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Here are the walking tours I can guide in London. I am always adding to
this list, and would be happy to research a tour for you.
Fitzrovia, Bloomsbury
& Camden Town
These areas are closely associated with artists, writers, and London
University: Walter Sickert, Charles Dickens, the Bloomsbury Group, George Bernard Shaw, WB
Yeats, William Hogarth, the Pre-Raphaelites, Roger Fry & the Omega
Workshops, the Slade School of Fine Art, the Euston Road School, the
Camden Town Group, the Vorticists. I'll show you one of the
strangest sights in London - Jeremy Bentham, who, although he died in
1832, still sits in the entrance to University College today.
Walter Sickert's Camden Town
Discover the area where artist Walter Sickert lived and worked. See the
sites of the Music Halls he loved, the studios where he and his friends
worked and taught, the scenes that he painted. Hear some of his favourite
stories about local murders - Dr Crippen, the Camden Town Murder, and Jack
the Ripper.
Blackfriars
Today the names of a bridge, a railway station and a pub recall the
Dominican, or 'Blackfriars', friary that stood her until the Dissolution
of the Monasteries. The area has a rich history that includes royal
residences, riverside wharves, the Blackfriars theatre, playwrights
William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, lutenist to King James I John Dowland,
artists Sir Anthony van Dyck, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal,
engineers Sir James Wolfe Barry and Henry Marc Brunel, and the Cubbitt family
of builders. The Blackfriars pub is one of London's finest examples of
Arts & Crafts architecture.
Garden walks
In the City area we can visit many small hidden gardens - in ruined
churches, in World War II bombsites, on top of office buildings - and
gardens by leading designers such as Piet Oudolf and Arabella Lennox-Boyd.
We can visit the Temple gardens, where Shakespeare tells us the War of the
Roses began. In the West End, our walk can take us through parks, garden
squares, botanic gardens, roof gardens, and the Museum of Garden History.
St
Katharine's Dock & Wapping
Part of the old dock area of London, this walk takes in ruined abbeys,
docks & locks, Thames barges & a lightship, old riverside warehouses, the HQ
of the River Police, a pub where the artist JMW Turner lived anonymously,
the site of the home of Captain Bligh of 'Mutiny on the Bounty', Execution
Dock, the pirate Captain Kidd, famous riverside pubs, stories of notorious
murders and an old Music Hall.
Covent
Garden
This is a walk through one of London's liveliest areas, showing you the
Royal Opera House, the Theatre Museum, Drury Lane & famous theatres, the actors' church, the markets, the street
entertainers, an area that has
been home to aristocrats, artists, actors & writers. I'll tell you
about Pygmalion/My Fair Lady, Punch & Judy, Nijinsky & Pavlova,
limelight, the Bow Street Runners & the cells of Bow Street Magistrates Court.
Royal
& Maritime Greenwich
Greenwich, the birthplace of Henry VIII, is internationally famous as the
home of the Meridian Line. This walk will show you where Henry VIII &
Queen Elizabeth I were born, the beautiful Queen's House designed by Inigo
Jones, the magnificent riverside buildings of the Royal Greenwich Hospital
for Seamen, the Cutty Sark tea clipper, the Royal Observatory where the
Astronomer Royal used to work, Greenwich Park and the National Maritime Museum.
I'll tell you stories about seafarers & adventurers, kings &
queens, architects & artists.
Westminster
& Whitehall
Seat of government for a thousand years, and site of two royal palaces. On
this walk you will hear about the fires that destroyed those palaces, the
execution of King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, the Suffragettes, Humphrey &
Larry
the Downing Street cats, the building of the
Houses of Parliament, 10 Downing Street, Old Scotland Yard, the Horseguards, Churchill working in the Cabinet War Rooms during the
bombing of World War II, the Cenotaph, and the government departments of Whitehall.
Royal
Palaces & Parks
This walk can take you all the way from Westminster to Kensington if you
are feeling very energetic, but focuses on the area around Buckingham
Palace. Lots of Royal stories, as well as a chance to feed the ducks.
Soho
& Chinatown
On this walk I'll tell you about artists & sculptors, rock, pop &
folk musicians, the film industry, Karl Marx, the cholera epidemic of 1854
& Dr John Snow, the great C19 engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the C18
Scottish surgeon John Hunter, the restaurants & cafes of Soho, and the
Chinese in London.
Spitalfields
This
walk looks at fine architecture, the artists and entertainers who have
lived in this area, the many different immigrant communities that have
settled here, the silk-weaving industry, the markets, and Bangla Town.
The
Da Vinci Code
This walk visits the locations in London that are important to Dan Brown's
story. The Temple, now an area of lawyers' offices, was once home to the
Knights Templar, and at its heart is the round Templars' church,
where famous knights were buried. Across the road are the Royal Courts of
Justice, where Dan Brown defended himself against accusations of
plagiarism. On the way to Westminster Abbey, where Isaac Newton's tomb
played an important role in the book, we can call into the National
Gallery to see work by Leonardo da Vinci.
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