scotch early in the day created a different “microclimate” in his head and Charles Bukowski made drink a central theme and muse of his art: “stay with the beer/beer is continuous blood/a continuous lover.”

Tate Britain’s latest exhibition Art and Alcohol examines this very relationship, the collection illustrates not so much the way alcohol affects art or artists, but the way artists use the subject of alcohol to tell a story. From William Hogarth’s notorious Gin Lane, featuring babies plummeting to their deaths and men impaled on spikes – Hogarth had obviously been familiar to a night out in Camden – to George Cruikshank’s vast work The Worship of Bacchus, the exhibition is high calibre stuff.

Drinks will be provided on entry, we assume…

Art and Alcohol runs at Tate Britain until Autumn 2016

“Love Music, Hate Racism”
Founded in 1976 the movement Rock Against Racism confronted racist ideology via music. Formed by a collective of musicians and political activists, – and sparked by that vile rant by Eric Clapton at a gig in Birmingham, praising Enoch Powell and urging Britain to “get the foreigners out” – they aimed to unite people through organising concerts across the country with an anti-racist message.

Photographer Syd Shelton joined the cause a year after and documented the movement through his lens. Collected in a new book, Rock Against Racism, this series of images, featuring the likes of The Clash, Elvis Costello, Tom Robinson, Au Pairs and The Specials, perfectly captures the Rock Against Racism’s passion and unity.

Syd Shelton: Rock Against Racism will be on show at Autograph ABP until December 5th

Roll up, roll up
Bored of the traditional Christmas markets and ‘cosy’ ski lodge pop-ups? We feel you. Try this for size, riverside drinking hole The Gun has been transformed into a Victorian Circus for the Winter months – think Moulin Rouge meets The Greatest Show on Earth.

Clown around with some vintage carnival games and soak up the retro atmosphere with some Hot Elderflower Toddys and Hot Gin Punch.

The Gun, 27 Coldharbour, Docklands, E14 9NS