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Hyde Park Gate","area":"South Kensington","address":"22 Hyde Park Gate, SW7 5DH","station":"Gloucester Road","walk":7,"lat":51.499639,"lng":-0.181195,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":"A private house in a cul-de-sac; the plaque is on the front. Churchill died at No. 28, a few doors up.","runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/808866235","types":["bloomsbury","free","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The tall dark house where Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell were born and grew up, and the Victorian childhood they spent the rest of their lives escaping.","note":"Leslie Stephen, editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, filled the house with two families' children, and Vanessa was born here in 1879 and Virginia in 1882; their mother died in 1895, their half-sister Stella two years later and their father in 1904, and the mourning, the Duckworth half-brothers and the closed curtains are the background to everything Woolf wrote about her early life. To the Lighthouse is this household moved to Cornwall. 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A round brass plaque on the corner building at Cambridge Circus marks the site, and the rest of the road is still where London's booksellers are.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"84 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0JG, London","in_area":{"slug":"covent-garden","name":"Covent Garden"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Fabrique","s":"fabrique-seven-dials","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":21},{"n":"Cambridge Circus: le Carr\u00e9's Circus","s":"cambridge-circus-le-carres-circus","c":"secrets","cn":"Secrets & Espionage","m":43},{"n":"Charing Cross Road","s":"charing-cross-road","c":"shopping","cn":"Shopping","m":48}],"near_same":[{"s":"agatha-christie-memorial","m":182},{"s":"stanfords","m":218},{"s":"cecil-court","m":287},{"s":"shakespeare-statue-leicester-square","m":339},{"s":"a-conversation-with-oscar-wilde","m":536},{"s":"the-wheatsheaf","m":629}]},{"slug":"a-conversation-with-oscar-wilde","name":"A Conversation with Oscar Wilde","area":"Covent Garden","address":"Adelaide Street, WC2N 4HZ","station":"Charing Cross","walk":1,"lat":51.508719,"lng":-0.125857,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/3688180043","types":["free","statue"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Maggi Hambling's Wilde rising out of a granite coffin behind St Martin-in-the-Fields, inviting you to sit and talk.","note":"Unveiled in 1998 on the anniversary of his death, Wilde's head and hand, cigarette in the fingers, rise from a green granite sarcophagus that doubles as a bench, so that the passer-by sits at the level of his face; the cigarette has been broken off and replaced many times. Along the side is cut his line from Lady Windermere's Fan: 'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars'. It stands in Adelaide Street, between the church and the Strand.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/a-conversation-with-oscar-wilde.jpg?v=d0516486","thumb":"/img/a-conversation-with-oscar-wilde-480.jpg?v=25cbdd10","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"Oscar Wilde's head and hand rising out of a granite bench beside Adelaide Street","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Alan Stanton, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscar_Wilde_-2_(2356468782).jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"A Conversation with Oscar Wilde, Adelaide Street, WC2N 4HZ, London","in_area":{"slug":"covent-garden","name":"Covent Garden"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Donutelier Strand","s":"donutelier-strand","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":41},{"n":"Eleanor Cross","s":"eleanor-cross","c":"monuments","cn":"Monuments & Ruins","m":49},{"n":"St Martin-in-the-Fields","s":"st-martin-in-the-fields","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":58}],"near_same":[{"s":"cecil-court","m":255},{"s":"shakespeare-statue-leicester-square","m":346},{"s":"agatha-christie-memorial","m":355},{"s":"stanfords","m":477},{"s":"84-charing-cross-road","m":536},{"s":"courtauld-gallery","m":650}]},{"slug":"agatha-christie-memorial","name":"Agatha Christie memorial","area":"Seven Dials","address":"Cranbourn Street, WC2H 7AD","station":"Leicester Square","walk":1,"lat":51.511779,"lng":-0.127366,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/2321090117","types":["free","statue"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A bronze book with Christie's face in it, on the corner where The Mousetrap has run since 1952.","note":"Ben Twiston-Davies's memorial of 2012 marks the sixtieth year of The Mousetrap, which opened at the Ambassadors and moved next door to the St Martin's Theatre in 1974, the longest run in the world. The book stands open on its spine with her profile in relief, and the titles of the novels are lettered along the pages; the theatre where the play still asks its audience to keep the secret is a few yards up West Street. She wrote sixty-six detective novels, and the play's twist is not in this note.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/agatha-christie-memorial.jpg?v=594fb8e9","thumb":"/img/agatha-christie-memorial-480.jpg?v=4c0f7f16","width":706,"height":1024,"alt":"Denkmal f\u00fcr Agatha Christie Great Newport Street Ecke Cranbourn Street, London West End of London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Diagram Lajard, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Agatha_Christie_Memorial_(cropped).jpg","thumb_width":331},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Agatha Christie memorial, Cranbourn Street, WC2H 7AD, London","in_area":{"slug":"covent-garden","name":"Covent Garden"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Donutelier Charing Cross Road","s":"donutelier-charing-cross-road","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":61},{"n":"Dishoom Covent Garden","s":"dishoom-covent-garden","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":83},{"n":"La Gelatiera","s":"la-gelatiera","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":85}],"near_same":[{"s":"cecil-court","m":118},{"s":"84-charing-cross-road","m":182},{"s":"stanfords","m":194},{"s":"shakespeare-statue-leicester-square","m":244},{"s":"a-conversation-with-oscar-wilde","m":355},{"s":"waterstones-piccadilly","m":665}]},{"slug":"aldgate-chaucers-rooms-over-the-gate","name":"Aldgate: Chaucer's rooms over the gate","area":"Aldgate","address":"Aldgate High Street at Jewry Street, EC3N 1AH","station":"Aldgate","walk":1,"lat":51.5137,"lng":-0.0763,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":"A street corner; the marker is on the pavement.","runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["free","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Where Chaucer lived for twelve years, in the rooms above the eastern gate of the City, and wrote The House of Fame and The Parliament of Fowls.","note":"In 1374 the City leased Geoffrey Chaucer the dwelling over Aldgate, rent free, on condition he kept it in repair and let nobody use it as a prison, and he lived there until 1386 while he walked each day to the Custom House on the river to count the wool duties; the dream poems of those years, with their narrator falling asleep over a book after a day of reckonings, are the rooms speaking. The gate came down in 1761 and the City's first blue plaque, put up for him in 1923, has since been lost, so what marks the spot is the Corporation's marker for the gate itself, at the corner of Jewry Street, with the traffic of the A11 passing where the pilgrims' road to Essex began.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Aldgate: Chaucer's rooms over the gate, Aldgate High Street at Jewry Street, EC3N 1AH, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Aldgate Pump","s":"aldgate-pump","c":"monuments","cn":"Monuments & Ruins","m":130},{"n":"City Wall at Vine Street","s":"city-wall-at-vine-street","c":"monuments","cn":"Monuments & Ruins","m":145},{"n":"Association Coffee","s":"association-coffee","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":192}],"near_same":[{"s":"st-olave-hart-street","m":381},{"s":"bishopsgate-institute","m":596},{"s":"guildhall-library","m":1160},{"s":"st-mary-aldermanbury-garden","m":1195},{"s":"the-theatre-shoreditch","m":1226},{"s":"the-curtain","m":1237}]},{"slug":"arts-richmond-literature-festival","name":"Arts Richmond Literature Festival","area":"Twickenham","address":"The Exchange, 75 London Road, Twickenham, TW1 1BE","station":"Twickenham","walk":2,"lat":51.450036,"lng":-0.331323,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":"Wednesday evenings in November: doors 19:00, talks 19:30","hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":{"from":"2026-11-04","to":"2026-11-25","repeats":"yearly"},"website":"https://artsrichmond.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["festival"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Four Wednesday evenings of author conversations in November at the Exchange in Twickenham.","note":"Arts Richmond, the borough's arts charity, runs its literature festival as a run of Wednesday 'in conversation' evenings at St Mary's University's theatre beside Twickenham station. The 2026 speakers are the crime writer Elly Griffiths, the historian Alwyn Turner, the royal biographer Andrew Lownie and the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber; tickets are \u00a315.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"whats-on/arts-richmond-literature-festival","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"What\u2019s On","href":"/whats-on/arts-richmond-literature-festival/"}],"maps_q":"Arts Richmond Literature Festival, The Exchange, 75 London Road, Twickenham, TW1 1BE, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Church Street, Twickenham","s":"church-street-twickenham","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":475},{"n":"Twickenham Museum","s":"twickenham-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":533},{"n":"York House Gardens","s":"york-house-gardens","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":622}],"near_same":[{"s":"popes-grotto","m":889},{"s":"strawberry-hill","m":1338},{"s":"virginia-woolf-statue-richmond-riverside","m":1932},{"s":"hogarth-house-richmond","m":2364},{"s":"royal-botanic-gardens-kew","m":4234},{"s":"garricks-temple-to-shakespeare","m":4617}]},{"slug":"barnes-bookfest","name":"Barnes BookFest","area":"Barnes","address":"St Mary's Church, Church Road, SW13 9HL","station":"Barnes Bridge","walk":10,"lat":51.475015,"lng":-0.24191,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":"Times and tickets on the festival website.","hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":{"from":"2026-09-25","to":"2026-09-27","repeats":"yearly"},"website":"https://barnesbookfest.org/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["festival"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A weekend of author talks in St Mary's church and the halls around Barnes Green.","note":"Three days of talks in St Mary's, the parish church beside Barnes Green, and in the Barnes Green Centre and Olympic Studios nearby, with a couple of dinners and evenings in the days before. The 2026 bill runs from Sebastian Faulks, William Boyd and Gyles Brandreth to Sajid Javid and Andrew Graham-Dixon, with tickets sold by the Barnes Bookshop and a pass for the whole weekend.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"whats-on/barnes-bookfest","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"What\u2019s On","href":"/whats-on/barnes-bookfest/"}],"maps_q":"Barnes BookFest, St Mary's Church, Church Road, SW13 9HL, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Riverside Gallery","s":"riverside-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":675},{"n":"WWT London Wetland Centre","s":"wwt-london-wetland-centre","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":821},{"n":"The Terrace","s":"the-terrace","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":976}],"near_same":[{"s":"london-childrens-literature-festival","m":406},{"s":"kelmscott-house","m":2102},{"s":"emery-walkers-house","m":2511},{"s":"royal-botanic-gardens-kew","m":3381},{"s":"chiswick-book-festival","m":3438},{"s":"hogarth-house-richmond","m":4450}]},{"slug":"bishopsgate-institute","name":"Bishopsgate Institute","area":"Broadgate","address":"230 Bishopsgate, EC2M 4QH","station":"London Liverpool Street","walk":2,"lat":51.518725,"lng":-0.07932,"hours":[[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,20.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],null,null],"hours_raw":"Mo-Tu,Th-Fr 10:00-17:00; We 10:00-20:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/visit","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Researchers' Area hours; no membership needed, material is read on site. The Reading Room opens most Mondays and Fridays.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/5289926062","types":["free","inside","library"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A free library of London's radicals, protests and everyday lives, in Townsend's 1895 building by Liverpool Street.","note":"Charles Harrison Townsend designed it, as he did the Whitechapel Gallery and the Horniman, and it opened in 1895 as a library and lecture hall for the East End; the library's special collections have grown into the record of London from below - the labour and co-operative movements, the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive and Switchboard's papers, protest banners and placards, feminist and humanist archives, and the diaries, photographs and flyers of ordinary Londoners. Anyone can ask to see them, and the Great Hall upstairs still holds the talks.","note_links":null,"regular":[{"what":"Reading Room","when":"Most Mondays and Fridays, 10:00 to 17:00","price":"Free, donations welcome","url":"https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/whats-on/activity/reading-room","note":"A quiet room to work or read in, with free wifi. Book ahead or at reception; it is not the archive service, which is booked separately. Some Mondays and Fridays it is hired out, so check before setting off."},{"what":"Archive tour: LGBTQIA+ collections","when":"One Thursday a month, 18:30 to 20:00","price":"\u00a313, \u00a35 concessions","url":"https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/whats-on/activity/archive-tour-lgbtqia-collections-2","note":"Stefan Dickers, who has built these collections since 2005, takes you down into the store: cuttings, badges, banners, lesbian pulp fiction and a set of wizard's robes. Stairs only."},{"what":"Swing Den, Pink Jukebox, Charles's Jukebox and Bishopsgate Ballroom","when":"Friday, Saturday and Sunday social dances through the season","price":"Ticketed, over-18s","url":"https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/whats-on","note":"The Institute's hall has been a dance floor for decades: Lindy Hop on Fridays, LGBTQIA+ ballroom and Latin on Sunday afternoons, and a Saturday night jukebox."}],"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/bishopsgate-institute.jpg?v=c603ddd9","thumb":"/img/bishopsgate-institute-480.jpg?v=5652b381","width":768,"height":1024,"alt":"Bishopsgate Library in the city of london","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Tom, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bishopsgate_Library.jpg","thumb_width":360},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"uk-fetish-archive-open-day","name":"UK Fetish Archive Open Day","href":"/literary/bishopsgate-institute/uk-fetish-archive-open-day/","verdict":"The magazines, badges and rubber of British kink history, out on tables for an afternoon.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-13","to":"2026-09-13"},"types":["adults","free","history"],"clue":["History"]},{"slug":"swing-live","name":"Swing Live","href":"/literary/bishopsgate-institute/swing-live/","verdict":"A live band and a room full of Lindy Hoppers on Bishopsgate.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-18","to":"2026-09-18"},"types":["dance","late","music"],"clue":["Dance"]},{"slug":"book-sale","name":"Book Sale","href":"/literary/bishopsgate-institute/book-sale/","verdict":"The library sells its duplicates for one afternoon.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-27","to":"2026-09-27"},"types":["books","free"],"clue":["Books & writers"]},{"slug":"dance-in-a-day-lindy-hop","name":"Dance in a Day: Lindy Hop","href":"/literary/bishopsgate-institute/dance-in-a-day-lindy-hop/","verdict":"Learn enough Lindy Hop in an afternoon to get through the evening.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-27","to":"2026-09-27"},"types":["dance","workshop"],"clue":["Dance"]},{"slug":"swing-live-performance-ball","name":"Swing Live! Performance Ball","href":"/literary/bishopsgate-institute/swing-live-performance-ball/","verdict":"Swing Patrol's students take the stage, then everyone dances until one in the morning.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-17","to":"2026-10-17"},"types":["dance","late","music"],"clue":["Dance"]}],"maps_q":"Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, EC2M 4QH, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Store Street Espresso","s":"store-street-espresso-broadgate","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":21},{"n":"Darlish Spitalfields","s":"darlish-spitalfields","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":32},{"n":"Eataly","s":"eataly","c":"food-markets","cn":"Food Markets","m":55}],"near_same":[{"s":"aldgate-chaucers-rooms-over-the-gate","m":596},{"s":"the-theatre-shoreditch","m":645},{"s":"the-curtain","m":652},{"s":"bunhill-fields","m":839},{"s":"capital-crime","m":849},{"s":"st-olave-hart-street","m":870}]},{"slug":"black-british-book-festival","name":"Black British Book Festival","area":"Barbican","address":"Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS","station":"Barbican","walk":4,"lat":51.519867,"lng":-0.093841,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":"Times and tickets on the festival website.","hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":{"from":"2026-10-04","to":"2026-10-04","repeats":"yearly"},"website":"https://www.blackbritishbookfestival.com/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["festival"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Europe's largest celebration of Black literature: one Sunday at the Barbican with more than eighty authors.","note":"A single day that fills the Barbican with headline conversations, panels, workshops, a spoken-word showdown, a children's programme and a marketplace of publishers and booksellers; the 2026 headliners include Candice Carty-Williams, Corinne Bailey Rae and Wretch 32. 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Today's shops sell first editions, children's books, maps, theatre ephemera, esoterica and stamps, under the original cast-iron lamps; the eight-year-old Mozart lodged at what is now No. 9 in 1764, and a plaque says so.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/cecil-court.jpg?v=0b849c63","thumb":"/img/cecil-court-480.jpg?v=de6d1805","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"Cecil Court from Charing Cross Road","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Jack1956 at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cecil-court-view.JPG","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Shopping","href":"/shopping/cecil-court/"},{"name":"Beautiful Streets","href":"/beautiful-streets/cecil-court/"},{"name":"Classic British Shops","href":"/classic-british-shops/cecil-court/"}],"maps_q":"Cecil Court, WC2N 4HE, London","in_area":{"slug":"covent-garden","name":"Covent Garden"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Sotheran's","s":"sotherans","c":"classic-british-shops","cn":"Classic British Shops","m":11},{"n":"La Gelatiera","s":"la-gelatiera","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":73},{"n":"Knoops Covent Garden","s":"knoops-covent-garden","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":77}],"near_same":[{"s":"agatha-christie-memorial","m":118},{"s":"shakespeare-statue-leicester-square","m":172},{"s":"a-conversation-with-oscar-wilde","m":255},{"s":"84-charing-cross-road","m":287},{"s":"stanfords","m":299},{"s":"waterstones-piccadilly","m":600}]},{"slug":"charles-dickens-museum","name":"Charles Dickens Museum","area":"Holborn","address":"48-49 Doughty Street, WC1N 2LX","station":"Russell Square","walk":7,"lat":51.523594,"lng":-0.116323,"hours":[null,null,[10.0,16.0],[10.0,16.0],[10.0,16.0],[10.0,16.0],[10.0,16.0]],"hours_raw":"We-Su 10:00-16:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://dickensmuseum.com/","instagram":"dickensmuseum","attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"node/334631276","types":["inside","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The only London house of Dickens's still standing, where Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby were written.","note":"Dickens rented 48 Doughty Street from 1837 to 1839, arriving as the twenty-five-year-old author of the Pickwick Papers and leaving famous. 