• Soho in the Morning
• The Victoria & Albert Museum Tour
• Royal London & Westminster Abbey
  
• Hidden London
  
• Eccentric London - "London is stranger than fiction" 
• The Old Jewish Quarter

• The Inns of Court - Legal & Illegal London 
• The Old University Quarter - Exploring London's Sorbonne
• Occult London & the Da Vinci Code 
• Secrets & Splendours of St. Paul's

• The London of Charles Dickens
  
  

• The Along The Thames Pub Walk
• The Old Knightsbridge Village Pub Walk
•  Haunted London
•  Jack The Ripper Haunts
  
  

• Additional London Walks on Selected Fridays
  
  Okay, now scroll on down for full details of each of Friday's London Walks...

10.15 am on Fridays
from Leicester SquareTube
(meet Graham by Wyndham's Theatre)

The brush that painted London sober, sombre and genteel missed Soho. What a delightful hotch-potch the place is. A graceful old square and courtyards and passages that burrow unpredictably between the streets...and everything humming with life. Shutters going up and flower boxes being watered, freshly baked bread carried into restaurants, waiters in white aprons serving Turkish coffee at sidewalk cafes, Chinatown bestirring itself, the colour and clamour of Berwick Street market (if it weren't for the Cockney accents you'd think you were in a Morroccan souk). What a tonic! Want a peek? Here's a wee "photo-essay".

The Soho in the Morning Walk takes place
every Friday morning at 10.15 am.

Meet Graham just outside Leicester SquareTube
(he'll be standing right in front of Wyndham's Theatre).

Leicester SquareTube is on
thePiccadilly and Northern Lines

Guided by Graham

10.45 am on Fridays
from South KensingtonTube

Meet Margaret or Helena just beyond the ticket barrier
[subway turnstile in American parlance] in the booking hall

Well yes and no. What you see - the route the guide takes and the selection she makes - is important in a museum that covers 11 acres, has 145 galleries, and runs to seven miles of exhibits and five million objects. But logistics and savvy are just the basics. The real thrill is what you see in the pieces we show you. These are objects that contain their history - that braid together culture and art. Which is why they're in the world's greatest decorative arts collection. To see them - to see into them - the Great Bed of Ware, the Raphael Cartoons ("one of the supreme sights of the world") the Ardabil carpet...well, it's like sunrise on Mount Moses. And if you want to make a day of it, how about lunch in the V & A's extremely civilised cafe followed by spot of shopping at nearby Harrods!

The Wonders of the V & A Walk takes place
every* Friday at 10.45 am.

*Except March 21st

Meet Margaret or Helena just beyond the ticket barrier
of South KensingtonTube.

South KensingtonTube is on
the Circle, District & Piccadilly Lines. 

Guided by Margaret or Helena

11 am on Fridays
from EmbankmentTube

This is a collector's piece of a walk...one that'll change the way you see central London. It teems with unexpected delights, odd places and passing strange things and people. You'll crack the mystery of the Trafalgar Square lions (and a royal statue), learn how an acrobat risked everything at St. Martin's in the Fields, and whether the spinning dome at the top of the Coliseum actually spins. Orson Welles and Sir John Betjeman put in an appearance...as does the most eccentric bookshop in the world. Enjoy! And afterwards you can spoil yourself with cream cakes and tea.

The Eccentric London Walk takes place
every* Friday morning at 11 am.

*Except Dec. 28th 

Meet Hilary or Kim just outside the exit of
EmbankmentTube.

EmbankmentTube is on
the Circle, District, Bakerloo & Northern Lines

Guided by Kim or Hilary

11 am on Fridays
from MonumentTube
(meet June just outside the Fish Street Hill exit )

This walk is the distillation of a brilliant guide's 25 years" experience probing the hidden places and forgotten nooks of the world's most elusive city. Exploring parts of London that few people know exist - up creeping lanes, round out-of-the-way corners, past secret islands of green - June's at her inimitable best. "She's evolved a highly entertaining style of  her own blend of historical commentary and bizarre anecdote laced with mildly scurrilous gossip about past and present celebrities and defunct royals" (The New York Times). In such places and with such a guide, the past becomes our present.

The Hidden London Walk takes place
every Friday morning at 11 am.

Meet June just outside the main exit - the Fish Street Hill exit - of MonumentTube.

