Dr Ann’s Bloomsbury Cocktail  New Walk!

Beautiful Squares, Dangerous Ideas

Bloomsbury looks calm. Leafy squares, polite terraces, people reading books on benches. But don’t be fooled. For 400 years this has been one of the most argumentative patches of ground in the country.

Led by Dr Ann, a brilliant guide with a gift for making big ideas human and accessible, this walk introduces the men and women who came here to wrestle with the biggest questions of their age – war and peace, money and power, race and gender, faith and doubt, freedom and fear. Quakers and communists. Pacifists and planners. Philosophers, economists, writers and rebels.

A picturesque stroll through green squares while thinking outside the box

As we stroll through London’s most beautiful squares, we follow ideas as they collide with events: how people in Bloomsbury responded to terror and war, how they grappled with the threat of nuclear annihilation, and how debates that began here still shape the modern world.

It’s a conversation, not a lecture.

A conversation sparked by places, personalities and stories.

We finish, appropriately, with a restorative cup of tea in Russell Square café or one of the many nearby pubs, where Bloomsbury arguments have a habit of continuing.

A grandstand view of the history of modern big ideas – big ideas that explain so much about our lives today. Places associated with key thinkers and influencers.

Fighters for peace, liberty and equality.

Gandhi for one.

Here’s a taster. It’s Dr Ann introducing us to Gandhi. [Aside here – yes, c’est moi, David. I thought I “knew” Gandhi. Talk about labouring under a massive misapprehension. This is just a short extract from Dr Ann’s walk but it was revelatory. She guides like a gifted novelist. Her selection of biographical particulars couldn’t have been more telling. Let alone fascinating. The scales fell from my eyes. And “meeting him” here, in Tavistock Square. He’s right there before us (the statue). And in stereo as it were because he’s also “right there before us” in Dr Ann’s words. I loved it. The ProtoIndo European root of the word “learn” is “find” or “follow the track.” Goes back aeons to the hunter-gatherer era. Bottom line: thanks to the “guidance” of this brilliant guide, Dr Ann, we were able to “find” or “follow the track” and we “found” Gandhi. We “learned.” Learned in the best possible way in the best possible setting.]

Ok, back to hostess, Dr Ann: “We end in a Bloomsbury square with a mash-up of political philosophies that still shape our world.”

And what company he’s keeping.

PRACTICALS

Meeting point: Meet Dr Ann just outside Friends House, which is just across Euston Road from Euston Station*

Ends: Bloomsbury Square, which is near Tottenham Court Road Underground Station and Russell Square Underground Station

Walking distance: 1.3 miles

*Euston Station is both a mainline railway station and an Underground Station

IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THE GUIDING