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James Daunt bought it in 1990 and shelved travel writing, fiction and history together by country, so that the shelf on Italy holds Lampedusa beside a guidebook; the arrangement has been copied everywhere and the shop has spawned a chain, but this is the original.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-daunt-books-marylebone.jpg?v=eb51254d","thumb":"/img/own-daunt-books-marylebone-480.jpg?v=6559ec88","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Daunt Books' long oak gallery under a barrel skylight, shelves either side and a table of books below","caption":"The galleried back room, shelved by country."},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"simon-sebag-montefiore-in-conversation-with-james-barr","name":"Simon Sebag Montefiore in conversation with James Barr","href":"/literary/daunt-books-marylebone/simon-sebag-montefiore-in-conversation-with-james-barr/","verdict":"The 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The house, one of the few of its date left in the City, keeps a first edition open to consult, Johnson's chair from the Old Cock Tavern and portraits of the circle: Boswell, Garrick, Reynolds. In the square outside sits Hodge, the cat Johnson bought oysters for, in bronze on a copy of the Dictionary.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/dr-johnsons-house.jpg?v=024653f2","thumb":"/img/dr-johnsons-house-480.jpg?v=4803f944","width":720,"height":1024,"alt":"Dr. Johnson's House in the City of London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Jim Linwood, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dr._Johnson%27s_House.jpg","thumb_width":337},"figures":null,"from":"museums/dr-johnsons-house","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/dr-johnsons-house/"}],"maps_q":"Dr Johnson's House, 17 Gough Square, EC4A 3DE, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Gough Square","s":"gough-square","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":45},{"n":"Old Spike","s":"old-spike","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":126},{"n":"Statue of John Wilkes","s":"statue-of-john-wilkes","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":129}],"near_same":[{"s":"ye-olde-cheshire-cheese","m":92},{"s":"st-bride-foundation","m":275},{"s":"middle-temple-hall","m":362},{"s":"lincolns-inn","m":390},{"s":"stationers-hall","m":517},{"s":"the-old-curiosity-shop","m":633}]},{"slug":"emery-walkers-house","name":"Emery Walker's House","area":"Hammersmith","address":"7 Hammersmith Terrace, W6 9TS","station":"Stamford Brook","walk":8,"lat":51.48983,"lng":-0.24242,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.emerywalker.org.uk/visit","hours_short":"Guided tours Thursdays and Saturdays at 11:00 and 13:00, March to November","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Pre-booked tickets only; an extra 15:00 tour on some Saturdays.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.emerywalker.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["inside","print"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The printer who taught William Morris typography, in the most complete Arts and Crafts interior left in London.","note":"Emery Walker's lantern lecture on early printing in 1888 sent Morris home to design a typeface, and the Kelmscott Press followed; Walker went on to found the Doves Press with Cobden-Sanderson, whose type ended in the Thames off Hammersmith Bridge after the two fell out. His terrace house by the river was kept as he left it by his daughter and then her companion, so it still holds Morris's wallpapers and furniture, Philip Webb's designs and the everyday objects of the circle that made the private-press movement. Seen by guided tour, in small groups.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/emery-walkers-house.jpg?v=e24e0132","thumb":"/img/emery-walkers-house-480.jpg?v=d2201a7f","width":1024,"height":728,"alt":"The garden of Emery Walker's House, running down to the river","caption":"","credit":"Photo by AndyScott, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hammersmith_Terrace,_Emery_Walker%27s_House,_garden_2.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Emery Walker's House, 7 Hammersmith Terrace, W6 9TS, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"The Elder Press Cafe","s":"the-elder-press-cafe","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":40},{"n":"Chiswick Mall","s":"chiswick-mall","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":142},{"n":"Fuller's Griffin Brewery Tour","s":"fullers-griffin-brewery-tour","c":"beer","cn":"Beer","m":504}],"near_same":[{"s":"kelmscott-house","m":489},{"s":"chiswick-book-festival","m":1099},{"s":"barnes-bookfest","m":2511},{"s":"london-childrens-literature-festival","m":2532},{"s":"royal-botanic-gardens-kew","m":4123},{"s":"22-hyde-park-gate","m":4376}]},{"slug":"faber-faber-24-russell-square","name":"Faber & Faber, 24 Russell Square","area":"Bloomsbury","address":"24 Russell Square, WC1B","station":"Russell Square","walk":2,"lat":51.52165,"lng":-0.12603,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["free","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"T. S. Eliot's office for forty years, where the author of The Waste Land read other people's poems for a living.","note":"Eliot joined the publisher Faber & Gwyer in 1925 and worked from the corner house on Russell Square until his death in 1965; from here he published Auden, Pound, Marianne Moore, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and wrote Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats for his godchildren. The blue plaque is on the wall by the door. The building belongs to the University of London now, and Faber has moved round the corner to Great Russell Street.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/faber-faber-24-russell-square.jpg?v=05faf8a6","thumb":"/img/faber-faber-24-russell-square-480.jpg?v=21363eaf","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"The Faber building on Russell Square","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Spudgun67, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:T._S._Eliot_-_SOAS_Faber_Building_23-24_Russell_Square_London_WC1B_5EA_-_est.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Faber & Faber, 24 Russell Square, 24 Russell Square, WC1B, London","in_area":{"slug":"bloomsbury","name":"Bloomsbury"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Wiener Library","s":"wiener-library","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":136},{"n":"SOAS Gallery","s":"soas-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":179},{"n":"Fortitude Bakehouse","s":"fortitude-bakehouse","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":182}],"near_same":[{"s":"senate-house","m":202},{"s":"gays-the-word","m":423},{"s":"tavistock-square","m":430},{"s":"gordon-square","m":443},{"s":"swedenborg-house","m":465},{"s":"the-fitzroy-tavern","m":683}]},{"slug":"fitzroy-square","name":"Fitzroy Square","area":"Fitzrovia","address":"Fitzroy Square, W1T 5HQ","station":"Warren Street","walk":3,"lat":51.522967,"lng":-0.140083,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":"The garden is private; the plaques at 29 and 33 are on the street.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.fitzroviapartnership.com/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"relation/8382251","types":["bloomsbury","free","print","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Virginia Stephen's house at No. 29, and No. 33, where Roger Fry's Omega Workshops sold Bloomsbury's painted furniture and fabrics from 1913.","note":"After Vanessa's marriage, Virginia and her brother Adrian took No. 29 on the Adam-designed square from 1907 to 1911 - Bernard Shaw had lived in the same house twenty years before, and the plaque records both - and the Thursday evenings moved here with them. At No. 33, from 1913 to 1919, Fry ran the Omega Workshops, where Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Wyndham Lewis, briefly, painted screens, tables, rugs and dresses for sale with no artist's name on anything; Winifred Gill kept it running, and the Courtauld's 2026 show is hers. The square is Fitzrovia's best piece of Georgian planning, and quiet.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/fitzroy-square.jpg?v=89dbc177","thumb":"/img/fitzroy-square-480.jpg?v=057681b7","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"The stucco terrace of Fitzroy Square","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Philafrenzy, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fitzroy_Square_July_2018_03.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Beautiful Streets","href":"/beautiful-streets/fitzroy-square/"}],"maps_q":"Fitzroy Square, W1T 5HQ, London","in_area":{"slug":"fitzrovia","name":"Fitzrovia"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Francisco de Miranda and Andr\u00e9s Bello","s":"francisco-de-miranda","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":157},{"n":"Joseph Lister's house, 12 Park Crescent","s":"joseph-listers-house-12-park-crescent","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":313},{"n":"Stefan Zweig","s":"stefan-zweig","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":377}],"near_same":[{"s":"george-orwell-statue-broadcasting-house","m":506},{"s":"the-fitzroy-tavern","m":610},{"s":"gordon-square","m":653},{"s":"the-wheatsheaf","m":715},{"s":"tavistock-square","m":799},{"s":"senate-house","m":813}]},{"slug":"garricks-temple-to-shakespeare","name":"Garrick's Temple to Shakespeare","area":"Hampton","address":"Hampton Court Road, TW12 2EN","station":"Hampton","walk":12,"lat":51.412379,"lng":-0.359399,"hours":[null,null,null,null,null,null,[14.0,17.0]],"hours_raw":"Su 14:00-17:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://garrickstemple.org.uk/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Sunday afternoons from late March to late October; the riverside garden is open every day.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.garrickstemple.org.uk/","instagram":"garrickstempletoshakespeare","attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["free","inside","shakespeare","statue"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"David Garrick's riverside temple at Hampton, built in 1756 to house his statue of Shakespeare.","note":"The actor-manager who made Shakespeare a national cult built this octagonal Ionic temple on the lawn of his Thames villa and filled it with relics: a chair reputedly made from the mulberry tree Shakespeare planted at Stratford, and Roubiliac's marble statue of the playwright, modelled on Garrick himself, now in the British Museum and represented here by a copy. Restored in 1999, it holds a small exhibition on Garrick and the Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769 he staged at Stratford, and volunteers open it on summer afternoons.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"museums/garricks-temple-to-shakespeare","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/garricks-temple-to-shakespeare/"}],"maps_q":"Garrick's Temple to Shakespeare, Hampton Court Road, TW12 2EN, London","bank":null,"near_all":[{"n":"Church Street, Hampton","s":"church-street-hampton","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":197},{"n":"Bushy Park","s":"bushy-park","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":1476},{"n":"National Physical Laboratory","s":"national-physical-laboratory","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":1785}],"near_same":[{"s":"strawberry-hill","m":3338},{"s":"popes-grotto","m":3830},{"s":"arts-richmond-literature-festival","m":4617},{"s":"virginia-woolf-statue-richmond-riverside","m":6264},{"s":"hogarth-house-richmond","m":6665},{"s":"royal-botanic-gardens-kew","m":8750}]},{"slug":"gays-the-word","name":"Gay's the Word","area":"St Pancras","address":"66 Marchmont Street, WC1N 1AB","station":"Russell Square","walk":3,"lat":51.525423,"lng":-0.125198,"hours":[null,[11.0,18.0],[11.0,18.0],[11.0,18.0],[11.0,18.0],[11.0,18.0],[13.0,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Tu-Sa 11:00-18:00; Su 13:00-18:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.gaystheword.co.uk/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Closed on Mondays.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.gaystheword.co.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/290459102","types":["bookshop","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Britain's first lesbian and gay bookshop, on Marchmont Street since 1979.","note":"Opened in 1979 by Ernest Hole in a Bloomsbury shopfront and named after an Ivor Novello musical, the shop was raided by Customs in 1984, which seized imported books by Vidal, Genet and Wilde as obscene; the case collapsed and the shop became a rallying point, the meeting place of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, whose story the film Pride retold. Still one room, still independent, with readings most weeks and a window that is a small history of the movement.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/gays-the-word.jpg?v=a4c9b1ae","thumb":"/img/gays-the-word-480.jpg?v=df50db6e","width":1002,"height":1024,"alt":"Gay's the Word bookshop, Marchmont Street, London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Ross Burgess, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gays_the_Word.jpg","thumb_width":470},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Gay's the Word, 66 Marchmont Street, WC1N 1AB, London","in_area":{"slug":"bloomsbury","name":"Bloomsbury"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Ta'mini Lebanese Bakery","s":"tamini-lebanese-bakery","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":12},{"n":"Store Street Espresso","s":"store-street-espresso-st-pancras","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":29},{"n":"P\u00e2tisserie Deux Amis","s":"patisserie-deux-amis","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":152}],"near_same":[{"s":"tavistock-square","m":268},{"s":"gordon-square","m":413},{"s":"faber-faber-24-russell-square","m":423},{"s":"british-library","m":537},{"s":"senate-house","m":549},{"s":"charles-dickens-museum","m":646}]},{"slug":"george-orwell-statue-broadcasting-house","name":"George Orwell statue, Broadcasting House","area":"East Marylebone","address":"Broadcasting House, Portland Place, W1A 1AA","station":"Oxford Circus","walk":5,"lat":51.518775,"lng":-0.142953,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/5715977089","types":["free","statue"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Orwell outside the BBC he worked for and disliked, with his line about liberty cut into the wall behind him.","note":"Martin Jennings's bronze of 2017 stands at the entrance to Broadcasting House, where Orwell produced Eastern Service talks from 1941 to 1943 and where, by tradition, Room 101 took its name from a meeting room he sat in. He leans forward, cigarette in hand, and the wall behind him carries his sentence about liberty meaning 'the right to tell people what they do not want to hear', from an unpublished preface to Animal Farm. The BBC turned the statue down in 2012 as too left-wing; his old employer accepted it five years later.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/george-orwell-statue-broadcasting-house.jpg?v=5e929f66","thumb":"/img/george-orwell-statue-broadcasting-house-480.jpg?v=ebd24154","width":1024,"height":1024,"alt":"Statue of George Orwell at BBC Broadcasting House","caption":"","credit":"Photo by JRennocks, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_George_Orwell_at_BBC_Broadcasting_House.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"George Orwell statue, Broadcasting House, Broadcasting House, Portland Place, W1A 1AA, London","in_area":{"slug":"marylebone","name":"Marylebone"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Broadcasting House","s":"broadcasting-house","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":32},{"n":"Carl Maria von Weber","s":"carl-maria-von-weber","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":86},{"n":"Artesian","s":"artesian","c":"cocktails","cn":"Cocktails","m":131}],"near_same":[{"s":"fitzroy-square","m":506},{"s":"the-fitzroy-tavern","m":575},{"s":"the-wheatsheaf","m":627},{"s":"daunt-books-marylebone","m":668},{"s":"senate-house","m":1012},{"s":"sherlock-holmes-statue","m":1030}]},{"slug":"george-padmore-institute","name":"George Padmore Institute","area":"Stroud Green","address":"76 Stroud Green Road, N4 3EN","station":"Finsbury Park","walk":5,"lat":51.56811,"lng":-0.1095,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org/archive","hours_short":"By appointment, weekdays 10:30\u201316:00","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["inside","library","print"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The archive of Black political and literary life in Britain, kept above the bookshop that made much of it happen.","note":"John La Rose founded the institute in 1991 in the rooms above New Beacon Books and named it for the Trinidadian pan-Africanist; its archive holds the papers of the Caribbean Artists Movement, the Black Parents Movement, the New Cross Massacre Action Committee and the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books, with La Rose's own correspondence and the publishing records of New Beacon itself. Researchers book a desk; exhibitions and talks bring parts of it downstairs.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"George Padmore Institute, 76 Stroud Green Road, N4 3EN, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Park Theatre","s":"park-theatre","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":274},{"n":"Blighty","s":"blighty","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":650},{"n":"Museum of Homelessness","s":"museum-of-homelessness","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":929}],"near_same":[{"s":"new-beacon-books","m":3},{"s":"highgate-cemetery","m":2558},{"s":"word-on-the-water","m":3761},{"s":"jewish-book-week","m":3782},{"s":"st-pancras-old-church","m":3954},{"s":"rimbaud-and-verlaine-royal-college-street","m":3967}]},{"slug":"gordon-square","name":"Gordon Square","area":"St Pancras","address":"Gordon Square, WC1H 0AG","station":"Euston Square","walk":5,"lat":51.524262,"lng":-0.130872,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":"The garden is locked at dusk; the plaques are on the houses along the east side, outside it.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.bedfordestates.com/gardens/gordon-square/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/4253288","types":["bloomsbury","free","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Where the Bloomsbury Group began: No. 46, the Stephen siblings' house of 1904, later Keynes's for thirty years, with Strachey at 51 and the group's plaque on 50.","note":"When Leslie Stephen died in 1904 his four children left Kensington for a tall house on the east side of this square, which respectable people thought a comedown, and Thoby Stephen's Cambridge friends began coming on Thursday evenings: Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Maynard Keynes, Saxon Sydney-Turner. Vanessa married Bell and kept the house; Virginia became Woolf; Keynes took over No. 46 in 1916 and lived there with the ballerina Lydia Lopokova until his death in 1946, writing the General Theory upstairs. 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Stuart Williamson's bronze of 2007 has him in the year of the decision, coat open, book on his knee, in one of the stone alcoves that stood on the eighteenth-century London Bridge and came to the hospital courtyard in 1861. Andrew Motion, his biographer, unveiled it, and the medical students still eat their lunch beside him.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/john-keats-statue.jpg?v=ad727674","thumb":"/img/john-keats-statue-480.jpg?v=a66a1dc0","width":769,"height":1024,"alt":"The statue of John Keats in Guys Hospital, London Borough of Southwark","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Statue_of_John_Keats_in_the_London_Borough_of_Southwark.jpg","thumb_width":360},"figures":null,"from":"monuments/john-keats-statue","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Monuments & Ruins","href":"/monuments/john-keats-statue/"}],"maps_q":"John Keats statue, Guy's Hospital courtyard, St Thomas Street, SE1 9RT, London","in_area":{"slug":"borough-bermondsey","name":"Borough & Bermondsey"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Gordon Museum of Pathology","s":"gordon-museum-of-pathology","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":115},{"n":"G\u014eNG","s":"gong","c":"cocktails","cn":"Cocktails","m":117},{"n":"The View from The Shard","s":"the-view-from-the-shard","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":123}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-george-inn","m":143},{"s":"site-of-the-tabard-inn","m":156},{"s":"southwark-cathedral","m":273},{"s":"marshalsea-prison-wall","m":352},{"s":"site-of-the-original-globe","m":571},{"s":"rose-theatre-exhibition","m":636}]},{"slug":"john-sandoe-books","name":"John Sandoe Books","area":"Chelsea","address":"10 Blacklands Terrace, SW3 2SR","station":"Sloane Square","walk":5,"lat":51.491374,"lng":-0.160931,"hours":[[9.5,17.5],[9.5,17.5],[9.5,17.5],[9.5,17.5],[9.5,17.5],[9.5,17.5],[11.0,17.