MonumentTube is on the Circle & District Lines

Guided by June

11.30 am on Fridays
from Tower HillTube

The Old Jewish Quarter Walk takes place
every Friday at 11.30 am,
every Sunday at 10.30 am
and every Wednesday at 11.30 am.

Meet Jean or Shaughan or Steve or Judy 
just outside the exit of Tower HillTube.

Tower HillTube is on
the Circle & District  Lines

N.B. Whenever possible we visit the wonderful Old Synagogue, for which there's a small entrance fee.

Guided on Fridays by Jean
Guided on Sundays by Judy or Shaughan
Guided on Wednesdays by Steve or Shaughan

2 pm on Fridays
from Russell  SquareTube

Full gush mode for this one. It's Disneyland for grownups.The university quarter itself is a patchwork quilt - London doesn't come any more higgledy piggledy. Which means the walk is right down the alley - so to speak - of what everyone loves about London Walks: it gets you into nooks and crannies that you wouldn't find off your own bat. But it pushes the envelope. Because we're not just out on the street - we're going into buildings to see several of the university's "collections". More than see them - we'll get a curator-guided tour of cabinets of curiosities, many of them extinct or endangered species: a Dodo, a Tasmanian Tiger, the stuffed body of a famous philosopher, the world's first calendar, the world's oldest (papyrus) wills, etc. It's like beetling around in an enchanted forest, coming upon a clearing...and finding a cromlech! But be careful - be very very careful - because this one comes with a whale in the bathtub!

The Old University Quarter Walk takes place
every* Friday at 2 pm.

Meet Alison or Hilary or Kim
just outside the exit of Russell SquareTube.

Russell SquareTube is on the Piccadilly Line

Guided by Alison or Hilary or Kim

 *Except December 28th or March 21st

---

"If there is such a thing as a shell secreted by man to fit himself here we find it, on the banks of the Thames, where the great streets join and St. Paul's Cathedral, like the volute on the top of the snail shell, finishes it off."
Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, 1922

2.15 pm on Fridays*
from St. Paul'sTube exit 2

"St. Paul's is much more than a place of worship. It is a specific against grossness, brutality and despair." And "to set foot into St. Paul's is to experience that cold shock straight from the past, beauty as a genius conceived it, grace that we had forgotten." Now some practical matters. There's an admission charge to St. Paul's, but there is a Group Rate. More to the point is your other "spend": your time. To refract it through a great guide will "buy" you inestimable riches in St. Paul's. Knowing where to look and what to look for - and seeing these things through the translucent integument of their "stories" - well, it's like going from blurry near-sighted to 20:20. What's more, the new Churchill Gates are in place; centuries-old Temple Bar has come home; and, most important of all, St. Paul's hasn't looked this good - inside and out - for 300 years. In short, the wraps are finally off - the restoration work's done - and our much loved old cathedral is radiant and pristine. Indeed, we'll show you some thrilling "rediscoveries" - wonderful features that were so begrimed they were lost and forgotten. And for some "added value", check this out!

The Secrets & Splendours of St. Paul's Tour takes place
every* Friday afternoon at 2.15 pm.

*Except March 21st

Meet Judy or Helena or Margaret 
just outside exit 2 of St. Paul'sTube.

St. Paul'sTube is on the Central Line

Guided by Margaret or Judy or Helena

"Was für Plunder!"
("What a place to plunder!")

Field Marshal von Blucher, on viewing London from St. Paul's after the peace banquet at Oxford 

2.30 pm on Fridays
from TempleTube

This walk is a real eye-opener. It's a sojourn into a lost city - an Atlantis. Which is why Jean, who guides the walk in Victorian costume, doesn't look at all out of place in her bonnet and shawl and apron. Because this London - Dickens's London - has kept the 20th century at bay. It's a London of nooks and crannies and alleyways and gas lamps and 18th- and 19th-century houses - and no cars! It's the London where Dickens lived and worked. It's the London of the 400-year-old Old Curiosity Shop and David Copperfield and Pip and Pickwick. It's "Inimitable" - like Dickens himself. Guided by Jean.

The Charles Dickens's London walk takes place
every Friday afternoon at 2.30 pm.

Meet Jean just outside the exit of TempleTube.

