20 fascinating facts about east London

Recognise this? (See 17)

What's On: Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest For Longitude at National Maritime Museum

WHAT'S ON

In many ways, a major new exploration of the quest for longitude at the National Maritime Museum is the story of Greenwich itself.

Spiral Notebook: Lutfur Rahman - here comes the new boss, same as the old boss?

COMMENT

By Giles Broadbent

Racked by weariness and relief, the new Mayor of Tower Hamlets wept. He was hurt, he said, by accusation that he was racist, that he was a disciple of division.

Film review: Frank (15)

WHAT'S ON

Frank
(15) 95mins
★★✩✩✩

Chris Sievey is a curious footnote in the history of alternative music and performance art. He was an animator, comedian and jobbing musician with various bands and appeared on a number of TV shows, mostly in the North West, during the '80s and '90s.

Sundance review: Obvious Child

WHAT'S ON

Obvious Child
(tbc) 83mins
★★★✩✩

Obvious Child opens with scatty and scatological stand-up Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) ruminating on gussets and female flatulence.

Sundance review: Dinosaur 13

WHAT'S ON

Dinosaur 13
(tbc) 105mins
★★★★✩

Up until 1990, only 12 fossils of Tyrannosaurus Rex had been recovered, the best being 40% complete. The one miraculously preserved in the badlands of South Dakota Hills was 80% complete and a scientific marvel.

Sundance review: Fruitvale Station

WHAT'S ON

Fruitvale Station
(tbc) 85mins
On general release on June 6
★★★★★

We know it's going to end badly. Genuine mobile phone footage captures the chaos and discord on the platform of the eponymous station where a bunch of lads are corralled by jittery transport police on New Year's Eve in Oakland.

Sundance review: The Voices

WHAT'S ON

The Voices
103mins
★★★✩✩

If the measure of a movie is the decibel of debate that follows the closing credits, then The Voices will surely rank among the most memorable at Sundance London.

Turner And The Sea, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

JMW Turner was the pre-eminent landscape painter in Western art, according to leading Victorian art critic John Ruskin. But the weight and obsession of the artist's canon suggests he was, above all, and with an relentless obsession, a seascape painter.

Exhibition: Nelson, Navy, Nation at National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

From this distance, Britain's unrivalled national hero Horatio Nelson appears to embody the entire span of glittering age of naval dominance such is his pre-eminence in our cultural consciousness.

And yet, definitive though his actions were, they spanned only a few years at the tail-end of the 1700s through to his victory - and celebrated death - at Trafalgar in 1805.

Exhibitions: Royal Museums, Greenwich

EXHIBITIONS
Yinka Shonibare / 
Astronomy Photographer of the Year
Royal Museums, Greenwich
★★★✩✩

IN A NUTSHELL
Two contemporary exhibitions of very different visuals ask the visitor to think again about what they see.

Exhibition: Visions Of The Universe, Greenwich

At the entrance to this new exhibition are four images of the Orion nebula. They represent all that this awe-inspiring collection aims to encompass - science, technology, history, beauty.

Exhibition: Alien Revolution, Greenwich

"No-one would have believed," writes HG Wells in his famous opening for The War Of The Worlds, "in the last years of the 19th century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's."

No-one would have believed! Wells clearly wasn't browsing the internet.

Someone somewhere is believing most things and the existence of life beyond our planet appears to be the receptacle of choice in which to decant the latest extreme thinking, providing a warm embrace for a spectrum of theories from the sinister to the scientific.

This new exhibition - with accompanying planetarium shows and talks - explores the history of ideas surrounding our search for extra-terrestrials.

What becomes apparent is that imposed upon ET are the beliefs, fears and hopes of the time he is sought, from the fantastical realms of life before the enlightenment, through the wrestling and wrangling with the anthropic principle on to the paranoia of the Cold War.

Although we are taking the whole business more seriously these days, the fact we are in thrall to Mars Curiosity's distant digging shows that romanticism is still rampant.

Carl Sagan said: "I am often asked, 'Do you believe in UFOs?' I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence. I'm almost never asked, 'How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?'"

Although right about extra-terrestrials, Sagan misses the point about the humans posing the question.
In response to the Big Question about whether there is or isn't either answer is so mind-blowing that religiosity has the best vocabulary.