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Sa 09:30-17:30; Su 11:00-17:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://johnsandoe.com/about/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.johnsandoe.com/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/4903159621","types":["bookshop","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Chelsea's independent bookshop since 1957, three small Georgian houses packed to the ceilings.","note":"John Sandoe opened in 1957 in three little houses knocked together off the King's Road, and the shop has kept its habits: tables piled with books chosen by people who have read them, shelves that pivot to reveal another row behind, and a staircase you turn sideways to pass on. It has been owned by its staff since Sandoe retired, publishes its own catalogues of recommendations, and has been Chelsea's writers' bookshop for as long as most of them can remember.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/john-sandoe-books.jpg?v=debc1537","thumb":"/img/john-sandoe-books-480.jpg?v=797938f0","width":1024,"height":626,"alt":"John Sandoe Books, Blacklands Terrace","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Monica Arellano-Ongpin, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Sandoe_Books.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"John Sandoe Books, 10 Blacklands Terrace, SW3 2SR, London","in_area":{"slug":"chelsea","name":"Chelsea"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Percy Grainger","s":"percy-grainger","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":126},{"n":"Peter Jones","s":"peter-jones","c":"shopping","cn":"Shopping","m":169},{"n":"Saatchi Gallery","s":"saatchi-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":170}],"near_same":[{"s":"national-art-library","m":972},{"s":"cheyne-walk","m":983},{"s":"carlyles-house","m":1013},{"s":"22-hyde-park-gate","m":1677},{"s":"peter-pan-statue","m":2180},{"s":"tate-britain","m":2308}]},{"slug":"keats-house","name":"Keats House","area":"Hampstead","address":"10 Keats Grove, Belsize Park, NW3 2RR","station":"Hampstead Heath","walk":2,"lat":51.5555,"lng":-0.1682,"hours":[null,null,[11.0,17.0],[11.0,17.0],[11.0,17.0],null,[11.0,17.0]],"hours_raw":"We-Fr 11:00-13:00,14:00-17:00; Su 11:00-13:00,14:00-17:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/attractions-museums-entertainment/keats-house/visit-keats-house","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/attractions-museums-entertainment/keats-house","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["inside","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The Hampstead house where Keats wrote 'Ode to a Nightingale' and fell in love with the girl next door.","note":"Keats lodged here with Charles Brown from 1818 to 1820, the two years in which almost all the poetry that matters was written: 'Ode to a Nightingale', supposedly under a plum tree in the garden, 'To Autumn', 'The Eve of St Agnes' and the odes on melancholy and the Grecian urn. Fanny Brawne and her mother took the other half of the house; the ring he gave her and the letters are here, along with the room where the poet, a trained apothecary, coughed up the drop of arterial blood he called his death warrant. He left for Rome from this house in September 1820 and died there five months later.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/keats-house.jpg?v=7bb67049","thumb":"/img/keats-house-480.jpg?v=c2d8eaac","width":1024,"height":576,"alt":"Keats House from the garden","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Eden, Janine and Jim, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keats%27_Garden_-_2025-03-09.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/keats-house","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/keats-house/"}],"maps_q":"Keats House, 10 Keats Grove, Belsize Park, NW3 2RR, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Badiani Hampstead Heath","s":"badiani-hampstead-heath","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":98},{"n":"Redemption Roasters","s":"redemption-roasters","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":101},{"n":"2 Willow Road","s":"2-willow-road","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":199}],"near_same":[{"s":"primrose-hill","m":1903},{"s":"highgate-cemetery","m":1961},{"s":"the-regents-park","m":3020},{"s":"rimbaud-and-verlaine-royal-college-street","m":3058},{"s":"st-pancras-old-church","m":3484},{"s":"sherlock-holmes-museum","m":3592}]},{"slug":"kelmscott-house","name":"Kelmscott House","area":"Hammersmith","address":"26 Upper Mall, W6 9TA","station":"Ravenscourt Park","walk":5,"lat":51.49062,"lng":-0.235463,"hours":[null,null,null,[10.0,16.0],[10.0,16.0],[10.0,16.0],[10.0,16.0]],"hours_raw":"Th-Su 10:00-16:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://williammorrissociety.org/visit/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://williammorrissociety.org/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/176677084","types":["inside","print","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"William Morris's last home, on the river at Hammersmith, where the Kelmscott Press was conceived and the socialists met in the coach house.","note":"Morris took the Georgian house on the Mall in 1878, named it after his Oxfordshire manor, and lived here until his death in 1896: News from Nowhere opens with its narrator waking in the house, and the Kelmscott Press, whose Chaucer is the most beautiful book printed in England, was run from a cottage a few doors along. The William Morris Society keeps the coach house and basement as a museum - the Albion press the Chaucer was printed on, original designs, printing blocks and books - and the coach house is the room where the Hammersmith Socialist Society heard Morris, Shaw and Kropotkin.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/kelmscott-house.jpg?v=cd5cbb18","thumb":"/img/kelmscott-house-480.jpg?v=3a1ae0d5","width":755,"height":1024,"alt":"Kelmscott House","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Bernard Burns, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kelmscott_House.JPG","thumb_width":354},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Kelmscott House, 26 Upper Mall, W6 9TA, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"The Elder Press Cafe","s":"the-elder-press-cafe","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":466},{"n":"7 Hammersmith Terrace","s":"7-hammersmith-terrace","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":489},{"n":"Chiswick Mall","s":"chiswick-mall","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":624}],"near_same":[{"s":"emery-walkers-house","m":489},{"s":"chiswick-book-festival","m":1467},{"s":"barnes-bookfest","m":2102},{"s":"london-childrens-literature-festival","m":2466},{"s":"22-hyde-park-gate","m":3888},{"s":"kensal-green-cemetery","m":4241}]},{"slug":"kensal-green-cemetery","name":"Kensal Green Cemetery","area":"Kensal Green","address":"Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Road, W10 4RA","station":"Kensal Green","walk":1,"lat":51.52824,"lng":-0.225369,"hours":[[9.0,18.0],[9.0,18.0],[9.0,18.0],[9.0,18.0],[9.0,18.0],[9.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Sa 09:00-18:00; Su 10:00-18:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.kensalgreencemetery.com/contactnew/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-03","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.kensalgreencemetery.com/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/149381619","types":["free","grave","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Thackeray, Trollope and Wilkie Collins in London's first great garden cemetery.","note":"Opened in 1833 on the model of P\u00e8re Lachaise, and the fashionable place to be buried once two of George III's children chose it. William Makepeace Thackeray lies under a plain slab, Anthony Trollope near the Harrow Road wall, Wilkie Collins beneath a cross with Caroline Graves buried beside him, and Leigh Hunt, who wrote 'Abou Ben Adhem', beneath a bust. Thomas Hood and the tightrope walker Blondin are neighbours, and the catacombs under the Anglican chapel still work their hydraulic coffin lift on the Friends' tours.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/kensal-green-cemetery.jpg?v=c0e3d940","thumb":"/img/kensal-green-cemetery-480.jpg?v=114ba1f9","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"The colonnaded Anglican chapel at Kensal Green Cemetery","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Rc1959, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kensal_Green_Cemetery_13.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"outdoors/kensal-green-cemetery","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Outdoors & Nature","href":"/outdoors/kensal-green-cemetery/"}],"maps_q":"Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Road, W10 4RA, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Le Choux","s":"le-choux","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":799},{"n":"Cable co.","s":"cable-co-brondesbury-park","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":840},{"n":"Layla bakery","s":"layla-bakery","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":1257}],"near_same":[{"s":"paddington-bear-statue","m":3541},{"s":"peter-pan-statue","m":4058},{"s":"chiswick-book-festival","m":4122},{"s":"kelmscott-house","m":4241},{"s":"22-hyde-park-gate","m":4411},{"s":"emery-walkers-house","m":4431}]},{"slug":"lambeth-palace-library","name":"Lambeth Palace Library","area":"Lambeth","address":"15 Lambeth Palace Road, SE1 7JT","station":"Lambeth North","walk":6,"lat":51.497683,"lng":-0.118168,"hours":[[10.0,17.0],[11.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,19.25],[10.0,17.0],null,null],"hours_raw":"Mo,We,Fr 10:00-17:00; Tu 11:00-17:00; Th 10:00-19:15","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://lambethpalacelibrary.info/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Free exhibitions in the entrance gallery; the reading room needs a reader's card, issued on the day.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.lambethpalacelibrary.info/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/998276956","types":["free","inside","library"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The Church of England's library since 1610, now in a brick tower in the palace garden, with free exhibitions from a collection that includes a Gutenberg Bible.","note":"Archbishop Bancroft left his books to his successors in 1610 and the library has been open to scholars ever since, which makes it one of the oldest public libraries in the country: the Lambeth Bible and the MacDurnan Gospels, a Gutenberg Bible, Elizabeth I's prayer book, the papers of the archbishops and the records of the Reformation and the English Bible. Wright & Wright's nine-storey tower of 2021 stands at the north end of the palace garden with a public gallery on the ground floor, where the exhibitions change through the year, and a reading room above that anyone with an interest can register for.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Lambeth Palace Library, 15 Lambeth Palace Road, SE1 7JT, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Florence Nightingale Museum","s":"florence-nightingale-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":260},{"n":"Lambeth Palace","s":"lambeth-palace","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":262},{"n":"SOE Memorial, Albert Embankment","s":"soe-memorial-albert-embankment","c":"secrets","cn":"Secrets & Espionage","m":277}],"near_same":[{"s":"westminster-bridge","m":400},{"s":"poets-corner-westminster-abbey","m":852},{"s":"imagine-childrens-festival","m":897},{"s":"london-literature-festival","m":897},{"s":"national-poetry-library","m":900},{"s":"tate-britain","m":976}]},{"slug":"lincolns-inn","name":"Lincoln's Inn","area":"Holborn","address":"Lincoln's Inn, WC2A 3TL","station":"Chancery Lane","walk":2,"lat":51.516616,"lng":-0.113097,"hours":[[8.0,19.0],[8.0,19.0],[8.0,19.0],[8.0,19.0],[8.0,19.0],null,null],"hours_raw":"Mo-Fr 08:00-19:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.lincolnsinn.org.uk/visit-us/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"The Chancery Lane and Carey Street gates are open to the public on weekdays; the Old Hall and chapel are seen on the Inn's tours.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.lincolnsinn.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"relation/2354019","types":["free","setting"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The Old Hall where Bleak House opens, in the Inn where Donne and Thomas More were students.","note":"'London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall.' The Court of Chancery sat in the fifteenth-century Old Hall from 1737 to 1883, so the fog of Bleak House's opening pages gathers here, at the heart of the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. John Donne was a student and later the Inn's preacher, Thomas More was admitted in 1496, and Dickens knew it as a young lawyer's clerk. 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The shop at the front sells the tools, the papers and the books it publishes about how to do it.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"London Centre for Book Arts, Britannia Works, 56 Dace Road, E3 2NQ, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"All My Friends","s":"all-my-friends","c":"cocktails","cn":"Cocktails","m":516},{"n":"CRATE Brewery","s":"crate-brewery","c":"beer","cn":"Beer","m":522},{"n":"Moo Canoes","s":"moo-canoes","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":523}],"near_same":[{"s":"discover-childrens-story-centre","m":1545},{"s":"the-theatre-shoreditch","m":4235},{"s":"the-curtain","m":4261},{"s":"bookartbookshop","m":4420},{"s":"bishopsgate-institute","m":4476},{"s":"aldgate-chaucers-rooms-over-the-gate","m":4598}]},{"slug":"london-childrens-literature-festival","name":"London Children's Literature Festival","area":"Barnes","address":"Judith Kerr Marquee, Barnes Green, SW13 0HN","station":"Barnes Bridge","walk":5,"lat":51.473047,"lng":-0.246848,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":"Times and tickets on the festival website.","hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":{"from":"2027-06-26","to":"2027-06-27","repeats":"yearly"},"website":"https://londonkidslitfest.org/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["children","festival"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The UK's largest children's book festival: a June weekend of authors and illustrators in marquees on Barnes Green.","note":"Formerly the Barnes Children's Literature Festival, it fills a weekend with events in the Judith Kerr Marquee beside Barnes Pond and in the halls, churches and the OSO arts centre around it: author talks, draw-alongs and workshops, with a free programme running in the marquee all weekend.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"whats-on/london-childrens-literature-festival","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"What\u2019s On","href":"/whats-on/london-childrens-literature-festival/"}],"maps_q":"London Children's Literature Festival, Judith Kerr Marquee, Barnes Green, SW13 0HN, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Riverside Gallery","s":"riverside-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":312},{"n":"The Terrace","s":"the-terrace","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":576},{"n":"WWT London Wetland Centre","s":"wwt-london-wetland-centre","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":1227}],"near_same":[{"s":"barnes-bookfest","m":406},{"s":"kelmscott-house","m":2466},{"s":"emery-walkers-house","m":2532},{"s":"chiswick-book-festival","m":3062},{"s":"royal-botanic-gardens-kew","m":3075},{"s":"hogarth-house-richmond","m":4052}]},{"slug":"london-literature-festival","name":"London Literature Festival","area":"South Bank","address":"Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX","station":"Waterloo","walk":4,"lat":51.5057,"lng":-0.1167,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":"Times and tickets on the festival website.","hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":{"from":"2026-10-20","to":"2026-11-01","repeats":"yearly"},"website":"https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/events/london-literature-festival/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["festival","free"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Nearly two weeks of writers at the Southbank Centre, with Dua Lipa curating the 2026 festival.","note":"The Southbank Centre's annual literature festival, guest-curated in 2026 by Dua Lipa, whose Service95 Book Club conversations fill the Royal Festival Hall on the opening weekend, with readings, debates and fiction in translation in the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room through the fortnight. Ticketed events start at about \u00a315 and a good number are free and unticketed.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"whats-on/london-literature-festival","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"What\u2019s On","href":"/venues/southbank-centre/london-literature-festival/"}],"maps_q":"London Literature Festival, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX, London","in_area":{"slug":"south-bank","name":"South Bank"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Royal Festival Hall","s":"royal-festival-hall","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":14},{"n":"Southbank Centre","s":"southbank-centre","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":17},{"n":"Southbank Centre Food Market","s":"southbank-centre-food-market","c":"food-markets","cn":"Food Markets","m":50}],"near_same":[{"s":"national-poetry-library","m":27},{"s":"south-bank-book-market","m":194},{"s":"westminster-bridge","m":617},{"s":"courtauld-gallery","m":662},{"s":"a-conversation-with-oscar-wilde","m":722},{"s":"middle-temple-hall","m":894}]},{"slug":"magculture","name":"magCulture","area":"Clerkenwell","address":"270 St John Street, EC1V 4PE","station":"Angel","walk":8,"lat":51.52658,"lng":-0.103717,"hours":[[11.0,18.0],[11.0,18.0],[11.0,18.0],[11.0,18.0],[11.0,18.0],[11.0,18.0],null],"hours_raw":"Mo-Sa 11:00-18:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://magculture.com/pages/faqs-1","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://magculture.com/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/147096432","types":["free","inside","print"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The best magazine shop in London, a curated wall of independent titles from around the world on St John Street.","note":"Jeremy Leslie opened the shop in 2015 as the retail end of his magazine studio and journal, and it stocks what the newsagent cannot: a few hundred independent magazines chosen by hand, from Delayed Gratification and The Gentlewoman to titles printed in runs of a thousand in Lisbon or Seoul, with events in the shop and a podcast recorded from it. At the edge of literary London, since a magazine is not a book - but for editorial writing and design as it is practised now, there is nowhere better to stand.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/magculture.jpg?v=5f253a5e","thumb":"/img/magculture-480.jpg?v=50dfeec6","width":1024,"height":682,"alt":"Magazines on the shelves at magCulture","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Bea Phi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MagCulture_in_London_02.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"magCulture, 270 St John Street, EC1V 4PE, London","in_area":{"slug":"farringdon-clerkenwell","name":"Farringdon & Clerkenwell"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Islington Museum","s":"islington-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":55},{"n":"Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings","s":"bourne-hollingsworth-buildings","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":277},{"n":"Sadler's Wells","s":"sadlers-wells","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":365}],"near_same":[{"s":"quentin-blake-centre-for-illustration","m":352},{"s":"marx-memorial-library","m":420},{"s":"the-charterhouse","m":630},{"s":"charles-dickens-museum","m":933},{"s":"black-british-book-festival","m":1011},{"s":"capital-crime","m":1092}]},{"slug":"marshalsea-prison-wall","name":"Marshalsea wall & St George the Martyr","area":"The Borough","address":"Angel Place and Borough High Street, SE1 1JA","station":"Borough","walk":2,"lat":51.501641,"lng":-0.091575,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":"The wall and the churchyard garden are open at any hour; the church keeps its own hours.