Piccadilly and Soho – elegant, decadent, and just a little unholy. Step into the gaslit streets that spawned literature’s most chilling creations: Dr Frankenstein’s monster, Dr Jekyll, and Count Dracula.
This is London as laboratory – where 19th-century science met gothic imagination and something strange began to stir. On this walk, Dr Stephen King takes you through the real streets and the real minds that inspired the monsters.
These are the purlieus of the grave-robbing surgeon who breathed life into Jekyll and Hyde.
Dracula and the Transylvania undead rise up before you. They’re immanent in the crucible where they took shape. Dr King takes you there, shows you that crucible.
Act III of the drama is meeting the publisher who rejected Frankenstein yet printed Darwin’s Origin of Species – before committing one of literature’s greatest acts of vandalism.
And the above is just a taster, a sampling.
We’ll also visit the hotel of presidents and murderers, where a certain desk later inspired Stephen King’s Misery.
And along the way: Darwin, Faraday, Davy, Newton, Ada Lovelace – the brilliant, eccentric minds who blurred the line between science and sorcery.
It’s a walk through fog and philosophy, lightning and lunacy – a tour of the moments when reason turned round and saw its own shadow.
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THE GUIDING
Brian –
A wonderful surprise of a tour with an engaging, knowledgeable, and entertaining tour guide. We signed up for this tour because it seemed so different from a typical walking tour of London. As it turns out, it was one of the best walks we have taken, and we learned a great deal. Prepare to be fascinated with discussions of gothic literature, history and science, and how it ties into the fabric of London. The two hours flew by. Would recommend to anyone – we had no particular interest in either monsters or science, but we probably will find ourselves reading some books now that we understand their context. This is not a boring or niche interest tour – sign up and you will not be disappointed!
Laura Hayden –
Monsters, Scientists and walks! Oh my! What a wonderful combination of science and fiction and how they meshed. Dr. Stephen was a congenial and informative guide, taking us on a fact filled tour about how science inspired fiction. (Or sometimes, how fiction sidestepped science altogether.) We enjoyed ourselves immensely and he moved us through time and through gothic fiction. Highly recommended!