The campaign to free London Aquarium's penguins heats up

Dear Londoners — did you spend Saturday in thousands of pounds worth of designer clothes, sipping champagne next to the Elgin Marbles? No? Neither did we — but that's exactly what plenty of celebs, wealthy donors and general society hangers-on were up to. Instead, I was at home ill with Covid (which, in 2025, feels like a bit of an indignity). Poorly and bored, I had hoped for the kind of incredible outfits and breathless media coverage given to the Met Gala — but unfortunately, there was no Rihanna in sight. There wasn't even a Katy Perry dressed up like Lumière from Beauty and the Beast. Mick Jagger couldn't even be bothered to put on a tie. Was everybody tired out by Frieze week? Sick of the bad weather? Is this simply the result of British restraint? More coverage of that below...

But first, on to an exciting development in the campaign to free the 15 penguins locked in a windowless room beneath Southbank, which we wrote about in detail back in May, as well as potential plans for a new overground line.

Big story: The campaign to save the London Aquarium penguins gets celebrity backing

Topline: Protestors blockaded the London Aquarium on Sunday over a colony of penguins trapped in the basement of the attraction, and were joined by famous faces including Chris Packham and Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey.

Context: In May, The Londoner wrote about the plight of a colony of Gentoo penguins kept in the basement of the London Aquarium, deprived of fresh air and natural daylight. Some of the penguins are over 30 years old, but have spent the last 14 years in an artificial basement habitat, with no taste of the outside world except for a painted mural of the Antarctic tundras. Their conditions have led to a growing campaign by animal rights campaigners to free the penguins, which reached a head on Sunday.

15 penguins are trapped in a Southbank basement. This is the plan to free them

An activist, a journalist and an MP walk into the London Aquarium. A colony of Gentoo penguins walk out

The LondonerAndrew Kersley

The protest: On Sunday, up to 300 animal rights protestors picketed outside the London Aquarium, which sits in the former County Hall building, joined by Packham, Sharkey and green campaigner Dale Vince. “As we now know, some of them have been there for 14 years, in the basement of a former council building,” Sharkey told the crowd.

A challenge: Sharkey, also known for his work campaigning against sewage dumping and the water industry, has issued a challenge to Fiona Eastwood the chief executive of Merlin Entertainments (which owns the London Aquarium) to “swap places with the penguins”. He added that he will donate £1,000 of his own money to any charity of her choosing if she was “prepared to actually spend a month down there”.

What did the aquarium say: Merlin Entertainment also runs Alton Towers, Legoland Windsor, Madame Tussauds, Thorpe Park and Chessington World of Adventures. A spokesperson for the group said the penguin habitat was “designed with help and advice from specialist vets” and offered “an excellent balance of water and land for the penguins, which enables them to express their normal behaviours”. They did not comment on whether they would take up Sharkey on his offer.

Your news briefing

🚇 London could be getting a new £700m overground line, if TfL’s pre-budget briefings are to be believed. The transport authority have told journalists about the planned West London Orbital route, which will run from Hendon and West Hampstead to Hounslow. Importantly, this will run via Old Oak Common, which is set to be one of the main interchanges for the new HS2 railway. The only barrier in the way is the very big if of whether it’ll get funding from central government in the next budget — last time there was a financial announcement from Whitehall, TfL’s dreams for the Bakerloo extension were dashed.

🏝️ The government’s planned sale of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius has inadvertently pushed a west London council to “breaking point”. Hillingdon Council, home to Heathrow airport, has seen 621 individuals from the Chagos Islands exercising their right to claim UK citizenship — as the first council they arrive in, Hillingdon has become responsible for finding them housing. At an estimated cost of £2m a year, this isn’t ideal for a council already so close to bankruptcy that it’s having to make £34m in cuts to its budget. See the full report in the Evening Standard.

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👠 Saturday night saw the first British Museum Ball, the institution’s attempt to recreate the splendour of New York’s Met Gala across the pond. With fewer flamboyant outfits and celebrity names than its American counterpart, the event struggled to have the same level of cultural cut-through, especially as big names like Idris Elba and Zadie Smith reportedly dropped out of helping run the event. But with tickets going for £2,000 a head for the 800 guests and funding from the family of Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man (whose daughter Issa was the main host for the evening), the museum no doubt still sees it as a fundraising coup. Less of a win, however, were the multiple protests over the museum’s funding by BP and other sponsors with alleged links to the war in Gaza, with the phrase “DROP BP” getting projected onto the building as celebrities entered the museum and another protesting staff member storming the stage during a speech by museum chair George Osborne.