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.borough.church/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/2317365397","types":["free","inside","setting"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The one surviving wall of the Marshalsea, where Dickens's father was jailed, and the church where Little Dorrit was christened and married.","note":"John Dickens was locked up for debt in the Marshalsea in 1824 and his twelve-year-old son walked here on Sundays; the prison's southern wall survives along the alley of Angel Place, with the novel's lines set into the paving, beside the churchyard of St George the Martyr, which stood outside the gate. In Little Dorrit the heroine is born in the prison, christened in the church and married at its altar, and the east window, reglazed in 1951, has her kneeling in the corner. One of the few places in London where a novel's geography can be walked yard for yard.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Marshalsea wall & St George the Martyr, Angel Place and Borough High Street, SE1 1JA, London","in_area":{"slug":"borough-bermondsey","name":"Borough & Bermondsey"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"St John Bakery","s":"st-john-bakery-the-borough","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":101},{"n":"Lant Street Wine","s":"lant-street-wine","c":"wine","cn":"Wine","m":221},{"n":"Gordon Museum of Pathology","s":"gordon-museum-of-pathology","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":254}],"near_same":[{"s":"site-of-the-tabard-inn","m":287},{"s":"the-george-inn","m":302},{"s":"john-keats-statue","m":352},{"s":"southwark-cathedral","m":517},{"s":"site-of-the-original-globe","m":618},{"s":"rose-theatre-exhibition","m":675}]},{"slug":"marx-memorial-library","name":"Marx Memorial Library","area":"Clerkenwell Green","address":"37a Clerkenwell Green, EC1R 0DU","station":"Farringdon","walk":4,"lat":51.52301,"lng":-0.10574,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk/","hours_short":"Tuesday to Thursday 11:00\u201316:00 by appointment; tours Mondays at 12:00 and Thursdays at 16:00","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Tours \u00a310, \u00a35 concessions, not during the summer closure. Email a week ahead to use the reading room.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/163032679","types":["inside","library"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The library founded in 1933 in Clerkenwell's radical schoolhouse, where Lenin edited Iskra and a 1935 fresco covers the wall.","note":"The building was the Welsh Charity School of 1738; the London Patriotic Club took it in 1872, the Twentieth Century Press printed socialist papers here, and in 1902 and 1903 Lenin edited the exile paper Iskra from a small back office that is kept as he left it. The library opened in 1933, the year of the Nazi book-burnings, on the fiftieth anniversary of Marx's death, and holds the working-class movement's books and archives, above all the papers of the British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. Jack Hastings painted the fresco in the reading room in 1935, a worker clearing away the chaos of capitalism, with Marx, Lenin and Morris looking on.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/marx-memorial-library.jpg?v=24e62452","thumb":"/img/marx-memorial-library-480.jpg?v=d7b144fb","width":1024,"height":576,"alt":"Marx Memorial Library 37a Clerkenwell Green","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Justinc, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marx_Memorial_Library_37a_Clerkenwell_Green.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Power & Politics","href":"/politics/marx-memorial-library/"},{"name":"The World in London","href":"/world/marx-memorial-library/"}],"maps_q":"Marx Memorial Library, 37a Clerkenwell Green, EC1R 0DU, London","in_area":{"slug":"farringdon-clerkenwell","name":"Farringdon & Clerkenwell"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Clerkenwell Green","s":"clerkenwell-green","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":36},{"n":"Museum of the Order of St John","s":"museum-of-the-order-of-st-john","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":246},{"n":"Goldsmiths' Centre","s":"goldsmiths-centre","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":299}],"near_same":[{"s":"magculture","m":420},{"s":"the-charterhouse","m":446},{"s":"quentin-blake-centre-for-illustration","m":634},{"s":"charles-dickens-museum","m":735},{"s":"lincolns-inn","m":874},{"s":"black-british-book-festival","m":894}]},{"slug":"middle-temple-hall","name":"Middle Temple Hall","area":"Temple","address":"Middle Temple Lane, EC4Y 9AT","station":"Temple","walk":3,"lat":51.51237,"lng":-0.11146,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.middletemple.org.uk/","hours_short":"Tours and open days only","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.middletemple.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/372838180","types":["inside","shakespeare"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The Elizabethan hall where Twelfth Night was played in February 1602, with its double hammerbeam roof intact.","note":"Finished in 1573, the Hall has the finest Elizabethan roof in London and a screen of carved oak that has stood since the play was new. 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It is a working Inn of Court, so the hall is seen on the tours and open days it announces.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/middle-temple-hall.jpg?v=3df10653","thumb":"/img/middle-temple-hall-480.jpg?v=0e8bd0b8","width":1024,"height":682,"alt":"Middle Temple Hall's double hammerbeam roof above the long tables","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Cmglee, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cmglee_London_Middle_Temple_hall.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Power & Politics","href":"/politics/middle-temple-hall/"}],"maps_q":"Middle Temple Hall, Middle Temple Lane, EC4Y 9AT, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Two Temple Place","s":"two-temple-place","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":98},{"n":"Inner Temple","s":"inner-temple","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":102},{"n":"Temple Church","s":"temple-church","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":128}],"near_same":[{"s":"dr-johnsons-house","m":362},{"s":"ye-olde-cheshire-cheese","m":368},{"s":"courtauld-gallery","m":439},{"s":"st-bride-foundation","m":463},{"s":"lincolns-inn","m":485},{"s":"the-old-curiosity-shop","m":499}]},{"slug":"national-art-library","name":"National Art Library","area":"Knightsbridge","address":"Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL","station":"South Kensington","walk":4,"lat":51.4966,"lng":-0.1722,"hours":[null,[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],null,null,null],"hours_raw":"Tu-Th 10:00-17:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/national-art-library","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Free; register online or on the day with ID for a reader's card.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/national-art-library","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["free","illustration","inside","library"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The V&A's library, free to use, holding the manuscripts of Dickens's novels, Leonardo's notebooks and the Beatrix Potter archive.","note":"It began in 1837 as the library of the Government School of Design and grew with the museum into the largest library of art and design in the country, reached up the stairs from the museum's galleries: the Forster bequest brought the manuscripts of nearly all of Dickens's novels and Leonardo's Codex Forster, the Linder bequest the drawings and letters of Beatrix Potter, and around them a million items on illustration, typography, bookbinding and the book as an object. The Victorian reading rooms are among the handsomest in London, and a reader's card is free.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/national-art-library.jpg?v=d9be80cc","thumb":"/img/national-art-library-480.jpg?v=92ab1d0e","width":1024,"height":461,"alt":"The National Art Library at the V&A","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Derbrauni, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:National_Art_Library,_Victoria_and_Albert_Museum,_London_2.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL, London","in_area":{"slug":"south-kensington","name":"South Kensington"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Victoria and Albert Museum","s":"victoria-and-albert-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":35},{"n":"Brompton Oratory","s":"brompton-oratory","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":186},{"n":"Venchi Exhibition Road","s":"venchi-exhibition-road","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":210}],"near_same":[{"s":"22-hyde-park-gate","m":708},{"s":"john-sandoe-books","m":972},{"s":"peter-pan-statue","m":1360},{"s":"carlyles-house","m":1398},{"s":"cheyne-walk","m":1518},{"s":"paddington-bear-statue","m":2256}]},{"slug":"national-poetry-library","name":"National Poetry Library","area":"South Bank","address":"Level 5, Royal Festival Hall, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX","station":"Waterloo","walk":4,"lat":51.5057,"lng":-0.1163,"hours":[null,[12.0,18.0],[12.0,20.0],[12.0,20.0],[12.0,20.0],[12.0,20.0],[12.0,20.0]],"hours_raw":"Tu 12:00-18:00; We-Su 12:00-20:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/venues/national-poetry-library/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/venues/national-poetry-library/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["free","inside","library"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The largest public collection of modern poetry in the world, free to join, up on the fifth floor of the Royal Festival Hall.","note":"Founded by the Arts Council in 1953 and opened by T. 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It nearly closed in 2021 and was saved by its readers; the George Padmore Institute's archive is upstairs.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"New Beacon Books, 76 Stroud Green Road, N4 3EN, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Park Theatre","s":"park-theatre","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":276},{"n":"Blighty","s":"blighty","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":650},{"n":"Museum of Homelessness","s":"museum-of-homelessness","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":926}],"near_same":[{"s":"george-padmore-institute","m":3},{"s":"highgate-cemetery","m":2561},{"s":"word-on-the-water","m":3765},{"s":"jewish-book-week","m":3785},{"s":"st-pancras-old-church","m":3958},{"s":"rimbaud-and-verlaine-royal-college-street","m":3971}]},{"slug":"paddington-bear-statue","name":"Paddington Bear statue","area":"Paddington","address":"Paddington station, Praed Street, W2 1HQ","station":"Paddington","walk":1,"lat":51.516596,"lng":-0.177729,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/3242621431","types":["free","setting","statue"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Paddington under the clock at the station where the Browns found him, suitcase and label and all.","note":"Michael Bond bought a lonely teddy bear at Selfridges on Christmas Eve 1956 and named it after the station near his flat; A Bear Called Paddington came out two years later. Marcus Cornish's bronze of 2000 sits on platform 1 with the label round his neck reading 'Please look after this bear. Thank you' and his suitcase beside him, at roughly the spot where the Browns found him sitting on it near the lost property office. His hat is polished by thousands of hands a year.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/paddington-bear-statue.jpg?v=8a9f342d","thumb":"/img/paddington-bear-statue-480.jpg?v=48f9a1f8","width":764,"height":1024,"alt":"Paddington Bear Statue @ Paddington Station","caption":"","credit":"Photo by justgrimes from Washington DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paddington_Bear_Statue_@_Paddington_Station.jpg","thumb_width":358},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Paddington Bear statue, Paddington station, Praed Street, W2 1HQ, London","in_area":{"slug":"bayswater-paddington","name":"Bayswater & Paddington"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"FCB Coffee","s":"fcb-coffee-paddington","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":59},{"n":"Paddington station","s":"paddington-station","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":62},{"n":"Market Halls Paddington","s":"market-halls-paddington","c":"food-markets","cn":"Food Markets","m":230}],"near_same":[{"s":"peter-pan-statue","m":895},{"s":"sherlock-holmes-museum","m":1552},{"s":"sherlock-holmes-statue","m":1603},{"s":"daunt-books-marylebone","m":1813},{"s":"22-hyde-park-gate","m":1900},{"s":"the-regents-park","m":2190}]},{"slug":"peter-pan-statue","name":"Peter Pan statue","area":"Paddington","address":"Kensington Gardens, W2 2UH","station":"Lancaster Gate","walk":5,"lat":51.508618,"lng":-0.175919,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":"Kensington Gardens, gates 06:00 to dusk","hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.royalparks.org.uk/visit/parks/kensington-gardens/monuments","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/255467667","types":["free","setting","statue"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Barrie's Peter Pan, put up in Kensington Gardens overnight in 1912 so that it would seem to have appeared by magic.","note":"J. M. Barrie commissioned George Frampton's bronze himself and had it installed secretly on the night of 30 April 1912, announcing it in The Times the next morning as if the fairies had done it. It stands on the spot where Peter lands in The Little White Bird, the 1902 novel in which he first appeared as a baby who flew out of his nursery window to the Gardens. Rabbits, squirrels, mice and fairies climb the tree-stump pedestal, worn bright by children's hands; Frampton modelled the boy on his own patron's son rather than on the Llewelyn Davies boys, which Barrie regretted. Casts stand from Liverpool to Brussels.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/peter-pan-statue.jpg?v=88dcc8f1","thumb":"/img/peter-pan-statue-480.jpg?v=4db7cdcf","width":655,"height":1024,"alt":"Monument to Peter Pan, Kensington Gardens, London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Peter Clarke, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Pan_monument.jpg","thumb_width":307},"figures":null,"from":"monuments/peter-pan-statue","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Art","href":"/art/peter-pan-statue/"},{"name":"Monuments & Ruins","href":"/monuments/peter-pan-statue/"}],"maps_q":"Peter Pan statue, Kensington Gardens, W2 2UH, London","in_area":{"slug":"hyde-park-kensington-gardens","name":"Hyde Park & Kensington Gardens"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Edward Jenner statue","s":"edward-jenner-statue","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":153},{"n":"Kensington Gardens","s":"kensington-gardens","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":355},{"n":"Serpentine","s":"serpentine","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":439}],"near_same":[{"s":"paddington-bear-statue","m":895},{"s":"22-hyde-park-gate","m":1063},{"s":"national-art-library","m":1360},{"s":"sherlock-holmes-statue","m":2042},{"s":"sherlock-holmes-museum","m":2071},{"s":"daunt-books-marylebone","m":2099}]},{"slug":"poets-corner-westminster-abbey","name":"Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey","area":"Westminster","address":"20 Dean's Yard, SW1P 3PA","station":"Westminster","walk":3,"lat":51.499401,"lng":-0.127391,"hours":[[9.5,15.5],[9.5,15.5],[9.5,15.5],[9.5,15.5],[9.5,15.5],[9.5,15.0],null],"hours_raw":"Mo-Fr 09:30-15:30; Sa 09:30-15:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.westminster-abbey.org/visit-us","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Last entry times; Sunday is for services only.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.westminster-abbey.org/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/364313092","types":["grave","inside","statue"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The south transept of the Abbey, where English literature has buried and remembered itself since Chaucer.","note":"Chaucer was buried here in 1400 because he had been a royal clerk, and the tomb put up for him in 1556 turned the corner into a habit: Spenser was laid beside him in 1599 with other poets throwing elegies and their pens into the grave, and Dryden, Johnson, Dickens, Browning, Tennyson, Hardy and Kipling followed. Those buried elsewhere are remembered on the walls and floor, from Shakespeare's Scheemakers statue and the memorials to Milton, Blake, Keats and Shelley to Jane Austen, the Bront\u00ebs, Dylan Thomas and Philip Larkin. Handel lies among them, and beneath the floor Chaucer's own grey tomb is the plainest thing in the transept.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/poets-corner-westminster-abbey.jpg?v=76768b54","thumb":"/img/poets-corner-westminster-abbey-480.jpg?v=2e711d40","width":768,"height":1024,"alt":"Westminster Abbey","caption":"","credit":"Photo by \u03a3\u03c0\u03ac\u03c1\u03c4\u03b1\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Westminster-Abbey.JPG","thumb_width":360},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, 20 Dean's Yard, SW1P 3PA, London","in_area":{"slug":"westminster","name":"Westminster"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Jewel Tower","s":"jewel-tower","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":122},{"n":"Supreme Court of the United Kingdom","s":"supreme-court-of-the-united-kingdom","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":122},{"n":"Millicent Fawcett statue","s":"millicent-fawcett-statue","c":"monuments","cn":"Monuments & Ruins","m":141}],"near_same":[{"s":"westminster-bridge","m":470},{"s":"lambeth-palace-library","m":852},{"s":"tate-britain","m":918},{"s":"a-conversation-with-oscar-wilde","m":1041},{"s":"imagine-childrens-festival","m":1064},{"s":"london-literature-festival","m":1064}]},{"slug":"popes-grotto","name":"Pope's Grotto","area":"Strawberry Hill","address":"Radnor House, Cross Deep, Twickenham TW1 4QG","station":"Strawberry Hill","walk":8,"lat":51.44204,"lng":-0.3313,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://popesgrotto.org.uk/open-days-and-guided-tours/","hours_short":"Open days by pre-booked ticket, around thirty a year","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://popesgrotto.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["inside","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The shell-and-crystal tunnel Alexander Pope dug under the Twickenham road, the last piece of his villa.","note":"Pope built his villa by the Thames in 1720 and, because the road cut his garden off from the river, tunnelled beneath it and turned the tunnel into a grotto: walls set with Cornish minerals, ores, shells, mirrors and a piece of the Giant's Causeway, so that with the doors shut and a lamp lit the place became, in his words, a camera obscura of the river. The house was pulled down in 1808 by an owner tired of visitors; the grotto survived under a school, and the trust that restored it in 2023 opens it a few dozen days a year.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Pope's Grotto, Radnor House, Cross Deep, Twickenham TW1 4QG, London","bank":null,"near_all":[{"n":"Church Street, Twickenham","s":"church-street-twickenham","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":609},{"n":"Twickenham Museum","s":"twickenham-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":661},{"n":"York House Gardens","s":"york-house-gardens","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":815}],"near_same":[{"s":"strawberry-hill","m":492},{"s":"arts-richmond-literature-festival","m":889},{"s":"virginia-woolf-statue-richmond-riverside","m":2473},{"s":"hogarth-house-richmond","m":2889},{"s":"garricks-temple-to-shakespeare","m":3830},{"s":"royal-botanic-gardens-kew","m":4926}]},{"slug":"primrose-hill","name":"Primrose Hill","area":"Primrose Hill","address":"Primrose Hill, Primrose Hill Road, NW3 3NA","station":"Chalk Farm","walk":7,"lat":51.538961,"lng":-0.161095,"hours":[[0,24],[0,24],[0,24],[0,24],[0,24],[0,24],[0,24]],"hours_raw":"24/7","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.royalparks.org.uk/visit/parks/regents-park-primrose-hill","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-03","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.royalparks.org.uk/visit/parks/regents-park-primrose-hill","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/4082666","types":["free","setting"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Blake's line on the summit, the Martians' last stand in The War of the Worlds, and the start of the Twilight Bark.","note":"The stone at the top carries William Blake's words, 'I have conversed with the spiritual Sun. I saw him on Primrose Hill', from a conversation Crabb Robinson wrote down. H. G. Wells ended The War of the Worlds here, with the last Martian machine dead in its pit on the hill and its cry fading over the city; Dodie Smith's Dalmatians start the Twilight Bark from the summit; and Sylvia Plath and Kingsley Amis lived on the streets below. The view over the Zoo to the whole of central London is why the writers came.