TempleTube is on
the Circle & District Lines  

Guided by Jean

"This is a London particular….A fog, miss."
                                   Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1852

7 pm on Fridays
from BlackfriarsTube, exit 3

"the most exciting walk in London...it can do more
to interpret the city than anything else, a real skeleton key"

If you only have time for one walking tour, this is the one to go on - it's the classic London pub walk. It takes in London's last remaining galleried coaching inn, its best riverside walkway (and, for that matter, the river crossing that takes the palm d'or...and to walk across the "Blade of Light" in the gloaming...well, London vignettes just don't come any better), its oldest market, the finest art nouveau pub in England, the most sensational art gallery in the world (on Fridays we pop inside for a quick look!), the church where Harvard University's founder was baptised, and an 18th-century pub that brews its own beer - plus lashings of Shakespeare, a jot of Dickens, lots of pub lore, and London's best skyline panorama. It gets better. Because there's also the recently discovered remains of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (and its sister playhouse The Rose)...and the thrilling, thatch-roofed reproduction that's risen, Phoenix-like, only a stone's throw away. Let alone the astonishing replica of Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hinde, the ship that the great Elizabethan mariner sailed around the world over 400 years ago. Anchored there in the murky Thames, its timbers creaking eerily in the misty London night and The Globe just yards away...it's a ghost ship lost in time. Go on this walk. (Food is available.)  And if you'd like to read a bit more, click me! Or, indeed, if you'd like to see a bit more, click here. And if you want to get the measure of just how special that last pub is, click me!

The Along the Thames Pub Walk takes place
every Friday at 7 pm,
every Monday at 7 pm,
and every Wednesday at 7 pm.

Meet your guide just outside exit 3 of
BlackfriarsTube.

And, hey, if you want to know what the spot where you'll be standing - exit 3 of BlackfriarsTube - looked like 2,000 years ago click here!

BlackfriarsTube is on the Circle & District Lines

Guided on Fridays by David or Mary
Guided on Mondays by Richard or Steve
Guided on Wednesday by Shaughan

"Go where we may, rest where we will,
Eternal London haunts us still."                             

Thomas Moore, Rhymes on the Road, c. 1820

7 pm on Fridays
from South KensingtonTube

Welcome to the other Knightsbridge. The old lanes, as they're known, are a London original. They're one of the capital's hidden delights, one of its special places. And yes they are hard to find...our higgledy-piggledy route takes us up a cobbled pathway, past a hidden churchyard, along a little mews, through a gate in a wall and down some steps and then...hey presto, we're through the looking glass and into the old lanes. Into a collector's corner of mews, alleys, and cosiness. Into unchanging London. Here we could be a million miles from Harrods and the hustle and bustle of Brompton Road. The contrast is as dramatic and unexpected as anything in London...if you didn't know better you'd think you were in the back streets of a Cornish fishing village. And that's just for openers. Stir in pots of history, add a dash of intrigue and gossip, and garnish with pubs that are real trouvailles and you've got a spiffing walk. (Food is available.)

The Old Knightsbridge Pub Walk takes place
every Friday evening at 7 pm.

Meet Nick or Richard III 
just outside the exit of South KensingtonTube.

South KensingtonTube
is on the Circle, District & Piccadilly Lines

Guided by Nick or Richard III

7.30 pm on Fridays
from MonumentTube
(meet just outside the Fish Street Hill exit)

It's blue dusk. Feeding time. Time to pierce the veil which hides the future after death. The time when rooftop cats look down - their eyes green as ringstones - and see things that maybe we shouldn't see. Down here in the creepiest part of London...in alleyways so narrow you can't open an umbrella in them. And so old they're cobwebbed with time. And cobwebbed with something else too. Cobwebbed with events that occurred long ago - events that under certain conditions can again "become dynamic". So when you see the unholy Trinity - and you will see it - and when silver dragons leer at you - and they will - and if you hear footsteps up a deserted alleyway - or voices of persuasion that whisper in the darkness - or catch a glimpse of a hooded, staring transparent figure - congratulations - you've just fed a haunting. It'll be back. And one day...so will you. Now who's for a really cozy pub?

The Haunted London Walk takes place
every Friday at 7.30 pm
and every Sunday at 7.30 pm.

Meet your guide just outside MonumentTube
(meet outside the Fish Street Hill exit, which is the main exit)

MonumentTube is on the Circle & District Lines

Guided on Fridays by Steve or Corinna
Guided on Sundays by Nick or Shaughan (he's the gentleman with the deadly pallor and swirling black cape! As the San Francisco Chronicle put it, "he's deliciously spooky!")