A series of walking tours has been launched to allow Londoners and tourists from afar to hear about the history of Stratford and how it was transformed to host the world-famous London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.  Those who join one of these Olympic Park walking tours will take in views of the world-class sporting venues which saw the likes of Jessica Ennis-Hill, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Sir Chris Hoy and Sarah Storey win gold.

London Blue Badge Tourist Guides Karen Eastland, Pamela McHutchon and I had front row tickets for wheelchair rugby aka ‘the best fun you can have with your clothes’ on at the London 2014 Invictus Games. This international sporting event, held at the Olympic Park where London Blue Badge Tourist Guides now regularly giving walking tours, turned out to be a star-studded event. 

Continuing on with the successful walking tours launched this past summer to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Great Dockers Strike of 1889, UNITE in partnership with The Association of Professional Tourist Guides announces a series of additional walking tours from October 2014 to March 2015. 

Mike Leigh’s film Mr Turner focuses on the latter life and career of the artist Joseph Mallord William Turner played by Timothy Spall. It premiered in competition for the Palme d’Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, where Spall won the award for Best Actor and cinematographer Dick Pope received a special jury prize for the film’s cinematography.

Joseph Mallord William Turner was not the most sociable of men but he found a true friend in George O’Brien, Third Earl of Egremont and owner of Petworth House in Sussex. The Earl was a sociable and generous aristocrat with a love of art, a large house and an open purse. Every year he had a party in the grounds of Petworth for the local community on his birthday and, when 6000 people turned up one time, he made sure they were all welcomed, fed and watered.

The Queen’s Gallery Gold exhibition at the Royal Collection Trust celebrates the enduring qualities of gold, and draws on works of art from the Bronze Age to the present day. The distinctive properties of gold – its lustre and its warm yellow colour which appears to mirror the sun, its rarity and its perceived purity, because it does not tarnish, have meant that this material has always been associated with the highest status, both earthly and divine.

A Scottish couple down in London for the day, the Chair of Tower Hamlets Labour Party, a Sri Lankan woman attending a course in London, the UNITE officer for Tilbury dock workers and a German speaking Blue Badge trainee – all came along together with many others, including many Blue Badge Tourist Guides, to the tailor-made walking tours commemorating the 125th anniversary of the Dockers’ Strike in 1889.

This year the Museum of London welcomes an exciting new exhibition, delving into the mind of the world’s famous fictional detective, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. 

The acclaimed Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition premieres at London’s Natural History Museum each year and tours more than 60 cities in the United Kingdom and across the world.

This is the first comprehensives exhibition in the United Kingdom of Giovanni Battista Moroni’s work.   He was one of the greatest portraits of 16th century Italy.  Famed for his gift capturing the exact likeness of his sitters, he created portraits that are as penetrating and powerful now as they were more than 400 years ago.

While there are many popular and well-established events in London, The Lord Mayor’s show is one of the best of the annual events held in the English capital. The event can be traced back to the 16th century and the Lord Mayor is the Lord Mayor of the City of London, the historic centre of the wider metropolitan area.

In September 2014, the Royal Academy will present the first major retrospective of work to be held in the UK by Honorary Royal Academician, Anselm Kiefer.  This will be the most significant exhibition of the German artist’s work ever held in the UK, spanning his entire 40-year career and unveiling new work created in direct response to the Royal Academy’s spaces.