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/primrose-hill.jpg?v=16db7b5d","thumb":"/img/primrose-hill-480.jpg?v=d870a03a","width":1024,"height":680,"alt":"Primrose Hill, London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Louise Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Primrose_Hill,_London_-16Sept2010.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"outdoors/primrose-hill","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Outdoors & Nature","href":"/outdoors/primrose-hill/"}],"maps_q":"Primrose Hill, Primrose Hill Road, NW3 3NA, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Friedrich Engels","s":"friedrich-engels","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":308},{"n":"Jos\u00e9 Rizal","s":"jose-rizal","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":389},{"n":"Sylvia Plath","s":"sylvia-plath","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":425}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-regents-park","m":1127},{"s":"sherlock-holmes-museum","m":1699},{"s":"rimbaud-and-verlaine-royal-college-street","m":1744},{"s":"sherlock-holmes-statue","m":1856},{"s":"keats-house","m":1903},{"s":"daunt-books-marylebone","m":2150}]},{"slug":"quentin-blake-centre-for-illustration","name":"Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration","area":"Kings Cross","address":"1 Myddelton Passage, EC1R 1AG","station":"Angel","walk":6,"lat":51.528594,"lng":-0.107645,"hours":[null,null,[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0]],"hours_raw":"We-Su 10:00-17:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://qbcentre.org.uk/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://qbcentre.org.uk","instagram":"qbcentre","attrs":[],"osm":"node/13583467062","types":["children","illustration","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The country's home for illustration, opened in 2026 in the old waterworks at New River Head, Clerkenwell.","note":"Quentin Blake gave his archive to found it, and the centre that carries his name opened in June 2026 in the Metropolitan Water Board's engine house and yard off Myddelton Passage: three galleries of changing exhibitions, a library of illustrated books that anyone can read in, and studios where the drawing is done as well as looked at. Blake's own work - Dahl's BFG and Matilda, Mister Magnolia, the Roald Dahl covers - anchors a programme that runs from Victorian picture books to comics and the illustrators working now.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"museums/quentin-blake-centre-for-illustration","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"murugiah-ever-feel-like","name":"MURUGIAH: Ever Feel Like\u2026","href":"/art/quentin-blake-centre-for-illustration/murugiah-ever-feel-like/","verdict":"Flower-headed, skull-headed characters from an illustrator who trained as an architect.","runs":{"from":"2026-06-05","to":"2026-10-04"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"queer-as-comics","name":"Queer as Comics","href":"/art/quentin-blake-centre-for-illustration/queer-as-comics/","verdict":"Eighty years of LGBTQIA+ comics, most of the artwork never shown before.","runs":{"from":"2026-06-05","to":"2026-10-04"},"types":["art","books","exhibition","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"quentin-blake-performance","name":"Quentin Blake: Performance","href":"/art/quentin-blake-centre-for-illustration/quentin-blake-performance/","verdict":"Over a hundred Blake drawings about the stage, from Punch and Judy to Godot.","runs":{"from":"2026-06-05","to":"2027-04-01"},"types":["art","exhibition","family"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"library-display-sophy-hollington","name":"Library display: Sophy Hollington","href":"/art/quentin-blake-centre-for-illustration/library-display-sophy-hollington/","verdict":"Linocut demons and moons with faces, in the free library.","runs":{"from":"2026-06-06","to":"2026-12-31"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"making-and-me","name":"Making and Me","href":"/art/quentin-blake-centre-for-illustration/making-and-me/","verdict":"Print trails made by older artists from the Peel community centre, and a soundscape of them talking.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-04","to":"2026-10-03"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/quentin-blake-centre-for-illustration/"},{"name":"Art","href":"/art/quentin-blake-centre-for-illustration/"}],"maps_q":"Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, 1 Myddelton Passage, EC1R 1AG, London","in_area":{"slug":"farringdon-clerkenwell","name":"Farringdon & Clerkenwell"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Sadler's Wells","s":"sadlers-wells","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":141},{"n":"Lloyd Square","s":"lloyd-square","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":272},{"n":"Caf\u00e9 Kick","s":"cafe-kick","c":"cocktails","cn":"Cocktails","m":300}],"near_same":[{"s":"magculture","m":352},{"s":"marx-memorial-library","m":634},{"s":"charles-dickens-museum","m":818},{"s":"the-charterhouse","m":961},{"s":"jewish-book-week","m":1206},{"s":"gays-the-word","m":1264}]},{"slug":"rimbaud-and-verlaine-royal-college-street","name":"Rimbaud and Verlaine, Royal College Street","area":"Somers Town","address":"8 Royal College Street, NW1","station":"Mornington Crescent","walk":4,"lat":51.53652,"lng":-0.13618,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["free","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The Camden terrace where Rimbaud and Verlaine lived in 1873, before the shot in Brussels.","note":"The two poets took a room at 8 Royal College Street in May 1873, aged nineteen and twenty-nine, having fled Paris; they taught French, walked the docks, drank in Camden and quarrelled, and it was from here that Verlaine stormed out in July, after Rimbaud laughed at him for carrying a herring, to the Brussels hotel room where he shot him in the wrist. Rimbaud drafted much of Une Saison en Enfer in London. A plaque marks the house, and the street is otherwise ordinary, which was rather the point.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/rimbaud-and-verlaine-royal-college-street.jpg?v=1828abaf","thumb":"/img/rimbaud-and-verlaine-royal-college-street-480.jpg?v=567620c8","width":768,"height":1024,"alt":"8 Royal College Street","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Graham from Adventco, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:8_Royal_College_Street.jpg","thumb_width":360},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Rimbaud and Verlaine, Royal College Street, 8 Royal College Street, NW1, London","in_area":{"slug":"camden","name":"Camden"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Rimbaud and Verlaine","s":"rimbaud-and-verlaine","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":189},{"n":"KOKO","s":"koko","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":240},{"n":"George Padmore","s":"george-padmore","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":382}],"near_same":[{"s":"st-pancras-old-church","m":451},{"s":"word-on-the-water","m":888},{"s":"british-library","m":931},{"s":"jewish-book-week","m":1011},{"s":"tavistock-square","m":1369},{"s":"gordon-square","m":1411}]},{"slug":"rose-theatre-exhibition","name":"Rose Theatre Exhibition","area":"Bankside","address":"Park Street, SE1 9HA","station":"London Bridge","walk":6,"lat":51.507215,"lng":-0.095469,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.roseplayhouse.org.uk/guided-tours","hours_short":"Guided tours on Thursdays in autumn; otherwise events only","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://roseplayhouse.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/1948210224","types":["inside","shakespeare"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The playhouse where Marlowe's plays were first staged, its footprint uncovered in 1989 and kept.","note":"Philip Henslowe's Rose of 1587 was Bankside's first theatre, home to Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta, and to the young Shakespeare, whose Henry VI and Titus Andronicus were played here before the Globe existed. Its remains were found when an office block came down, saved after a public campaign led by actors, and lie under the building that replaced it, lit in outline beneath a shallow pool of water that keeps the timbers from drying out. A volunteer-run exhibition explains what is under the water.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"museums/rose-theatre-exhibition","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/rose-theatre-exhibition/"}],"maps_q":"Rose Theatre Exhibition, Park Street, SE1 9HA, London","in_area":{"slug":"southwark","name":"Southwark & Bankside"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Shakespeare's Globe guided tour","s":"shakespeares-globe-guided-tour","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":155},{"n":"Longboys","s":"longboys","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":217},{"n":"Borough Yards","s":"borough-yards","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":242}],"near_same":[{"s":"site-of-the-original-globe","m":65},{"s":"shakespeares-globe","m":150},{"s":"southwark-cathedral","m":425},{"s":"site-of-the-tabard-inn","m":503},{"s":"the-george-inn","m":507},{"s":"john-keats-statue","m":636}]},{"slug":"royal-botanic-gardens-kew","name":"Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew","area":"Kew","address":"Victoria Gate, Kew Road, Kew, TW9 3AE","station":"Kew Gardens","walk":5,"lat":51.478303,"lng":-0.290447,"hours":[[10.0,19.0],[10.0,19.0],[10.0,19.0],[10.0,19.0],[10.0,19.0],[10.0,19.0],[10.0,19.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 10:00-19:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.kew.org/kew-gardens/visit-kew-gardens/opening-and-closing-times","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-03","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.kew.org/kew-gardens","instagram":"kewgardens","attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["bloomsbury","inside","setting"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The flower bed of Woolf's story Kew Gardens, printed by the Hogarth Press in 1919 with woodcuts by her sister.","note":"Woolf wrote Kew Gardens a mile from the house at Richmond: a July afternoon in which four pairs of people pass an oval flower bed, talking of ghosts, marriage and the price of tea, while a snail crosses the soil between the stalks and the aeroplanes drone overhead. The Hogarth Press published it in 1919 in an edition of a hundred and fifty with Vanessa Bell's woodcuts, and its notice in the Times Literary Supplement sold out the print run in a week. Any flower bed on the lawns by the Palm House will do.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"introduction-to-the-gardens","name":"Introduction to the Gardens","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/introduction-to-the-gardens/","verdict":"An hour with a Kew guide, twice a day, included in the ticket.","runs":null,"types":["free","nature","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour"]},{"slug":"henry-moore-monumental-nature","name":"Henry Moore: Monumental Nature","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/henry-moore-monumental-nature/","verdict":"Thirty monumental Moores among Kew's trees, the largest outdoor showing of him ever.","runs":{"from":"2026-05-09","to":"2027-01-31"},"types":["art","exhibition","family","nature"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"monumental-botanical-art","name":"Monumental Botanical Art","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/monumental-botanical-art/","verdict":"Botanical painting in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery, included with entry to the gardens.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-08","to":"2027-01-31"},"types":["art","exhibition","nature"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"an-evening-of-moore","name":"An Evening of Moore","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/an-evening-of-moore/","verdict":"Henry Moore's sculptures in the gardens after the gates have shut.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-15","to":"2026-11-08"},"types":["art","late","nature"],"clue":["Art & design"]},{"slug":"the-nash-sessions-jazz-cats-quartet","name":"The Nash Sessions: Jazz Cats Quartet","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/the-nash-sessions-jazz-cats-quartet/","verdict":"Swing and the Great American Songbook, in a glasshouse built for Buckingham Palace.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-24","to":"2026-09-24"},"types":["concert","jazz","music","nature"],"clue":["Gig","Jazz"]},{"slug":"halloween-at-kew","name":"Halloween at Kew","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/halloween-at-kew/","verdict":"Dracula, the Headless Horseman and a new cursed tomb on an illuminated trail through the Gardens.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-16","to":"2026-11-01","repeats":"yearly"},"types":["family","nature"],"clue":[]},{"slug":"christmas-at-kew","name":"Christmas at Kew","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/christmas-at-kew/","verdict":"The Gardens after dark as a mile of light, with a fairground and Father Christmas at the end.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-13","to":"2027-01-03","repeats":"yearly"},"types":["family","food_available","nature"],"clue":[]}],"also_in":[{"name":"What\u2019s On","href":"/whats-on/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/"},{"name":"Outdoors & Nature","href":"/outdoors/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/"},{"name":"Science & Engineering","href":"/science/royal-botanic-gardens-kew/"}],"maps_q":"Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Victoria Gate, Kew Road, Kew, TW9 3AE, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"The Original Maids of Honour","s":"the-original-maids-of-honour","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":308},{"n":"Kew Palace","s":"kew-palace","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":692},{"n":"Musical Museum","s":"musical-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":1079}],"near_same":[{"s":"hogarth-house-richmond","m":2145},{"s":"virginia-woolf-statue-richmond-riverside","m":2508},{"s":"london-childrens-literature-festival","m":3075},{"s":"barnes-bookfest","m":3381},{"s":"chiswick-book-festival","m":3462},{"s":"emery-walkers-house","m":4123}]},{"slug":"senate-house","name":"Senate House","area":"Bloomsbury","address":"Malet Street, WC1E 7HU","station":"Russell Square","walk":5,"lat":51.521002,"lng":-0.12876,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"relation/11948662","types":["free","setting"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The Ministry of Truth: Orwell's model for Minitrue in Nineteen Eighty-Four.","note":"Charles Holden's white Portland-stone tower for the University of London, finished in 1937, was the wartime Ministry of Information, where Orwell's wife Eileen worked in the censorship department while he was at the BBC. Winston Smith's Ministry of Truth, 'an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete', is this building, and its art deco lobbies and library are much used by films that need a totalitarian frontage. Graham Greene wrote propaganda in it, and Evelyn Waugh put it in Put Out More Flags.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/senate-house.jpg?v=7e1922c1","thumb":"/img/senate-house-480.jpg?v=6343f6ae","width":765,"height":1024,"alt":"Senate House, University of London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by stevecadman, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Senate_House,_University_of_London.jpg","thumb_width":358},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Senate House, Malet Street, WC1E 7HU, London","in_area":{"slug":"bloomsbury","name":"Bloomsbury"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"SOAS Gallery","s":"soas-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":76},{"n":"Wiener Library","s":"wiener-library","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":85},{"n":"Store Street Espresso","s":"store-street-espresso","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":132}],"near_same":[{"s":"faber-faber-24-russell-square","m":202},{"s":"gordon-square","m":390},{"s":"tavistock-square","m":449},{"s":"the-fitzroy-tavern","m":484},{"s":"the-wheatsheaf","m":513},{"s":"swedenborg-house","m":530}]},{"slug":"shakespeare-statue-leicester-square","name":"Shakespeare statue, Leicester Square","area":"Seven Dials","address":"Leicester Square, WC2H 7NA","station":"Leicester Square","walk":2,"lat":51.510377,"lng":-0.130089,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/571836758","types":["free","shakespeare","statue"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The marble Shakespeare at the centre of Leicester Square, leaning on a stack of books.","note":"Giovanni Fontana's statue of 1874 is a copy of the Scheemakers Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey, put here when the square was laid out as a public garden. Shakespeare rests an elbow on a pile of books and points to a scroll reading 'There is no darkness but ignorance', a line from Twelfth Night. Dolphins spout at his feet, and around the garden are busts of Newton, Reynolds, Hunter and Hogarth, who all lived on the square when it was a place people lived.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/shakespeare-statue-leicester-square.jpg?v=9b49c874","thumb":"/img/shakespeare-statue-leicester-square-480.jpg?v=15e005dd","width":575,"height":1024,"alt":"The statue of William Shakespeare in Leicester Square, City of Westminster","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare_Statue_in_Leicester_Square.JPG","thumb_width":270},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Shakespeare statue, Leicester Square, Leicester Square, WC2H 7NA, London","in_area":{"slug":"soho","name":"Soho"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Harry Potter statue, Leicester Square","s":"harry-potter-statue-leicester-square","c":"harry-potter","cn":"Harry Potter","m":36},{"n":"The Comedy Store","s":"the-comedy-store","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":152},{"n":"Gerrard Street","s":"gerrard-street","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":170}],"near_same":[{"s":"cecil-court","m":172},{"s":"agatha-christie-memorial","m":244},{"s":"84-charing-cross-road","m":339},{"s":"a-conversation-with-oscar-wilde","m":346},{"s":"waterstones-piccadilly","m":429},{"s":"stanfords","m":439}]},{"slug":"shakespeares-globe","name":"Shakespeare's Globe","area":"Bankside","address":"21 New Globe Walk, SE1 9DT","station":"London Blackfriars","walk":6,"lat":51.508123,"lng":-0.097089,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/visit/opening-hours/","hours_short":"Tours daily; performances by ticket","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"The Globe Story and Tour runs every day. Box office 11:00-18:00 Monday to Friday, 10:00-18:00 Saturday, 10:00-17:00 Sunday; the shop 10:00-17:00 daily.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"relation/1239793","types":["inside","shakespeare"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A working copy of Shakespeare's playhouse, in oak and thatch, a few hundred yards from where the first one stood.","note":"The first Globe was raised in 1599 out of the timbers of an earlier theatre that Shakespeare's company had taken apart and carried across the river. It burned down in 1613 when a cannon fired during a performance set the thatch alight, was rebuilt, and was pulled down in 1644 after the Puritans closed the playhouses. Then there was nothing here for three hundred years.\n\nThis one is the work of Sam Wanamaker, an American actor who settled in London in the 1950s, found the site of the Globe marked by a plaque on a brewery wall, and spent the rest of his life raising the money to rebuild it. He founded the trust in 1970 and died in 1993, four years before it opened.\n\nIt is built as the original was: English oak cut and pegged together rather than nailed, and the only thatched roof London has allowed since the Great Fire of 1666. Eight hundred and seventy sit on hard benches around three tiers and seven hundred stand in the yard in front of the stage, in daylight, because there is no lighting rig. The actors can see every face and play to them, which is a different bargain from a dark auditorium. Beside it the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, opened in 2014, is a small indoor theatre lit by candles, of the kind Shakespeare's company used in winter.