Today a new exhibition opens at the Wellcome Collection looking at drugs. High Society is a typical show for the Wellcome: attending a preview yesterday, I found the idiosyncratic splicing of art, literature, medicine, social history and anthropology I’ve come to expect from the institution.

High Society’s claim is that every society is a high society: your early morning coffee is no different to drinking kava in the Pacific, chewing betel nuts in Asia, or coca leaves in the Andes. Time and geography produce different substances, but the use of drugs in society is universal, everyday, and stretches back through history.

And the very first display case sets the scene perfectly. Alongside a crude 21st-century crack pipe is an intricately carved pair of betel nut cutters from 19th-century India, and Chilean trays for hallucinogenic snuff dating back as far as 400AD.

Later, you can see an opium ball, about the same size as a baby’s head, from the 19th century; Mervyn Peake’s Caterpillar illustration from “Alice in Wonderland”; and bronze crack-pipe sculptures by Keith Coventry. There’s syringes, laudanum bottles, photos of magic mushrooms, NHS pamphlets for parents worried about drugs. And work by Dante Gabriel Rosetti, the original manuscripts of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas de Quincey, a note on Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes craving “mental exultation” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan.

Highlights for me included the incredibly modern-looking lithograph “Morphinomane” from 1897 by Eugène Grasset: pain and anguish stretch through the girl’s face as she drives a needle into her thigh. Delightfully silly is a coloured aquatint entitled “Doctor and Mrs Syntax with a party of friends, experimenting with laughing gas”. Tracey Moffat’s hauntingly bleak “Laudanum” series of big, black and white photographs certainly make an impression. And the Joshua Light Show by Joshua White makes for a delightfully trippy museum moment.

Altering one’s mental state is a universal impulse, the exhibition suggests. The following sections, dedicated to Apothecary to Laboratory (tracing the history of early folk remedies to the garden shed where Alexander Shulgin made MDMA, or ecstasy), Collective Intoxication (looking at communal drug taking), and The Drugs Trade (mainly examining the Opium Wars) seeks to gently alter your state of mind about drugs as a whole.

Later, placing Prohibition posters alongside what modern society deems to be “harder” or “illegal” drugs poses many questions. The final section, called  A sin, a crime, a vice or a disease? after a quote by the British doctor Norman Kerr in 1884, doesn’t seek to find answers, and you’re sure to leave this thought-provoking exhibition with the issues High Society raises whirling in your mind.

High Society is at the Wellcome Collection until 27 February. Look out for the brilliant-sounding High Society Events Programme. More exhibits from the show can be see on The Guardian website.

To celebrate British Wool Week, the Campaign for Wool have filled Savile Row with grass and sheep! If you’re fanatical about fashion, you’ll probably be aware that wool tailoring is enjoying a massive resurgence in popularity, thanks in part to Matt “The Doctor” Smith‘s Harris Tweed jacket and Benedict Cumberbatch dashing about as Sherlock Holmes in an Inverness Cape. Savile Row is the perfect place to check out the latest menswear trends and indulge in a little bit of luxury.

The Exmoor Horns and Bowmont sheep were happily grazing in the sunshine in central London this morning and will be there all day. Next to the sheep is an exhibition by R Gledhill, who card and spin British wool into yarn which then gets spun into cloth which is then used by Savile Row tailors to make bespoke suits.

All those big boxes of unspun fleece were so soft, colourful and tempting it made me wish I’d popped my spindle in my bag this morning so I could spin a few meters!

If you’re popping along to see the sheep, you might also be excited to know that many of Mayfair’s most distinguished tailors, including Hardy Amies and H.Huntsman & Sons have opened their studios and archives to the public today so you can find out what goes on behind the scenes.

I took a tour of Anderson & Sheppard with Managing Director John Hitchcock who guided me round the shop, office, changing rooms and workshops and showed us (some London College of Fashion students joined in) the details on some funky purple and yellow plus fours suit which won the 2009 Golden Shears competition. John also told us about Alexander McQueen‘s time at Anderson & Sheppard.

You can pop along to see the sheep and enjoy the open day till 6pm tonight. If you can’t make it there are events happening all week, including wool themed windows in many shops across London including Selfridges, Jaeger and Jigsaw. You can follow the design trail at the Design Centre Chelsea Harbour to find out more about wool for your home.

Find out more about The Campaign for Wool, British Wool Week and why wool is the ultimate in sustainable, biodegradable and luxurious fashion at www.campaignforwool.org

You could win one night’s accommodation at the Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes for two people, plus do a bit of sleuthing yourself at one of the hotel’s exciting murder mystery dinner parties.

And to fill that Sherlock Holmes-shaped hole in your life, you’ll also win a copy of new novel The Baker Street Phantom by Fabrice Bourland.  Set in the spring of 1932 the private detective agency of Messrs, Singleton and Trelawney must solve a series of brutal murders, aided by the most famous detective of all time.

To enter, send your name, address and contact details to sherlock@all-leo.com by midnight on 24 August 2010. Plus, tell us which is your favourite novel set in London in the comments box below.

The overnight stay will need to be taken during September 2010 and two places on the murder mystery dinner are available on 25 September 2010 only.

Interactive murder mystery dinners are hosted by MurderMysteryEvents.com.

If you aren’t lucky enough to win but decide to book a stay at the Park Plaza Sherlock Holmes this September, you’ll get a free copy of The Baker Street Phantom.

Read competition terms and conditions.

Robert Downey Jr (as the famous detective Sherlock Holmes) has arrived at Madame Tussauds.  The new waxwork  mirrors Downey Jr’s penetrating stare and tousled hair and wears a replica costume – dapper black and grey suit, waistcoat and cravat. Look out for the exciting new film based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous character when its released on Boxing Day.

If you’re a fan of Sherlock Holmes, check out our itinerary around Holmes’ London.