Imperial War Museum, London, until 1 January
If you know something of Cecil Beaton's politics you could be forgiven for thinking that this exhibition may be one to miss. Beaton, like so many of the English aristocracy that he longed to be part of, was an anti-Semite a fawning monarchist and a snob of the worst sort.
However, if you can afford the eight quid to get in, missing this exhibition would be an error for a number of reasons.
At Tate Britain, until 13 January
Victorian Britain, we know now, was one of capitalism's great success stories. Britain industrialised and came to dominate the world economically and politically. At the time success seemed far less certain to Britain's rulers. Revolution broke out in France in 1789, 1830, 1848 and 1871: it might do so in Britain. The educated classes had believed that the Bible, central to their ideas, was literally true: in 1859 Darwin's Origin of Species implied that it was not. Britain was the world's first industrial superpower, but could such a society last?
Tate Modern currently has a display of 54 works by the German artist John Heartfield (1891-1968).
Heartfield pioneered photomontage and used the technique of cutting up and combining photographic images to strong political effect. His most famous works were powerful satirical attacks on Hitler and the Nazis.
Heartfield was born Helmut Herzfelde. He anglicised his name during the First World War in protest against German nationalism.
For those interested in such things, a minor spat has broken out among some of Britain's best known thespians about whether Will Shakespeare of Stratford was, in fact, the author of the plays attributed to him.
So this exhibition at the British Musuem seems timely. Visitors are invited to walk through a series of themed rooms which explore the relationship between the plays and the world that Shakespeare would have known. Specially commissioned videos of well-known actors performing Shakespearean soliloquies are interspersed among the swords, maps, paintings, bear skulls, witches' charms and other renaissance relics.
Although at £14 it's a bit expensive for those without British Museum membership, there is plenty to enjoy here.
Edward Burtynsky says that the main aim of his work is to depict nature transformed through industry. Over a long career he has photographed mines, quarries, scrapyards, shipyards, recycling yards, refineries, oil fields and oil spills, factories and urban landscapes.
Through these images he attempts to show us places that are outside most people's normal experience, but whose output is central to our daily lives. These landscapes are often scarred and damaged by industrial development - but Burtynsky's photographs are often hauntingly beautiful.
Our round-up of some of this summer's cultural highlights
The 1990 film adaptation of Philip K Dick's short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as forgetful fugitive Douglas Quaid, was a huge hit.
This reboot of Total Recall stars Colin Farrell and will try to put some of the political punch back into Dick's sci-fi romp.
An attempt to convey the essence, as the author perceives it, of a particular time and location is often central to literature. This has arguably become more important in the last 200 hundred years, as writers have attempted to memorialise places that are being rapidly transformed by industrialisation.
So Wordsworth's beloved Lake District is punctured by Blake's dark satanic mills; for George Eliot's provincial characters the railways are a thrilling but threatening herald of progress; from a train carriage in Edward Thomas's well-known poem "Adlestrop", the serenity of an English village seems complete - but the horror of an industrial world war is just round the corner.
Barbican, London
Bauhaus is probably the most famous of all architectural design movements of the 20th century. It's also one of the most interesting for socialists. This exhibition has the biggest collection of Bauhaus objects seen in Britain for over 40 years and was put together with help from the Berlin Bauhaus Archive.
Matt's Gallery, Mile End, London
This new exhibition at Matt's Gallery in east London shows rarely exhibited photographs from artist Willie Doherty from between 1985 and 1992.
The work began in a period when the Irish Republican movement was entering into political negotiations with the British government over the future of Northern Ireland. The images offer us a glimpse into this process, contrasting the simple black and white photographs with short bites of text - "undercover", "unseen", "protecting", "invading" - creating tension for the viewer.
Hastings
The Jerwood Gallery in Hastings opened its doors in March. On the edge of the historic fishing beach, this has been a controversial project. Jerwood paid the borough council nothing for the site and is exempted from council tax. Hopes for free entry were dashed when the gallery announced charges of £7 for the general public, £2 for locals.
Clad in dark ceramic tiles intended to mirror the black of their iconic neighbours, it remains to be seen how their gleam will withstand the onslaught of seagull droppings.