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-shakespeares-globe.jpg?v=d1ca52cc","thumb":"/img/own-shakespeares-globe-480.jpg?v=309aba21","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Shakespeare's Globe from Bankside, white walls, black timbers and a thatched roof","caption":"The rebuilt Globe from Bankside."},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"much-ado-about-nothing","name":"Much Ado About Nothing","href":"/venues/shakespeares-globe/much-ado-about-nothing/","verdict":"The one where two people who cannot stand each other are tricked into love, outdoors.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-10","to":"2026-10-24"},"types":["theatre"],"clue":["Theatre"]},{"slug":"as-you-like-it","name":"As You Like It","href":"/venues/shakespeares-globe/as-you-like-it/","verdict":"Rosalind flees a powdered court for a Forest of Arden the company paints on stage as you watch.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-11","to":"2026-10-25"},"types":["theatre"],"clue":["Theatre"]},{"slug":"julius-caesar","name":"Julius Caesar","href":"/venues/shakespeares-globe/julius-caesar/","verdict":"The assassination, by candlelight, in a room built from seventeenth-century drawings.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-06","to":"2027-02-14"},"types":["theatre"],"clue":["Theatre"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Performance venues","href":"/venues/shakespeares-globe/"}],"maps_q":"Shakespeare's Globe, 21 New Globe Walk, SE1 9DT, London","in_area":{"slug":"southwark","name":"Southwark & Bankside"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Shakespeare's Globe guided tour","s":"shakespeares-globe-guided-tour","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":8},{"n":"Tate Modern","s":"tate-modern","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":176},{"n":"Millennium Bridge","s":"millennium-bridge","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":207}],"near_same":[{"s":"rose-theatre-exhibition","m":150},{"s":"site-of-the-original-globe","m":216},{"s":"southwark-cathedral","m":564},{"s":"site-of-the-tabard-inn","m":654},{"s":"the-george-inn","m":657},{"s":"stationers-hall","m":768}]},{"slug":"sherlock-holmes-museum","name":"Sherlock Holmes Museum","area":"Regent's Park","address":"221B Baker Street, NW1 6XE","station":"Baker Street","walk":2,"lat":51.523763,"lng":-0.158474,"hours":[[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0],[9.5,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 09:30-18:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.sherlock-holmes.co.uk/","instagram":"thesherlockholmesmuseum","attrs":[],"osm":"node/3916613190","types":["inside","setting","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"221b Baker Street, furnished as Conan Doyle described it, with a Victorian policeman on the door.","note":"The address did not exist when Conan Doyle invented it in 1887, and when Baker Street was extended the numbers were held by a building society that employed a secretary to answer Holmes's post. Since 1990 a house of the right date has borne the number by special permission and been fitted out as the rooms Watson described: the sitting room with its chemistry bench and the Persian slipper of tobacco, the study with the bullet-pocked wall, and waxwork scenes from the stories on the floors above.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/sherlock-holmes-museum.jpg?v=68e45a9a","thumb":"/img/sherlock-holmes-museum-480.jpg?v=f0a57018","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"Photo showing the address as 221B beside the location of the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London England","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Jordan 1972, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:221B_Baker_Street,_London_-_Sherlock_Holmes_Museum.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/sherlock-holmes-museum","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/sherlock-holmes-museum/"}],"maps_q":"Sherlock Holmes Museum, 221B Baker Street, NW1 6XE, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Jos\u00e9 de San Mart\u00edn","s":"jose-de-san-martin","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":95},{"n":"Hidden London: Baker Street \u2014 the world's first Underground","s":"hidden-london-baker-street-the-worlds-first-underground","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":177},{"n":"Madame Tussauds London","s":"madame-tussauds-london","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":266}],"near_same":[{"s":"sherlock-holmes-statue","m":191},{"s":"daunt-books-marylebone","m":568},{"s":"the-regents-park","m":730},{"s":"george-orwell-statue-broadcasting-house","m":1208},{"s":"fitzroy-square","m":1275},{"s":"paddington-bear-statue","m":1552}]},{"slug":"sherlock-holmes-statue","name":"Sherlock Holmes statue","area":"Marylebone","address":"Marylebone Road, NW1 5LD","station":"Baker Street","walk":1,"lat":51.5225,"lng":-0.156588,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/1929011546","types":["free","statue"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Holmes in deerstalker and cape outside Baker Street station, three metres of bronze.","note":"John Doubleday's statue of 1999 was paid for by the Abbey National, which occupied the block that took in 221 and for decades answered Holmes's letters. He stands at the Marylebone Road entrance to the station, pipe in hand, looking up the street towards the address Conan Doyle invented in 1887; the tiles on the platforms below carry his silhouette. Doubleday had already made a Holmes for Meiringen, beside the Reichenbach Falls.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/sherlock-holmes-statue.jpg?v=7aeab850","thumb":"/img/sherlock-holmes-statue-480.jpg?v=cb75097e","width":832,"height":1024,"alt":"Statue Of Sherlock Holmes-Marylebone Road London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Lonpicman, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_Of_Sherlock_Holmes-Marylebone_Road.jpg","thumb_width":390},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Sherlock Holmes statue, Marylebone Road, NW1 5LD, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Hidden London: Baker Street \u2014 the world's first Underground","s":"hidden-london-baker-street-the-worlds-first-underground","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":14},{"n":"Chiltern Street","s":"chiltern-street","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":117},{"n":"Madame Tussauds London","s":"madame-tussauds-london","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":126}],"near_same":[{"s":"sherlock-holmes-museum","m":191},{"s":"daunt-books-marylebone","m":378},{"s":"the-regents-park","m":825},{"s":"george-orwell-statue-broadcasting-house","m":1030},{"s":"fitzroy-square","m":1143},{"s":"the-fitzroy-tavern","m":1577}]},{"slug":"site-of-the-original-globe","name":"Site of the original Globe","area":"Borough Market","address":"Park Street, SE1","station":"London Bridge","walk":6,"lat":51.506838,"lng":-0.094742,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/1948210427","types":["free","shakespeare"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Where the first Globe stood, traced in dark stones across the pavement of Park Street.","note":"The Globe of 1599 was raised here by the Burbages from the timbers of their Shoreditch theatre, carried over the river in the winter of 1598. It burned in 1613 when a cannon fired during Henry VIII set the thatch alight, was rebuilt the next year and was pulled down in 1644. A plaque on the wall of the old brewery and a line of stones set into the ground trace part of the polygon that archaeologists found in 1989, under the corner of a historically protected Georgian terrace that could not be moved to reveal the rest.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Site of the original Globe, Park Street, SE1, London","in_area":{"slug":"borough-bermondsey","name":"Borough & Bermondsey"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Longboys","s":"longboys","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":168},{"n":"Borough Yards","s":"borough-yards","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":179},{"n":"Clink Prison Museum","s":"clink-prison-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":197}],"near_same":[{"s":"rose-theatre-exhibition","m":65},{"s":"shakespeares-globe","m":216},{"s":"southwark-cathedral","m":365},{"s":"site-of-the-tabard-inn","m":438},{"s":"the-george-inn","m":441},{"s":"john-keats-statue","m":571}]},{"slug":"site-of-the-tabard-inn","name":"Site of the Tabard Inn","area":"Borough Market","address":"Talbot Yard, SE1 1YP","station":"London Bridge","walk":2,"lat":51.504082,"lng":-0.090218,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/66065786","types":["free","setting"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Where Chaucer's pilgrims gathered: the site of the Tabard, in a yard off Borough High Street.","note":"'In Southwark at the Tabard as I lay': the inn where the Canterbury Tales begins, kept by Harry Bailly, stood here from 1307 until it was pulled down in 1873, having burned and been rebuilt as the Talbot in 1676. A plaque in Talbot Yard, put up in 2003, marks the site; the George next door, the last galleried inn on the road, shows what it looked like. 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Eighteen of them, Macbeth, The Tempest and Twelfth Night among them, had never been printed and would otherwise have been lost. Both men were churchwardens here and are buried in the churchyard. The 1896 memorial carries a bust of Shakespeare above an open Folio, and its inscription says of the two that 'to their disinterested affection the world owes all that it calls Shakespeare'.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/st-mary-aldermanbury-garden.jpg?v=cf91d07d","thumb":"/img/st-mary-aldermanbury-garden-480.jpg?v=039b34a3","width":1024,"height":769,"alt":"The stone footings of a demolished church standing in a City garden lawn, under a plane tree","caption":"The footings left in the grass, where the columns stood.","credit":"Photo by Doyle of London, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Footings_of_Saint_Mary_Aldermanbury_(01).jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"monuments/st-mary-aldermanbury-garden","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Monuments & Ruins","href":"/monuments/st-mary-aldermanbury-garden/"}],"maps_q":"St Mary Aldermanbury Garden, Love Lane, EC2V 7HH, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"St Alban's Tower, Wood Street","s":"st-albans-tower-wood-street","c":"monuments","cn":"Monuments & Ruins","m":76},{"n":"Guildhall","s":"guildhall","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":93},{"n":"Guildhall Roman Amphitheatre","s":"guildhall-roman-amphitheatre","c":"monuments","cn":"Monuments & Ruins","m":116}],"near_same":[{"s":"guildhall-library","m":42},{"s":"st-giles-without-cripplegate","m":253},{"s":"black-british-book-festival","m":381},{"s":"capital-crime","m":471},{"s":"stationers-hall","m":572},{"s":"the-charterhouse","m":727}]},{"slug":"st-olave-hart-street","name":"St Olave Hart Street","area":"Tower Hill","address":"8 Hart Street, EC3R 7NB","station":"London Fenchurch Street","walk":2,"lat":51.510898,"lng":-0.079471,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":"Weekdays","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/142196708","types":["free","grave","inside","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Pepys's own church, where he and his wife are buried and where he watched the plague fill the churchyard.","note":"Samuel Pepys lived in Seething Lane beside the Navy Office, and St Olave's was 'our own church', where he sat in the Navy gallery and eyed the congregation; Elizabeth Pepys, who died at twenty-nine in 1669, has a bust he commissioned looking towards where he sat, and he was buried beside her in 1703. The churchyard gate of 1658 with its skulls made Dickens call it St Ghastly Grim in The Uncommercial Traveller, and hundreds of plague victims of 1665 are buried here, which the diary records with dread. The church survived the Great Fire by yards, and Pepys has a bust in the garden on Seething Lane.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/st-olave-hart-street.jpg?v=c52d7aeb","thumb":"/img/st-olave-hart-street-480.jpg?v=ea265bf4","width":1024,"height":809,"alt":"St Olave Church, Hart Street, London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Lonpicman, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Olave_Church.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Sacred London","href":"/sacred/st-olave-hart-street/"}],"maps_q":"St Olave Hart Street, 8 Hart Street, EC3R 7NB, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"All Hallows Staining","s":"all-hallows-staining","c":"monuments","cn":"Monuments & Ruins","m":90},{"n":"Rosslyn Coffee","s":"rosslyn-fenchurch-street","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":131},{"n":"All Hallows-by-the-Tower Crypt Museum","s":"all-hallows-by-the-tower-crypt-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":166}],"near_same":[{"s":"aldgate-chaucers-rooms-over-the-gate","m":381},{"s":"bishopsgate-institute","m":870},{"s":"southwark-cathedral","m":895},{"s":"guildhall-library","m":1081},{"s":"the-george-inn","m":1101},{"s":"john-keats-statue","m":1104}]},{"slug":"st-pancras-old-church","name":"St Pancras Old Church","area":"Somers Town","address":"Pancras Road, NW1 1UL","station":"London St. Pancras International","walk":4,"lat":51.534945,"lng":-0.130156,"hours":[[9.5,15.0],[9.5,15.0],[9.5,15.0],[9.5,15.0],[9.5,15.0],[9.5,15.0],[9.5,15.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 09:30-15:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://stpancrasoldchurch.posp.co.uk/worship/opening-times/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Closes between 15:00 and 17:00 depending on concerts; the churchyard is open until dusk.","runs":null,"website":"https://posp.co.uk/st-pancras-old-church/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/26638075","types":["free","grave","inside","setting"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Mary Wollstonecraft's grave, where her daughter met Shelley, in the churchyard of the Hardy Tree.","note":"One of the oldest Christian sites in England, and the churchyard is where the sixteen-year-old Mary Godwin met Percy Shelley in 1814 at the tomb of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft; the future author of Frankenstein is said to have learned to read by tracing the letters on the stone. The Wollstonecraft tomb still stands, though the bodies were moved to Bournemouth in 1851. In the 1860s the young Thomas Hardy, then an architect's assistant, oversaw the clearing of graves for the railway and had the headstones stacked around an ash tree that grew through them; the Hardy Tree fell in 2022 but the stones remain. Sir John Soane's tomb, which gave Giles Gilbert Scott the shape of the red telephone box, is here as well.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/st-pancras-old-church.jpg?v=0fb9f03f","thumb":"/img/st-pancras-old-church-480.jpg?v=60bffd46","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"St Pancras Old Church among the plane trees of its churchyard","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Elliott Brown from Birmingham, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Pancras_Old_Church_-_Pancras_Road,_St_Pancras,_London_(31352873461).jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Sacred London","href":"/sacred/st-pancras-old-church/"}],"maps_q":"St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, NW1 1UL, London","in_area":{"slug":"kings-cross-st-pancras","name":"King's Cross & St Pancras"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Camley Street Natural Park","s":"camley-street-natural-park","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":187},{"n":"Gasholder Park","s":"gasholder-park","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":268},{"n":"Coal Drops Yard","s":"coal-drops-yard","c":"shopping","cn":"Shopping","m":275}],"near_same":[{"s":"rimbaud-and-verlaine-royal-college-street","m":451},{"s":"word-on-the-water","m":465},{"s":"british-library","m":575},{"s":"jewish-book-week","m":580},{"s":"tavistock-square","m":1104},{"s":"gays-the-word","m":1112}]},{"slug":"stanfords","name":"Stanfords","area":"Seven Dials","address":"7 Mercer Walk, WC2H 9FA","station":"Covent Garden","walk":1,"lat":51.513006,"lng":-0.125355,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.stanfords.co.uk/our-stores","hours_short":"Open daily","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.stanfords.co.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/485638349","types":["bookshop","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The map and travel bookshop of 1853, where Holmes sent for his map of Dartmoor.","note":"Edward Stanford's shop sold the maps for the Victorian world: Livingstone, Scott and Shackleton bought here, Florence Nightingale bought her maps of the Crimea, and in The Hound of the Baskervilles Holmes sends to 'Stamford's', as Conan Doyle spelt it, for a large-scale map of the moor. It moved from Long Acre to Mercer Walk in 2019 with its stock of a hundred thousand maps, globes and guides, laid out under the big floor maps that customers walk across.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/stanfords.jpg?v=9f41c5fd","thumb":"/img/stanfords-480.jpg?v=9d390681","width":768,"height":1024,"alt":"12-14 Long Acre - Stanfords Bookshop","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Mr Biz, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:12-14_Long_Acre_-_Stanfords_Bookshop_(geograph_2682247).jpg","thumb_width":360},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Classic British Shops","href":"/classic-british-shops/stanfords/"}],"maps_q":"Stanfords, 7 Mercer Walk, WC2H 9FA, London","in_area":{"slug":"covent-garden","name":"Covent Garden"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Badiani Covent Garden","s":"badiani-covent-garden","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":34},{"n":"Arome Bakery","s":"arome-bakery","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":54},{"n":"Venchi Long Acre","s":"venchi-long-acre","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":66}],"near_same":[{"s":"agatha-christie-memorial","m":194},{"s":"84-charing-cross-road","m":218},{"s":"cecil-court","m":299},{"s":"shakespeare-statue-leicester-square","m":439},{"s":"a-conversation-with-oscar-wilde","m":477},{"s":"courtauld-gallery","m":551}]},{"slug":"stationers-hall","name":"Stationers' Hall","area":"St Paul's","address":"Ave Maria Lane, EC4M 7DD","station":"City Thameslink","walk":3,"lat":51.5146,"lng":-0.1007,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.stationers.org/events/","hours_short":"Tours and open days only","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Occasional booked tours through the year and Open House in September; see the company's events list.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.stationers.org/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["inside","print"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The livery hall of the company that licensed every book printed in England for a century and a half: copyright began in its register.","note":"The Stationers' Company was chartered in 1557 with a monopoly on printing, and from then until 1710 a book existed in law only once it was entered in the Stationers' Register - Shakespeare's plays, the Authorised Version and Paradise Lost all passed through this company's hands, and the register is still kept here. The hall behind St Paul's was rebuilt after the Great Fire, panelled in 1673 and lit by stained glass of Caxton, Tyndale and Cranmer; the courtyard garden is the old churchyard of St Martin Ludgate.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Stationers' Hall, Ave Maria Lane, EC4M 7DD, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Temple Bar","s":"temple-bar","c":"monuments","cn":"Monuments & Ruins","m":90},{"n":"Paternoster Square","s":"paternoster-square","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":102},{"n":"Old Bailey","s":"old-bailey","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":121}],"near_same":[{"s":"st-bride-foundation","m":323},{"s":"ye-olde-cheshire-cheese","m":449},{"s":"dr-johnsons-house","m":517},{"s":"st-mary-aldermanbury-garden","m":572},{"s":"guildhall-library","m":587},{"s":"st-giles-without-cripplegate","m":656}]},{"slug":"stratford-upon-avon-by-train-from-marylebone","name":"Stratford-upon-Avon, by train from Marylebone","area":"Marylebone","address":"Chiltern Railways from London Marylebone, NW1 6JJ","station":"London Marylebone","walk":1,"lat":51.52437,"lng":-0.16359,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.chilternrailways.co.uk/destinations/stratford-upon-avon","hours_short":"Trains from Marylebone daily; advance fares from \u00a36.40","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Some services change at Leamington Spa. The Birthplace, the houses and the theatres keep their own hours.