Quick hits: The controversial redevelopment of the Aylesham Centre in Peckham has been approved despite public anger, council tax in Newham is to rise by 9%, Leyton and Wanstead MP Calvin Bailey is under investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner. 

In case you missed it…

• On Saturday, The Londoner went for lunch at Oslo Court, a restaurant sat in the bottom of an art deco apartment block in St John’s Wood that’s almost unchanged since its 1970s opening. So why is this culinary institution suddenly back in vogue? 
• On Wednesday, we published the latest edition of My First Year in London, speaking to publisher and editor Marianne Tatepo about life in London versus Europe and how much a bedroom in Covent Garden back in the early 2010s. 

Wining and dining

With endless offerings and non-stop openings, we all know that deciding where to eat and drink in the capital can be fraught. We want to make it easy — so every week we’ll give you our insider guide to the city’s best spots. 

One perfect meal: Nestled between Homerton and Clapton, Elephant isn’t the easiest spot for a south Londoner to reach. But ex-Manteca chef Francesco Sarvonio is, I reasoned, worth the numerous overgrounds — and how right I was. It’s a charmingly cosy place to spend an autumn Saturday lunch: think candle-lit trattoria meets old-fashioned boozer, complete with white muslin half-curtains, Italian film posters and cast iron original fireplaces. The menu is fairly uncomplicated, a blend of modern Neopolitan-tinged primi and pizzas with seasonal toppings. A tip — the fireworks are in the piattini, so grab a few to share. When I visited, the highlights were the squid skewer with friatelli and a tart, zingy salda verde; and the seabass crudo with a melon and anchovy colatura, sweet yet pleasantly briney. The pizzas are excellent, too, soupy in the middle with a crust puffed out like a cherub’s cheek. 

One perfect drink: So for today’s pub entry we felt it was only fair to include what we thought was a major omission from Time Out’s recent top 50 London pubs list (see more on that later). Five minutes walk away from the invariably crammed pubs on Hackney’s broadway market is the Virgin Queen. Once a backstreet football boozer, its newest iteration is a lot more Hackney, with a focus on food and restored carved wooden panels, bar and furnishings — but crucially, without the usual pretentiousness and bankrupting costs that usually comes with those kind of regenerations. Its sister pubs — like the Shakespeare in Hackney and the George and Dragon in Acton — have similarly beautiful interiors and great beer selections (see: Litovel on tap). But the Virgin Queen has two added advantages: a quiet street side beer garden and a hidden basement pool and darts room.

Have a perfect meal you think we should check out? Want to recommend your favourite pub? Let us know in the comments.

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Our favourite reads

The 50 best pubs in London — Time Out

For all the fans of pubs out here, Time Out have published their official best 50 pubs in London list for 2025. This entry comes with the caveat that not every recommended read we put in is one we agree with — indeed there’s a lot to push back on here (the Old Nun's Head in first… really?). But if you have strong opinions about pubs, it’s well worth a read, even if to spark up a debate with your friends about its worst omissions and biggest misses. 

Sumo wrestling at the Royal Albert Hall — Tom Jenkins, Guardian

In this photo essay, Tom Jenkins takes us behind the ropes of the sacred dohyo ring for a look at exactly how this weekend’s Grand Sumo Tournament — the second time that a major event for the sport has been hosted outside of Japan — came to be. Our favourite pic? The artisan using an empty Asahi beer bottle to secure a straw bale known as a tawara into place around the ringside. 

To Do List

1. If you haven’t Frieze-d yourself out, Wolfgang Tillmans’s Build From Here at Maureen Paley — showing until 20 December — makes for a lovely day out in east London. Set across three different sites across Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, one of which is Tillmans’ own former studio, the exhibition is a fascinating meditation on work and artistic process. 

2. Not feeling spooky enough yet? Grab a ticket for Has Elvis Really Left the Building?, a short history of celebrity seances. With Dr Kate Cherrell, an academic specialising in paranormal history, the talk covers everything from Elvis' supposed spectral sightings in Watford to Oscar Wilde's “post-mortem literature”.

From the archive

The capital's had scores of famous bars, clubs and pubs, but none have stuck in the city's collective imagination quite so thoroughly as the Colony Room, the member's drinking club frequented by Francis Bacon (and a host of other famous 20th century artists) and perhaps the defining symbol of lost Soho bohemia. In this short documentary, curator Darren Coffield explores the mythos.