Chelsea Area Guide

Nickki Lamborn fronts this high-energy blues five-piece who are famous for their electric live shows and have supported The Who, ZZ Top and The Pretenders in their time.

Annual floral spectacular with a variety of displays.

As The Beach Boys mark more than a half century of making music, the group continues to ride the crest of a wave unequalled in America’s musical history. The Beach Boys – who have become synonymous with the California lifestyle and an American icon to fans around the world -- will celebrate 250 years of the USA, saluting 60 years of Pet Sounds, at Live at Chelsea in London, on 14th June 2026. Since the band’s co-founder, lead-singer and chief lyricist Mike Love penned the lyrics to The Beach Boys’ first hit,“Surfin’” (1961), dozens of the bands chart toppers have become eternal anthems of American youth: “Surfin’ USA,” “Surfer Girl,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “I Get Around,” “California Girls,” “Help Me Rhonda,” “Barbara Ann,” “Good Vibrations,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “Rock and Roll Music” and “Kokomo.” The Beach Boys have sold over 100 million records worldwide and have received more than 33 RIAA Platinum and Gold record awards. The Rock And Roll Hall of Famers where also honored at the 2001 Grammy Awards with the Lifetime Achievement Award. With more than five decades of touring under their belts, The Beach Boys have performed more concerts than any major rock band in history.

Join author and journalist Lucy Colback as she explores how an entire generation was shaped by the experience of global conflict, drawing on her book Afterbursts: Reliving World War II. Over four years, Lucy travelled across Russia, the United States, Europe, Japan and China, interviewing men and women who lived through the Second World War. Her journey also brought her to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, where she spoke with two late Chelsea Pensioners, Roy Cadman and Harry Rawlins. In this talk, Lucy shares their remarkable stories—voices that illuminate a generation marked by war—and reflects on how personal memories can echo, complicate, or even contradict national narratives of pride, heroism, decency and shame. Afterbursts began with a single photograph: a Chinese man and an American GI lighting their cigarettes tip to tip. At a time when governments were reviving wartime grievances to serve modern geopolitical agendas, Lucy set out to ask a simple but profound question: How do those who endured the war feel about their suffering being used to fuel division today? What she discovered was far more complex. Survivors shared not only their wartime experiences but also how those experiences shaped their identities, relationships and understanding of the world. Afterbursts challenges nationalist myths and reveals the deeply human, often uncomfortable truths of conflict.

CEFC returns toHoly Trinity, Sloane Square for another concert of contrasts and choral magic. Programme

Where Music Meets Memory Written & performed by Karen Cecilia Doorway to Perception asks the audience to consider music as both memory and as part of their own story. Karen Cecilia performs the theremin throughout; a uniquely ethereal, body-responsive instrument that becomes both a musical and symbolic conduit as we journey between sound, story, identity, and political agency. Doorway to Perception asks the audience to consider what music offers us in a time when public expression is increasingly fraught. As political forces attempt to dictate narratives, the act of listening, and of creating, becomes a form of defiance. Each performance includes structured audience participation as Karen tells personal musical memories that become a living part of the work. Starring Karen Cecilia (writer/performer) Projections by Karen Cecilia