This free tour: Christmas Day 2023.
Meet: At the Eros statue, Piccadilly Circus, 11am.
Duration: Around four hours with a coffee stop half-way.
What if…? You have to go early to turn the turkey. We will have been so pleased to see you, but don’t forget to tip the guide!
Booking: Please press here to register with Eventbrite.


Discover the sensational secret history of London on Christmas Day with the capital’s leading historian and most energetic tour guide, Penguin author Ed Glinert

Join Ed Glinert to take in the sleazy sexy streets of Soho, the magical mysterious mews of Mayfair and the stylish sophisticated sights and sites of St James’s.

Eye-opening stories of society hostesses, political intrigue, royal scandal, spies and spooks, the Titanic, ’orrible murders, Rolls and Royce, the Beatles, the Stones, fascists, Sherlock Holmes, one or two Rothschilds, Marx & Engels and the kitchen sink.

Meet Charles Dickens, Oliver Cromwell, Hitler’s ambassador to Britain, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Pepys, the late Queen, Arsene Wenger, the head of MI6, James II, Boris Johnson…well, some of them, metaphorically, by joining us on this bumper festive tour through the capital.

We go from the very centre of London – Trafalgar Square – into the very heart of Whitehall, very posh St James’s, even posher Mayfair and the wildly exciting West End, hearing, learning, reliving the stories of Royal London, Victorian London, rock music London, Sherlock Holmes’s London, wartime London, Spies’ and Spooks’ London, Churchillian London … and a whole melting pot of the stories of the greatest city in the world.

And what stories as we visit:

  • The secret location which the Queen uses to go down to her nuclear bunker.
  • The building where the horrors of the Titanic were revealed to the crowds.
  • The cat who guards the foreign secretary.
  • The palace where the Queen (not this Queen) allowed a foundling to replace the royal female birth.
  • The massive column that leads to the tunnel that joins 10 Downing Street to Buckingham Palace (“What tunnel?” – Rishi). 

And that’s just before the first coffee stop!

Ideal for inquisitive tourists who want to discover London. A must for Londoners who want to find out more about their city before dinner.