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["grave","inside","shakespeare","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":"Day trip: train from Marylebone","scope_icon":"train","route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The Shakespeare town itself, reachable in a day from Marylebone: the house he was born in, the church he is buried in, and his company's theatre on the river.","note":"The trains from Marylebone arrive a few streets from Henley Street, where the half-timbered house Shakespeare was born in in 1564 has been shown to visitors since the 1840s; the Birthplace Trust also keeps New Place, the site of the house he bought when he was rich, Hall's Croft, his daughter's home, and Anne Hathaway's thatched farmhouse at Shottery, a walk across the fields. Holy Trinity, by the Avon, has his grave in the chancel under the curse against anyone who moves his bones, and the Royal Shakespeare Company plays his work on the riverbank in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the Swan most nights of the year. A day gives the town; a matinee makes it.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Stratford-upon-Avon, by train from Marylebone, London","bank":1},{"slug":"strawberry-hill","name":"Strawberry Hill","area":"Twickenham","address":"268 Waldegrave Road, TW1 4ST","station":"Strawberry Hill","walk":4,"lat":51.438194,"lng":-0.334814,"hours":[null,null,[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0]],"hours_raw":"We-Su 10:00-17:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"House and shop; last entry 16:00. Garden and caf\u00e9 open from 09:30 on weekdays and 09:00 at weekends.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/","instagram":"strawbhillhouse","attrs":[],"osm":"way/207444024","types":["inside","setting","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Horace Walpole's Gothic castle in miniature, where The Castle of Otranto came to him in a dream and the Gothic novel began.","note":"Walpole bought a cottage by the Thames in 1747 and spent thirty years turning it into a little castle of battlements, fan vaults in papier mache and painted glass, the first Gothic Revival house in England; in 1764 he dreamed of a giant armoured hand on the staircase here and wrote The Castle of Otranto in two months, inventing the genre that runs to Frankenstein and Dracula. He ran his own press in the garden, printing Gray's Odes, and the house restored in 2010 has its gilt and gloom back, with the collection he described in his own catalogue returned to the rooms.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/strawberry-hill.jpg?v=2e2102ee","thumb":"/img/strawberry-hill-480.jpg?v=0aa83197","width":1024,"height":598,"alt":"Horace Walpole's Twickenham house, Strawberry Hill, gleaming white in spring sunshine, soon after restoration","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Chiswick Chap, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Strawberry_Hill_House_from_garden_in_2012_after_restoration.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/strawberry-hill","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"strawberry-hill-house-flower-festival","name":"Strawberry Hill House Flower Festival","href":"/museums/strawberry-hill/strawberry-hill-house-flower-festival/","verdict":"Thirty florists fill Walpole's Gothic villa with British-grown flowers, for four days.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-10","to":"2026-09-13","repeats":"yearly"},"types":["art","festival","nature"],"clue":["Festival","Art & design"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/strawberry-hill/"},{"name":"Architecture","href":"/architecture/strawberry-hill/"}],"maps_q":"Strawberry Hill, 268 Waldegrave Road, TW1 4ST, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Church Street, Twickenham","s":"church-street-twickenham","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":1101},{"n":"Twickenham Museum","s":"twickenham-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":1151},{"n":"York House Gardens","s":"york-house-gardens","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":1300}],"near_same":[{"s":"popes-grotto","m":492},{"s":"arts-richmond-literature-festival","m":1338},{"s":"virginia-woolf-statue-richmond-riverside","m":2953},{"s":"garricks-temple-to-shakespeare","m":3338},{"s":"hogarth-house-richmond","m":3368},{"s":"royal-botanic-gardens-kew","m":5437}]},{"slug":"swedenborg-house","name":"Swedenborg House","area":"St Giles","address":"20-21 Bloomsbury Way, WC1A 2TH","station":"Holborn","walk":3,"lat":51.517964,"lng":-0.122841,"hours":[[9.5,17.0],[9.5,17.0],[9.5,17.0],[9.5,17.0],[9.5,17.0],null,null],"hours_raw":"Mo-Fr 09:30-17:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.swedenborg.org.uk/visit/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":"Bookshop hours; the library and archive by appointment, exhibitions and talks in the hall in the evenings.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.swedenborg.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/1431546162","types":["bookshop","free","inside","library"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Bloomsbury's hidden house of the mystic who shaped Blake, Baudelaire and Borges: a library, a bookshop and a lecture hall.","note":"The Swedenborg Society was founded in 1810 to publish the Swedish visionary's works in English and has occupied this Bloomsbury house since 1925: a library of everything by and about him, a bookshop, a museum room of relics and a panelled hall where the talks, films and readings are held. Blake attended the first Swedenborgian conference in 1789 and answered him in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Coleridge, Yeats, Strindberg and Borges all read him, and the society's programme keeps that lineage going with writers who would not otherwise share a room.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/swedenborg-house.jpg?v=d95a98a2","thumb":"/img/swedenborg-house-480.jpg?v=6082132b","width":768,"height":1024,"alt":"Numbers 20 And 21 And Attached Railings","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Magnus Manske, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Numbers_20_And_21_And_Attached_Railings.jpg","thumb_width":360},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Swedenborg House, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, WC1A 2TH, London","in_area":{"slug":"bloomsbury","name":"Bloomsbury"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Pushkin House","s":"pushkin-house","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":37},{"n":"Present & Correct","s":"present-correct","c":"classic-british-shops","cn":"Classic British Shops","m":108},{"n":"St George's Bloomsbury","s":"st-georges-bloomsbury","c":"sacred","cn":"Sacred London","m":133}],"near_same":[{"s":"faber-faber-24-russell-square","m":465},{"s":"the-old-curiosity-shop","m":505},{"s":"senate-house","m":530},{"s":"stanfords","m":578},{"s":"84-charing-cross-road","m":652},{"s":"lincolns-inn","m":690}]},{"slug":"tate-britain","name":"Tate Britain","area":"Millbank","address":"Millbank, SW1P 4RG","station":"Pimlico","walk":7,"lat":51.491142,"lng":-0.127585,"hours":[[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 10:00-18:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":"Until 2027 the Millbank steps are closed for building work; the way in is the Manton entrance on Atterbury Street.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-britain","instagram":"tate","attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/24553580","types":["bloomsbury","free","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The national collection of British art, where Bell, Grant and Fry hang, and where Charleston's studio comes to London for the winter of 2026.","note":"Tate holds the largest public collection of the Bloomsbury painters - Vanessa Bell's Studland Beach and her portraits of Virginia, Duncan Grant's bathers and interiors, Fry, Carrington - and from November 2026 to April 2027 gives them the big exhibition, Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury, with three hundred works and the Charleston studio rebuilt in the gallery. The permanent collection is free; the Bloomsbury pictures move around the British galleries and are worth asking for.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/tate-britain.jpg?v=8554b6e9","thumb":"/img/tate-britain-480.jpg?v=420f8b87","width":1024,"height":575,"alt":"Tate Britain, Millbank","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Carlos Cunha, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tate_Britain,_Millbank_-_panoramio_(1).jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/tate-britain","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"tate-britains-permanent-galleries","name":"Tate Britain's permanent galleries","href":"/art/tate-britain/tate-britains-permanent-galleries/","verdict":"Five hundred years of British art in one free run, and all the Turner there is.","runs":null,"types":["art","exhibition","free","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"james-mcneill-whistler","name":"James McNeill Whistler","href":"/museums/tate-britain/james-mcneill-whistler/","verdict":"The first big European Whistler show in thirty years, with the Old Battersea Bridge Nocturne.","runs":{"from":"2026-05-21","to":"2026-09-27"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"the-90s-art-and-fashion","name":"The 90s: Art and Fashion","href":"/museums/tate-britain/the-90s-art-and-fashion/","verdict":"Edward Enninful's 1990s: McQueen, Westwood, Corinne Day, Hirst and Steve McQueen in one show.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-08","to":"2027-02-14"},"types":["art","exhibition","fashion","music"],"clue":["Exhibition","Fashion"]},{"slug":"vanessa-bell-duncan-grant-inside-bloomsbury","name":"Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury","href":"/museums/tate-britain/vanessa-bell-duncan-grant-inside-bloomsbury/","verdict":"Three hundred works and a Charleston studio moved into the gallery.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-12","to":"2027-04-11"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/tate-britain/"},{"name":"Art","href":"/art/tate-britain/"}],"maps_q":"Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1P 4RG, London","in_area":{"slug":"westminster","name":"Westminster"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Locking Piece","s":"locking-piece","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":196},{"n":"MI5, Thames House","s":"mi5-thames-house","c":"secrets","cn":"Secrets & Espionage","m":337},{"n":"Regency Cafe","s":"regency-cafe","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":445}],"near_same":[{"s":"poets-corner-westminster-abbey","m":918},{"s":"lambeth-palace-library","m":976},{"s":"westminster-bridge","m":1169},{"s":"imagine-childrens-festival","m":1795},{"s":"london-literature-festival","m":1795},{"s":"national-poetry-library","m":1811}]},{"slug":"tavistock-square","name":"Tavistock Square","area":"St Pancras","address":"Tavistock Square, WC1H 9EZ","station":"Russell Square","walk":5,"lat":51.525041,"lng":-0.129024,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/3241840","types":["bloomsbury","free","statue","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Bloomsbury's square: Virginia Woolf's bust, Gandhi in the middle, and the site of the Hogarth Press at No. 52.","note":"The Woolfs lived at 52 Tavistock Square from 1924 to 1939, running the Hogarth Press in the basement, where they published The Waste Land and the first English editions of Freud, while Virginia wrote Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves upstairs. 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The school has gone to Surrey but the Tudor mansion built on a Carthusian monastery is still an almshouse for the Brothers, with its courts, its great hall and its chapel, where Thackeray's memorial is.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-the-charterhouse.jpg?v=8c999c78","thumb":"/img/own-the-charterhouse-480.jpg?v=e853e870","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"A grass court inside the Charterhouse, the hall range in flint and stone with a carved coat of arms and a red sundial","caption":"The court inside the gate, on a summer afternoon."},"figures":[{"src":"/img/own-the-charterhouse-5.jpg?v=af2c5ccf","thumb":"/img/own-the-charterhouse-5-480.jpg?v=309a9f0f","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"A brick and flint tower with a cupola and gilded weathervane, above an arcaded cloister of three gables","caption":"The chapel tower, above the cloister."},{"src":"/img/own-the-charterhouse-2.jpg?v=3f515afb","thumb":"/img/own-the-charterhouse-2-480.jpg?v=7cd1e674","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"A cobbled courtyard inside the Charterhouse, stone ranges with dormer windows","caption":"One of the courts inside."},{"src":"/img/own-the-charterhouse-3.jpg?v=65045cad","thumb":"/img/own-the-charterhouse-3-480.jpg?v=8f059bc9","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Charterhouse Square's cobbles looking towards the gatehouse and its clock turret","caption":"Looking towards the entrance from the square."},{"src":"/img/own-the-charterhouse-4.jpg?v=8e48c850","thumb":"/img/own-the-charterhouse-4-480.jpg?v=f109e5f5","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Charterhouse Square at dusk, lit windows in the Georgian range and the gatehouse beyond","caption":"Charterhouse Square at dusk."},{"src":"/img/own-the-charterhouse-6.jpg?v=18c8aad6","thumb":"/img/own-the-charterhouse-6-480.jpg?v=372b7172","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"A garden of clipped box in a knot pattern and a bed of yellow rudbeckias, purple geraniums and red spikes of flowers, in front of a stone and brick tower with leaded windows, a gabled Tudor range on the left and an old flint wall on the right."}],"from":"museums/the-charterhouse","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/the-charterhouse/"}],"maps_q":"The Charterhouse, Charterhouse Square, Clerkenwell, EC1M 6AX, London","in_area":{"slug":"farringdon-clerkenwell","name":"Farringdon & Clerkenwell"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Museum of the Order of St John","s":"museum-of-the-order-of-st-john","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":201},{"n":"Goldsmiths' Centre","s":"goldsmiths-centre","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":221},{"n":"Golden Lane Estate","s":"golden-lane-estate","c":"architecture","cn":"Architecture","m":279}],"near_same":[{"s":"marx-memorial-library","m":446},{"s":"black-british-book-festival","m":447},{"s":"st-giles-without-cripplegate","m":513},{"s":"capital-crime","m":599},{"s":"magculture","m":630},{"s":"st-mary-aldermanbury-garden","m":727}]},{"slug":"the-curtain","name":"The Curtain","area":"Shoreditch","address":"Curtain Road, EC2A","station":"Shoreditch High Street","walk":5,"lat":51.524564,"lng":-0.080182,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/7988657199","types":["free","shakespeare"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Shoreditch's second Elizabethan playhouse, where Romeo and Juliet and Henry V were first seen.","note":"The Curtain opened in 1577 a few hundred yards south of the Theatre, and the Lord Chamberlain's Men played here for two seasons after they lost their own house, staging Romeo and Juliet and the first Henry V, whose prologue apologises for 'this wooden O'. Archaeologists found it in 2012 beneath a yard off Hewett Street and discovered it was not round at all but a rectangle, adapted from an existing building, with a stage nearly fourteen metres wide. The remains are kept beneath the development that went up over them, and a plaque marks the site.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"The Curtain, Curtain Road, EC2A, London","in_area":{"slug":"shoreditch-old-street","name":"Shoreditch & Old Street"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Village Underground","s":"village-underground","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":154},{"n":"Passione Vino","s":"passione-vino","c":"wine","cn":"Wine","m":155},{"n":"Dark Arts Coffee","s":"dark-arts-coffee-shoreditch","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":181}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-theatre-shoreditch","m":30},{"s":"bookartbookshop","m":352},{"s":"bunhill-fields","m":601},{"s":"bishopsgate-institute","m":652},{"s":"capital-crime","m":884},{"s":"black-british-book-festival","m":1079}]},{"slug":"the-feminist-library","name":"The Feminist Library","area":"Peckham","address":"Sojourner Truth Community Centre, 161 Sumner Road, SE15 6JL","station":"Peckham Rye","walk":11,"lat":51.47793,"lng":-0.07315,"hours":[null,[11.0,17.0],[13.0,19.0],null,[11.0,17.0],[13.0,16.0],null],"hours_raw":"Tu,Fr 11:00-17:00; We 13:00-19:00; Sa 13:00-16:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://feministlibrary.co.uk/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://feministlibrary.co.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["free","inside","library"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The Women's Liberation Movement's own library, kept going by volunteers since 1975 and now in Peckham.","note":"Founded as the Women's Research and Resources Centre in 1975, the library has collected what the movement produced - the books, the periodicals from Spare Rib to the smallest newsletters, posters, pamphlets, badges and the papers of campaigns - and lends it, which the university archives holding the same material do not. It moved from Westminster Bridge Road to a community centre in Peckham in 2020 and runs reading groups, launches and workshops from there; anyone can walk in and read.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"The Feminist Library, Sojourner Truth Community Centre, 161 Sumner Road, SE15 6JL, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Peckham Library","s":"peckham-library","c":"architecture","cn":"Architecture","m":484},{"n":"Peckham Platform","s":"peckham-platform","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":522},{"n":"South London Gallery","s":"south-london-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":613}],"near_same":[{"s":"marshalsea-prison-wall","m":2928},{"s":"john-keats-statue","m":3063},{"s":"site-of-the-tabard-inn","m":3138},{"s":"the-george-inn","m":3143},{"s":"southwark-cathedral","m":3335},{"s":"deptford-literature-festival","m":3358}]},{"slug":"the-fitzroy-tavern","name":"The Fitzroy Tavern","area":"East Marylebone","address":"16 Charlotte Street, W1T 2LY","station":"Goodge Street","walk":3,"lat":51.518648,"lng":-0.134645,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":"Pub hours","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/138339524","types":["inside","pub"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The pub of bohemian London between the wars, which gave Fitzrovia its name and Dylan Thomas his local.","note":"Under the landlord Charlie Allchild the Fitzroy became the centre of bohemian London in the 1930s and 40s: Dylan Thomas, Augustus John, Nina Hamnett and Aleister Crowley drank here, George Orwell used it, and the district took its name from the pub. 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Dickens drank here and gave it a line in Little Dorrit, where Tip writes his begging letter from it; the Tabard, where Chaucer's pilgrims gathered, stood next door. Only the south range stands, one arm of what was a three-sided courtyard, and the wooden galleries above the yard are the last of their kind in London.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/the-george-inn.jpg?v=bc1ee36a","thumb":"/img/the-george-inn-480.jpg?v=b5731010","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"A photograph of The George Inn.","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Ewan Munro from London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_George_Inn_1.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"The George Inn, 75-77 Borough High Street, SE1 1NH, London","in_area":{"slug":"borough-bermondsey","name":"Borough & Bermondsey"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Gordon Museum of Pathology","s":"gordon-museum-of-pathology","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":74},{"n":"Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret","s":"old-operating-theatre-museum-and-herb-garret","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":142},{"n":"The Leaky Cauldron, Stoney Street","s":"the-leaky-cauldron-stoney-street","c":"harry-potter","cn":"Harry Potter","m":145}],"near_same":[{"s":"site-of-the-tabard-inn","m":18},{"s":"john-keats-statue","m":143},{"s":"southwark-cathedral","m":218},{"s":"marshalsea-prison-wall","m":302},{"s":"site-of-the-original-globe","m":441},{"s":"rose-theatre-exhibition","m":507}]},{"slug":"the-london-library","name":"The London Library","area":"St James's","address":"14 St James's Square, SW1Y 4LG","station":"Piccadilly Circus","walk":4,"lat":51.507322,"lng":-0.136938,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/about-us/public-tours-events","hours_short":"Public tours, booked","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.londonlibrary.co.