Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. Exactly 400 years ago, give or take a couple of weeks, Monteverdi’s Orfeo received its first performance in ...

The Banqueting House is currently closed while the work is carried out but is expected to reopen in the summer. Listen to the best of BBC Radio London on Sounds and follow BBC London on Facebook ...

On this day in 1649, King Charles I was led from St James's Palace to Banqueting House on Whitehall, in front of which he was beheaded, thus drawing a gory line under the English Civil War.