In Focus: The Strand & Its Lost Lanes

Embankment underground station, London (Villiers Street exit)

Guided by Fiona

Streets Ahead! More trail blazing by the best urban walking tour guides on the planet. In Focus walks are an extremely detailed look – "what I love about London Walks is the degree of granularity you get" (as that American visitor memorably put it) – at the most famous streets and squares of London. And their tributaries. Today's In Focus walk explores The Strand. Disraeli called it "the first street in Europe." He meant foremost but the chronological sense packs some punch, too – the name was first recorded in 1185. Marx cast a beady over it as well, describing it as "a main thoroughfare which gives strangers an imposing idea of the wealth of London." And then he went on to point out that behind its grand institutions lay streets teeming with the city's underclass. Any way you cut it, any way you walk it, any way you look at it it's a spellbinder of a street: theatres, palaces, luxury hotels, a great railway station, pubs, astonishing literary connections, those lillies, a bestiary of statues, hidden rivers, a Royal Society, a Tarot deck of London place names and historical associations… It's the buckle, the street that connects everything – London to Westminster, the past to the present, the river to its city, east to west, rulers to ruled. London's spine. To walk it, to see it, to get to know it the way you will after a couple of hours along there in Fiona's company is to get your internal London compass aligned perfectly. From the Strand – from your understanding of it – London opens up to you like the petals of a rose. Becomes part of you. And vice versa. And – bears repeating this – this one's got a Superstar Guide. Fiona took the laurels in her Westminster Guiding course. And of course last year won the biggest one of all – the Blue Badge Guide of the Year Award.