Blog

  • I Want A Picture-Perfect White Christmas In London

    In December our thoughts turn to Christmas. We think about our family, friends, Christmas cards, food (lots of it!) and presents – will Santa pass by this year? Also, just as important, the reason for Christmas: the birth of Jesus. But what we also think about is the weather – will it snow? This question set me thinking – why do we feel Christmas isn’t really Christmas if it doesn’t snow?

  • Pantomime – A Traditional British Christmas Treat For All The Family

    Would you like to go to a theatre where you were allowed to shout back at the actors on the stage? The opportunity to do so comes between November running all the way through Christmas until the start of the New Year when Pantomimes take place in many village halls and theatres across the United Kingdom.

  • Claude Monet Exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in London

    London has been a smokeless zone for over sixty years. The city used to be famous for its ‘London fogs.’ They were described by the novelist Charles Dickens and even led to the creation of a type of American rainwear called London Fog. Then the Clean Air Acts were passed in the late 1950s and 1960s, largely as a reaction to the ‘great smog’ of 1952 and London Fogs gradually became a thing of the past that will hopefully never be seen again.

  • William Shakespeare – A London Eastender

    It is not known to many people, but William Shakespeare began his theatrical career in the East End of London rather the place most often associated with him – Southwark, the area to the south of London Bridge. Sam Wannamaker, the American actor and director, felt that Shakespeare deserved a monument in London, the city where he made his fame and fortune. Wannamaker decided to rebuild the Globe Theatre in Southwark near the Tate Modern Museum and raised the money from donors to do so.

  • Fourth Plinth In Trafalgar Square – Filling The Most Famous Empty Space In London

    Blue Badge Tourist Guides on a tour of London will probably go through Trafalgar Square in the centre of the city. One of its most striking features is the sculpture on display on the northwest side of the Square. Known simply as ‘The Fourth Plinth,’ it remained empty until 1999. It was consistently rumoured that a statue of the late Queen Elizabeth II was planned for this space but she had a very long life and died at the age of 96 in 2022.

  • New Uses for Red Telephone Boxes in London

    Most London Blue Badge Tourist Guides have had clients who want to get a snap of themselves by a red London phone box, often with Big Ben in the background. It is almost a rite of passage for a visitor to London and so the red boxes at the end of Whitehall often have long queues of people waiting outside for the chance to take a picture of themselves. The phone booths are rarely put to their original use – namely, to make phone calls. Now, of course, the mobile phone reigns supreme and most people have a smartphone in their pocket.

Blog Posts

Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Bed-In for Peace, Amsterdam, 1969. Courtesy YO. Photo by Central Press/Getty Images via Tate Modern.

Yoko Ono Music of the Mind Exhibition at Tate Modern in London

The artist Yoko Ono, who turned 91 in February, has enjoyed a successful—if notorious—career over seven decades. She spent the seventies as the wife of Beatle John Lennon until his assassination in New York in 1980, and appropriately for British audiences, that part of her life forms the core of her current exhibition, ‘Music of the Mind’ at Tate Modern.

Read more
City of London Model. Photo Credit: © Don Brown.

See 3 City of London Models at The London Centre

On the Aldermanbury side of Guildhall, you will find the London Centre, the base for New London Architecture and home to its magnificent London models. These 3D scale models of the capital and its buildings are a great resource if people want to see the architecture of London or the historical development of the city—or simply want to trace routes across the metropolis. Their sheer size is jaw-dropping.

Read more
Scipio-Turaminus Gregorian calendar 1582. Photo Credit: © Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Calendar Curiosities: Leap Years, Easter Moves, and the Curious Origins of Dates We Celebrate

Dates on the calendar we normally use have mainly Christian origin but some of them reflect pagan origins and everything changed in the eighteenth century with the adoption of a new calendar.

Read more
William Shakespeare portrait known as the Cobbe painting. Photo Credit: © Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

William Shakespeare at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London

William Shakespeare (1552 to 1616) was undoubtedly our greatest playwright and poet. He lived until the age of fifty-two and although he was born and is buried in Stratford-upon-Avon, it was in London that he made his fame and fortune. Known as The Bard of Avon, his plays are regularly revived on the London stage, and the Globe Theatre, where he made his reputation as a playwright, was rebuilt in the late twentieth century largely as a result of the efforts of the American actor and theatre director Sam Wanamaker.

