Everyone knows the lions of Trafalgar Square.
The famous Trafalgar Square lions were created by the Victorian artist Sir Edwin Landseer.
Few know the extraordinary story behind that pride of lions.
London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good morning to you, London walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Saturday, March 7th, 2026. And here it is, your daily London fix.
On this day in 1802, in a house in Marylebone – 88 Queen Anne Street East – a baby boy arrived who would grow up to give London four of its most famous residents.
They’re large.
They’re bronze.
They’re extremely patient with tourists.
And they live in Trafalgar Square.
Yes.
Today’s birthday boy is Sir Edwin Landseer – the artist who designed the lions at the base of Nelson’s Column.
Those lions.
The ones children climb.
The ones selfie-seekers hug.
The ones pigeons once treated as a sort of municipal perch.
Millions of people know the lions.
Far fewer know the man.
The boy who drew dogs
Landseer was a prodigy. A genuine one.
Not the sort of prodigy parents claim when a child produces a slightly recognisable stick-figure giraffe.
No. Landseer was sketching animals with astonishing skill before he was out of short trousers.
At five he was drawing dogs.
At seven he was making etchings.
By fourteen he had entered the Royal Academy of Arts schools.
The keeper of the Academy, the formidable painter Henry Fuseli, had a nickname for him.
“My little dog boy.”
Which tells you something.
Landseer loved animals.
Studied them obsessively.
As a boy he haunted the menagerie at Exeter Change in the Strand – imagine the smell –
sketching lions and tigers.
He watched cows in the fields near Hampstead.
He drew dogs constantly.
Dogs noble.
Dogs comic.
Dogs tragic.
Dogs thinking very serious dog thoughts.
The painter who made animals human
Here’s Landseer’s genius.
He didn’t just paint animals.
He gave them emotion.
In one famous painting a collie crouches beside the coffin of his dead shepherd.
The picture is called “The Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner.”
Victorian viewers wept.
In another famous image – “Dignity and Impudence” – a tiny terrier sits cheekily beside a huge bloodhound.
You can practically hear the terrier saying something rude.
Landseer’s animals felt things.
Loyalty.
Pride.
Mischief. Grief.
Critics said he painted animals the way Shakespeare wrote people.
Scotland enters the story
Then came Scotland.
Landseer travelled north in the 1820s and fell hopelessly in love with the Highlands.
The mountains.
The stags.
The drama of weather and wilderness.
Out of that came perhaps the most famous deer painting in the world.
Say hello to “The Monarch of the Glen.”
A magnificent stag.
Antlers like a crown.
Standing proud against the Highland sky.
You’ve probably seen it somewhere –
whisky labels,
calendars,
pub walls.
The image became so popular it practically defined the romantic vision of Scotland.
A celebrity artist
By the middle of the 19th century Landseer was a superstar.
Dukes commissioned him.
Collectors fought over his paintings.
And Queen Victoria adored him.
The Queen and Prince Albert loved Scotland too,
and Landseer helped shape their romantic vision of Highland life.
He was charming company.
Small, lively, witty.
The sort of guest who could draw caricatures of everyone in the room and have them laughing.
He even had a party trick.
He could draw two pictures at once.
One with each hand.
And then… the lions
And so we come to the great London twist.
In the 1850s the government needed statues for the base of Nelson’s Column.
Four lions.
Majestic guardians for Britain’s great naval hero Horatio Nelson.
For reasons that still make historians smile,
they chose Landseer to design them.
There was just one tiny complication.
Edwin Landseer had never made a sculpture in his life.
Not a single one.
Never mind, he took the job.
At one point he wrote that the government had “turned a lion loose on me”.
For years he struggled with the colossal clay models.
Real lions were brought to his studio so he could study them.
One of them –
a dead one from the London Zoo – apparently decomposed rather alarmingly during the process.
Victorian sculpture was not always glamorous.
Finally, after ten long years,
the bronze lions were cast.
In 1867 they were unveiled.
And London got its most famous pride.
A difficult final chapter
Landseer’s later life was troubled.
Illness.
Depression.
Heavy drinking.
The brilliant, sociable artist sometimes withdrew into himself.
But he kept working.
Right to the end.
When he died in 1873 the nation mourned.
His funeral took place
in St Paul’s Cathedral.
A remarkable honour for a painter.
And today
Today millions pass through Trafalgar Square every year.
They photograph the fountains.
Admire the column.
Climb the lions.
And very few realise they’re encountering the work of a Victorian artist born in a Marylebone townhouse two centuries ago.
An artist who loved animals.
An artist who could make them feel.
An artist who once said a lion
had been turned loose on him.
Well.
He conquered.
And London has been living with the result ever since.
Because Landseer’s lions in Trafalgar Square…
…are one of the most famous sights in the London scene.
London calling.
I’m David of London Walks.
And, look, if you enjoyed finding out a little bit more about this splendid London tableau –this quintessential London story – well – there are hundreds, no thousands, tens of thousands more where that came from.
Magnificent stories.
Ridiculous stories.
Stories so unlikely they could only possibly be true.
If getting to know London a whole lot better by drinking deep draughts from the infinitely deep well of its stories is to your liking, there’s only one thing for it –
Come walking with us.
Because London isn’t just a city.
It’s a story walking past you every every where you go, every where you look. London Walks guides –they’re the genie in the bottle. They make the new familiar and the familiar new.
You let that genie out of the bottle the London merry go round turns into a magic carpet ride.
Before you know it,
statues are talking,
alleyways are whispering, and history is nudging you in the ribs.
Nothing more to be said, really. Except Good Day.
And Good walking.
May the force of Good Londoning be with you.
See you tomorrow.
Streets ahead.