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/256633845","types":["library"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Carlyle's lending library of 1841, a million books on open shelves that members may take home.","note":"Thomas Carlyle founded it because the British Museum would not lend and its reading room gave him headaches; Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Henry James, Conan Doyle, Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Agatha Christie and Kipling were members, and it is still where a large part of literary London writes. The stacks are iron grilles you can see down through, seventeen miles of them, shelved by a scheme of the library's own invention, and nothing is thrown away. It is a members' library, so the rooms are seen on the tours it runs and at its evening events.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/the-london-library.jpg?v=9a069abd","thumb":"/img/the-london-library-480.jpg?v=a6e366e5","width":768,"height":1024,"alt":"A photograph of The London Library.","caption":"","credit":"Photo by John W. Schulze from Tejas, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:London_Library_(4706652036).jpg","thumb_width":360},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"The London Library, 14 St James's Square, SW1Y 4LG, London","in_area":{"slug":"st-jamess","name":"St James's"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"White Cube Mason's Yard","s":"white-cube-masons-yard","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":37},{"n":"Ada Lovelace's house, 12 St James's Square","s":"ada-lovelaces-house-12-st-jamess-square","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":50},{"n":"Napoleon III","s":"napoleon-iii","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":61}],"near_same":[{"s":"hatchards","m":149},{"s":"waterstones-piccadilly","m":199},{"s":"shakespeare-statue-leicester-square","m":583},{"s":"cecil-court","m":745},{"s":"a-conversation-with-oscar-wilde","m":782},{"s":"agatha-christie-memorial","m":827}]},{"slug":"the-old-curiosity-shop","name":"The Old Curiosity Shop","area":"St Clement Danes","address":"13\u201314 Portsmouth Street, WC2A 2ES","station":"Holborn","walk":4,"lat":51.514988,"lng":-0.117321,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/181939036","types":["free","setting"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A crooked sixteenth-century shop that borrowed Dickens's title and has kept it ever since.","note":"The building on Portsmouth Street dates from the 1560s, built of old ships' timbers by tradition, and is one of the oldest shops in London; the sign naming it The Old Curiosity Shop was painted on after the novel of 1841 made the phrase famous, by a dealer who knew a good thing. Dickens's own shop was somewhere near Leicester Square and is long gone, but this leaning survivor with its overhanging upper floor is what everyone pictures, and it outlasted the Blitz and the office blocks that grew up around it.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/the-old-curiosity-shop.jpg?v=00441f8c","thumb":"/img/the-old-curiosity-shop-480.jpg?v=052f6996","width":1024,"height":896,"alt":"The Old Curiosity Shop","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Dhowes9, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Old_Curiosity_Shop._City_of_Westminster.JPG","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"The Old Curiosity Shop, 13\u201314 Portsmouth Street, WC2A 2ES, London","in_area":{"slug":"holborn","name":"Holborn"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Peacock Theatre","s":"peacock-theatre","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":67},{"n":"Hunterian Museum","s":"hunterian-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":105},{"n":"Sir John Soane's Museum","s":"sir-john-soanes-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":232}],"near_same":[{"s":"lincolns-inn","m":343},{"s":"courtauld-gallery","m":374},{"s":"middle-temple-hall","m":499},{"s":"swedenborg-house","m":505},{"s":"stanfords","m":598},{"s":"dr-johnsons-house","m":633}]},{"slug":"the-regents-park","name":"The Regent's Park","area":"Regent's Park","address":"The Regent's Park, NW1 4NR","station":"Baker Street","walk":2,"lat":51.529772,"lng":-0.154199,"hours":[[5.0,20.0],[5.0,20.0],[5.0,20.0],[5.0,20.0],[5.0,20.0],[5.0,20.0],[5.0,20.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 05:00-20:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.royalparks.org.uk/visit/parks/regents-park-primrose-hill","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-03","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.royalparks.org.uk/visit/parks/regents-park-primrose-hill","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"relation/1384127","types":["bloomsbury","free","setting"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Where Mrs Dalloway's other story happens: Septimus and Rezia on a bench, Peter Walsh walking through, the aeroplane writing in the sky above.","note":"In Woolf's novel the June day that Clarissa spends preparing her party is also the day the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith spends in Regent's Park with his wife, watching the skywriting aeroplane and hearing the dead speak, before the walk to Harley Street and the end; Peter Walsh crosses the park between them, and the whole of London's middle is stitched together through it. The benches by the Broad Walk are the ones to read it on.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/the-regents-park.jpg?v=737b146a","thumb":"/img/the-regents-park-480.jpg?v=b61cc1ad","width":1024,"height":682,"alt":"Regent's Park, London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Tom Page from London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Regent%27s_Park_London.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"outdoors/the-regents-park","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"frieze-sculpture-2026","name":"Frieze Sculpture 2026","href":"/outdoors/the-regents-park/frieze-sculpture-2026/","verdict":"Eleven sculptors in the English Gardens, free, for six weeks either side of the fair.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-16","to":"2026-11-01","repeats":"yearly"},"types":["art","exhibition","free","nature"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Outdoors & Nature","href":"/outdoors/the-regents-park/"},{"name":"Royal London","href":"/royal/the-regents-park/"}],"maps_q":"The Regent's Park, NW1 4NR, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Regent's Park Open Air Theatre","s":"regents-park-open-air-theatre","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":152},{"n":"Frieze London and Frieze Masters","s":"frieze-london-and-frieze-masters","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":386},{"n":"Penguin Pool, London Zoo","s":"penguin-pool-london-zoo","c":"architecture","cn":"Architecture","m":472}],"near_same":[{"s":"sherlock-holmes-museum","m":730},{"s":"sherlock-holmes-statue","m":825},{"s":"daunt-books-marylebone","m":1048},{"s":"primrose-hill","m":1127},{"s":"fitzroy-square","m":1235},{"s":"george-orwell-statue-broadcasting-house","m":1449}]},{"slug":"the-theatre-shoreditch","name":"The Theatre, Shoreditch","area":"Shoreditch","address":"New Inn Yard, EC2A","station":"Shoreditch High Street","walk":5,"lat":51.524522,"lng":-0.079747,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/1766962582","types":["free","shakespeare"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The site of James Burbage's Theatre of 1576, London's first purpose-built playhouse.","note":"Built in the fields beyond the City's reach, where the Lord Mayor could not shut it, Burbage's Theatre is where Shakespeare's early plays were staged and where his company was based. When the landlord would not renew the lease, the Burbages took the building down over the Christmas of 1598 and hauled the timbers to Bankside to build the Globe. Excavations in 2008 found the polygonal wall footings; a plaque on Curtain Road marks the spot, and the courtyard beside New Inn Yard sits roughly where the playhouse's yard was.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/the-theatre-shoreditch.jpg?v=84abbd83","thumb":"/img/the-theatre-shoreditch-480.jpg?v=98dc3c96","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"The Shakespeare statue at the site of the Theatre, Shoreditch","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Matt Brown, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Shakespeare_statue_Shoreditch_2025-07-10.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"The Theatre, Shoreditch, New Inn Yard, EC2A, London","in_area":{"slug":"shoreditch-old-street","name":"Shoreditch & Old Street"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Village Underground","s":"village-underground","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":131},{"n":"Dark Arts Coffee","s":"dark-arts-coffee-shoreditch","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":152},{"n":"Passione Vino","s":"passione-vino","c":"wine","cn":"Wine","m":186}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-curtain","m":30},{"s":"bookartbookshop","m":377},{"s":"bunhill-fields","m":630},{"s":"bishopsgate-institute","m":645},{"s":"capital-crime","m":908},{"s":"black-british-book-festival","m":1103}]},{"slug":"the-wheatsheaf","name":"The Wheatsheaf","area":"Fitzrovia","address":"25 Rathbone Place, W1T 1JB","station":"Tottenham Court Road","walk":4,"lat":51.517749,"lng":-0.134035,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":"Pub hours","hours_checked":"2026-09-08","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk/restaurants/london/wheatsheaf","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/135117851","types":["inside","pub","writer"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Dylan Thomas met his wife in this bar in 1936, and proposed with his head in her lap.","note":"In the spring of 1936 Augustus John brought Caitlin Macnamara here - she was twenty-two, a dancer, and John's lover at the time - and introduced her to Dylan Thomas. Thomas, drunk, put his head in her lap and proposed. They married in Penzance on 11 July the following year, and stayed married until he died.\n\nThe pub had a literary set of its own rather than borrowing one: Orwell, Thomas, Edwin Muir and Humphrey Jennings were known for a while as the Wheatsheaf writers, and Julian Maclaren-Ross held court here in dark glasses and a camel coat, taking his post at the bar. Nina Hamnett, Quentin Crisp and Philip O'Connor were among the rest of it. A small dark Younger's house on Rathbone Place, and still a pub.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, W1T 1JB, London","in_area":{"slug":"fitzrovia","name":"Fitzrovia"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Italian Bear Chocolate","s":"italian-bear-chocolate","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":32},{"n":"Crosstown Fitzrovia","s":"crosstown-fitzrovia","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":114},{"n":"Happy Sky Japanese Bakery","s":"happy-sky-japanese-bakery","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":163}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-fitzroy-tavern","m":108},{"s":"senate-house","m":513},{"s":"george-orwell-statue-broadcasting-house","m":627},{"s":"84-charing-cross-road","m":629},{"s":"faber-faber-24-russell-square","m":703},{"s":"fitzroy-square","m":715}]},{"slug":"virginia-woolf-statue-richmond-riverside","name":"Virginia Woolf statue, Richmond riverside","area":"East Twickenham","address":"Richmond Riverside, near Heron Square, TW9 1TP","station":"Richmond","walk":9,"lat":51.458123,"lng":-0.306636,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/12424833405","types":["bloomsbury","free","statue"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The first full-size statue of Woolf anywhere, sitting on a bench by the Thames in the town where she recovered and started the Press, unveiled in 2022.","note":"Laury Dizengremel's bronze, paid for by public subscription and unveiled in November 2022, has Woolf on a bench in a coat with her legs crossed, turned as if to talk to whoever sits down next to her, and people do. Richmond was the Woolfs' home for nine years and the Hogarth Press began up the hill on Paradise Road; the river below is the one she walked along most days, and the statue's placing on the riverside rather than in a square was the point of the campaign. Look for it between the bridge and Heron Square.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/virginia-woolf-statue-richmond-riverside.jpg?v=2339d4f9","thumb":"/img/virginia-woolf-statue-richmond-riverside-480.jpg?v=8e16ea95","width":1024,"height":682,"alt":"Virginia Woolf on a bench, Richmond Riverside","caption":"","credit":"Photo by AndyScott, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Richmond_Riverside,_statue_of_Virginia_Woolf_(2).jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Virginia Woolf statue, Richmond riverside, Richmond Riverside, near Heron Square, TW9 1TP, London","bank":null,"near_all":[{"n":"Museum of Richmond","s":"museum-of-richmond","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":86},{"n":"Hagen","s":"hagen-east-twickenham","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":88},{"n":"Friars Lane","s":"friars-lane","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":225}],"near_same":[{"s":"hogarth-house-richmond","m":422},{"s":"arts-richmond-literature-festival","m":1932},{"s":"popes-grotto","m":2473},{"s":"royal-botanic-gardens-kew","m":2508},{"s":"strawberry-hill","m":2953},{"s":"london-childrens-literature-festival","m":4461}]},{"slug":"waterstones-piccadilly","name":"Waterstones Piccadilly","area":"St James's","address":"203-206 Piccadilly, W1J 9HD","station":"Piccadilly Circus","walk":2,"lat":51.50899,"lng":-0.135875,"hours":[[9.0,21.0],[9.0,21.0],[9.0,21.0],[9.0,21.0],[9.0,21.0],[9.0,21.0],[12.0,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Sa 09:00-21:00; Su 12:00-18:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.waterstones.com/bookshops/piccadilly","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.waterstones.com/bookshops/piccadilly","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/290321029","types":["bookshop","free","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The largest bookshop in Europe, eight miles of shelves in the modernist Simpson's building on Piccadilly.","note":"Joseph Emberton built Simpson's in 1936 as the most advanced department store in London - a curtain of glass and travertine, concealed lighting, an open plan on every floor - and it became a bookshop in 1999 with the bones intact. Six floors of books, with a floor for children built round a circus, a games flagship, first editions, a bar with a view over the rooftops on the fifth, and an events programme that runs from prime ministers to poets in the basement. The building is protected at the highest historic grade, and the lifts are the originals.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/waterstones-piccadilly.jpg?v=eec91716","thumb":"/img/waterstones-piccadilly-480.jpg?v=d07eaeed","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"The shop's entrance from the pavement: curved travertine steps with Waterstones Piccadilly set into the floor in dark letters, glass doors either side, and tables of books, a Christmas tree and a spiral staircase inside.","caption":"The doorway on Piccadilly, in December.","credit":"Photo by Matt Brown, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Waterstones_Piccadilly_2025-11-14.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":[{"src":"/img/waterstones-piccadilly-2.jpg?v=664791d7","thumb":"/img/waterstones-piccadilly-2-480.jpg?v=65f76207","width":768,"height":1024,"alt":"The 1936 Simpson's building on Piccadilly from across the road: six storeys of long ribbon windows between bands of pale stone, Waterstone's on the fascia and the old Simpson's name still by the door, a crowd on the pavement.","caption":"Simpson's of Piccadilly, Joseph Emberton's building of 1936, the bookshop since 1999.","credit":"Photo by Ewan-M, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Waterstone%27s,_Piccadilly,_W1.jpg","thumb_width":360},{"src":"/img/waterstones-piccadilly-3.jpg?v=f22d4743","thumb":"/img/waterstones-piccadilly-3-480.jpg?v=b70b7a39","width":894,"height":1024,"alt":"A chrome stair lamp with two white glass globes on a slender pole, against a sweeping staircase with a glass balustrade and a wall of fluted glass panels.","caption":"One of Simpson's original stair lamps, still on the stairs.","credit":"Photo by Freeaspirations, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Simpsons_of_Piccadilly_light_fitting.jpg","thumb_width":419}],"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Shopping","href":"/shopping/waterstones-piccadilly/"}],"maps_q":"Waterstones Piccadilly, 203-206 Piccadilly, W1J 9HD, London","in_area":{"slug":"st-jamess","name":"St James's"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"St James's Piccadilly","s":"st-jamess-piccadilly","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":64},{"n":"Jermyn Street","s":"jermyn-street","c":"shopping","cn":"Shopping","m":69},{"n":"Geo. 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The hull is a hundred-year-old Dutch barge, the shelves inside hold new and second-hand books around a stove, and the roof carries a piano and a small stage for readings and jazz on summer evenings, with cushions on the towpath for the audience.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/word-on-the-water.jpg?v=a5a2c223","thumb":"/img/word-on-the-water-480.jpg?v=ad9dcd84","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"At London 2025 975","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Photograph by Mike Peel ( www.mikepeel.net )., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:At_London_2025_975.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Word on the Water, Regent's Canal towpath, Granary Square, N1C 4LW, London","in_area":{"slug":"kings-cross-st-pancras","name":"King's Cross & St Pancras"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Ruby Violet","s":"ruby-violet","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":40},{"n":"Queer Britain","s":"queer-britain","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":44},{"n":"Lethaby Gallery","s":"lethaby-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":107}],"near_same":[{"s":"jewish-book-week","m":127},{"s":"st-pancras-old-church","m":465},{"s":"british-library","m":669},{"s":"rimbaud-and-verlaine-royal-college-street","m":888},{"s":"gays-the-word","m":1117},{"s":"tavistock-square","m":1215}]},{"slug":"ye-olde-cheshire-cheese","name":"Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese","area":"Temple","address":"145 Fleet Street, EC4A 2BU","station":"City Thameslink","walk":3,"lat":51.514342,"lng":-0.107183,"hours":[[12.0,23.0],[12.0,23.0],[12.0,23.0],[12.0,23.0],[12.0,23.0],[12.0,23.0],[12.0,22.5]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Sa 12:00-23:00; Su 12:00-22:30","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://ye-olde-cheshire-cheese.co.uk/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://ye-olde-cheshire-cheese.co.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/60186067","types":["inside","pub"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The Fleet Street chophouse of 1667 that Johnson, Dickens, Twain and Conan Doyle all drank in.","note":"Rebuilt straight after the Great Fire, with a warren of dark rooms and cellars going down to a thirteenth-century crypt, sawdust on the floors, and a chair by the fire that Dr Johnson is supposed to have sat in, since he lived round the corner. Dickens is on firmer ground: he was a regular, and the Fleet Street tavern of A Tale of Two Cities is generally taken to be this one. Yeats's Rhymers' Club met upstairs in the 1890s; Twain, Conan Doyle, Chesterton and Wodehouse came; and a parrot called Polly, who lived in the bar for forty years, had her death announced on the BBC in 1926.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/ye-olde-cheshire-cheese.jpg?v=f5a55191","thumb":"/img/ye-olde-cheshire-cheese-480.jpg?v=d12337dc","width":1024,"height":680,"alt":"The entrance to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in its alley off Fleet Street","caption":"","credit":"Photo by David, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ye_Olde_Cheshire_Cheese_-_16_Mar_2013_London.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"maps_q":"Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, 145 Fleet Street, EC4A 2BU, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Gough Square","s":"gough-square","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":84},{"n":"Daily Express Building","s":"daily-express-building","c":"architecture","cn":"Architecture","m":88},{"n":"St Bride's Fleet Street","s":"st-brides-fleet-street","c":"sacred","cn":"Sacred London","m":132}],"near_same":[{"s":"dr-johnsons-house","m":92},{"s":"st-bride-foundation","m":183},{"s":"middle-temple-hall","m":368},{"s":"stationers-hall","m":449},{"s":"lincolns-inn","m":481},{"s":"the-old-curiosity-shop","m":705}]}]}