Read more
A View of London Bridge in the Year 1616, from an Engraving by John Vischer. Photo Credit: © © The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

History of the Old London Bridge, the Original Bridge Over the River Thames

One of the most striking and admired structures throughout the history of the City of London is its medieval inhabited stone bridge. Bridges with houses were relatively common in medieval Europe; examples include Bath’s Pulteney Bridge, which is still open for business. However, the old London Bridge, aka the Bridge, as it was commonly known, was the most populous of them all. It is calculated that its 140 houses housed 800 people in the fourteenth century, and the Bridge’s population averaged 500.

Read more
New Tower of London Ravenmaster Barney Chandler. Photo Credit: © Historic Royal Palaces.

Tower of London Ravenmaster: Guardian of Birds and Legend

According to legend King Charles the Second, who ruled Great Britain for twenty five years after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, was told, when the astronomer royal Sir John Flamsteed complained about the ravens, that the safety of the kingdom was threatened if the birds ever left the Tower of London. King Charles then decreed that there should always be at least six ravens there to prevent the Tower – and the kingdom – falling down. History does not record what Flamsteed thought of this decision but he had to accept it.

Read more
The Copper Horse in Windsor Great Park. Photo Credit: © Ildi Pelikan.

Exploring Windsor Great Park

If you are in London and planning a trip to Windsor Castle, why not make it a full day and include a visit Windsor Great Park? In 2021, the park was crowned the UK’s most popular free attraction. This ancient Royal landscape of forests, lakes, and gardens really deserves a visit, boasting over 1000 years history, monuments and rare wildlife, a national collection of plants, champion trees, a farm, vineyard and forest.

Read more
View of River Thames and Lambeth Bridge in London. Photo Credit: © Justin Norris via Wikimedia Commons.

Major Bridges Over The River Thames in London

There are now many ways to cross the River Thames in Central London – although for many years, the only bridge across the river was London Bridge. Originally built by the Romans and moved from its original site, London Bridge was replaced in 1971 by a modern bridge that takes people from Southwark to the City and affords them fine views of Tower Bridge. This article looks at each of the main bridges over the River Thames in London, starting with the famous Tower Bridge.

Read more
View of Tower Bridge from Horizon 22. Photo Credit: © Ursula Petula Barzey.

London Bridge vs Tower Bridge

London’s 35 bridges over the River Thames whisper tales of Roman conquests, Victorian ingenuity, and soaring modern visions. Among them stand London Bridge and its grand neighbour, Tower Bridge. Despite their stark differences in history and design, some visitors often confuse London Bridge and Tower Bridge, unaware of the rich narratives that set them apart.

Read more
Pancake Day race

Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake Day in London

If you are looking for a quintessentially British event in February, then you must witness Pancake Day racing.  The old religious festival of Shrove Tuesday is when Christians ate a rich meal using butter and sugar before beginning the fast of Lent.  This day always falls 47 days before Easter Sunday, so the date varies yearly and falls between February 3 and March 9.  This year, Shrove Tuesday will take place on Tuesday, 13th February.

Read more
Vauxhall Cross, Secret Intelligence Service aka MI6 Building in London. Photo Credit: © Richard Cooke via Wikimedia Commons.

Vauxhall London: Unveiling the Mysteries of a Historic Neighborhood

The main attraction in Vauxhall is a building you cannot enter. Vauxhall Cross is the headquarters of the Special Intelligence Services (formerly MI6) and the employer of Britain’s most famous fictional secret agent, James Bond, often referred to simply by the number 007. The double 00 prefix indicates that Bond has a ‘licence to kill’, an invention of his creator Ian Fleming who worked for Naval Intelligence during the Second World War when the double 0 symbol indicated that a document was classified as ‘top secret.’

Read more
Notre-Dame, the Augmented Exhibition at the Arsenal art contemporain museum in Montreal. Photo Credit: (c) Paul Litherland via Westminster Abbey.

Notre Dame is Coming to Westminster Abbey in London from Paris

Westminster Abbey is the venue for an augmented reality exhibition that will transport visitors through the history of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Notre Dame de Paris, The Augmented Exhibition will be in the Chapter House between 7th February and 1st June 2024. It is the only time the exhibition, which began in Dubai and has been seen in America, China, Germany, Canada, and Mexico, will be seen in Britain, and entry is included in the admission price to the Westminster Abbey.

Read more