Until Sept 8, go to rmg.co.uk.

Image: Lunar Life by Leopoldo Galluzo, 1836 © Smithsonian

Upwardly mobile at The O2

Here's the easy option: The O2 could have built a vast Stannah stairlift that took all-comers to the peak of its iconic roof. In a steady drone, rising to the heavens, the elderly, frail and obese could have ascended, strapped in but comfortable, conveyed and cowed.

There could be flask breaks and oxygen stops and chuntering counterweights descending to keep the balance, like a Welsh mountainside funicular.

That would be a way to go. Boring, yes, but inclusive and beige and all those things that modern life likes but you don't want in an attraction that takes you 52m into the sky onto a roof.

(Something magical about rooftops, isn't there? Dick Van Dyke and all that.)

No, here, in Up At The O2, (too many prepositions for a title) you want a taste of adventure, if only a tingle on the tongue from a pipette shot of adrenalin.

And if you want to see the vast panorama of east London - Canary Wharf, the Orbit, the Royal Docks, the Thames Barrier - well, remember what Debbie Allen said in Fame: "You want views? Well, views cost and right here is where you start paying - in sweat."

No faint-hearts. No-one weak of limb or soft of resolve. No lily-livered, muffin topped, state-coddled idlers welcome.

While the attraction doesn't exactly take you to the extreme, it does nudge you to the outer perimeter of the bit before the edge of your comfort zone.

I'm not suggesting roller-coaster thrill or a pilot-has-fainted thunderclap but it does leave you a little puffed and, maybe, disconcerted. For example, if you drop stuff over the side, it's gone - so that's like The Poseidon Adventure isn't it?

In fact, there's something very Disneyland about the experience from the outset. Waiting is not a pleasure, more an endurance leavened by a sense of impending adventure. Inform, entertain, get the paperwork done.

So we have Rupert briefing us on screen. A rather excitable Englishman, he calls on our heritage of derring-do, our sense of pride and patriotism to get us to the top, with all those pesky health and safety lessons tucked in between for good measure.

We know our purpose, our birthright our destiny - and where the toilets are, just in case.
An hour and a half for a complete trip, we were told. Seemed excessive.

But then there were the checks, the straps, the harnesses, the nervy banter between newly-bonded brothers and the lessons in clamping on to the wire so you don't tumble down, Jack and Jill style.

Part of it was probably prescribed by the HSE, but it did add to the drama - as though we really were steeplejacks, or mountaineers, or Chinese engineers in some Channel Five documentary.

Either way, the ascent was overseen by a Sherpa Tensing - ours was Adam, generous with his time and eager to please - and our excursion jellied the legs for the unfit (me) and curdled the lunch of the lesser folk (so not me).

If heights are not your thing, you wouldn't be here but if steep slopes that appear to lead to an eternal void stir the butterflies, or a route march on a trampoline ungirds your loins, then you'll be glad of the umbilical link to the sturdy wires.

At the top, the viewing platform and plenty of time for panoramic shots, for picking out buildings and cooing at cityscapes.

Pity the panorama is downbeat - too much industrial plant and not enough sky piercing drama - but for those of us who live and work round here, at ground-level mostly, there is enough to excite.

The empty cable car slung to and fro dejectedly, the planes rose from City Airport, the sun hit the Thames and the playful Shard hid behind the skirts of One Canada Square, a perspective that flatters the latter.

Then it was down the other side, marching sideways like crabs and both ruing and grateful for the benevolent weather (for the rain would have made the descent slippery and heart-pumping).

In our gear - jumpsuits, harnesses, climbing shoes - we were swashbuckling outsiders in an attraction busy with diners and gawpers and somnambulists.

But if there were any doubt that we were back down to earth then - well, we exited through the gift shop. Did Edmund Hillary? Did Chris Bonington? Did James Bond after his skiddy descent down the iconic parabola.

Oh, forget it. The moment's gone.

FACTFILE

■ Climbs take place every 30 minutes and run noon to 8pm weekdays in the summer and 10am to 6pm at weekends.
■ Tickets cost £22 for adults and children (over 10) and all the gear is provided. Stringent health guidelines apply.
■ Pre-booking is recommended, online at o2.co.uk/upattheo2