Theatrical walking tours about famous writers in Bloomsbury and St James's
Come on one of our tours of literary sites and delight in tales about some of London's most illustrious writers - like Virginia Woolf, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene and Noel Coward - brought to life in their own words, and with performances of excerpts from their novels, plays and poems.
Key features of our tours:
• Limited to small groups
• Two guides, Mike and Cindy, working as a double act
• Performed extracts from novels, plays and poems
• Writers ‘brought to life’ with quotations from their letters and diaries
• Researched and created by guides
NEW: THE BLOOMSBURY BLAST
Starring Virginia Woolf, T S Eliot and friends
Available Saturday mornings and Wednesday afternoons
3 hours
Characterised by grand garden squares and streets lined with bookshops, cafes and pubs, Bloomsbury is an area synonymous with writers, commemorated in numerous plaques on the walls of their former residences.
On our Bloomsbury Blast you'll meet dazzling literary stars like Virginia Woolf, T S Eliot, W B Yeats, D H Lawrence and E M Forster, and unique, experimental women like Charlotte Mew, Dorothy Richardson and Hilda Doolittle. Joined by a giant of world literature in Rabindranath Tagore, and movers and shakers like Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis we'll reveal a Bloomsbury buzzing with radical ideas, progressive movements and literary pioneers.
- The price is £25 per person and pre-booking is essential. Click on 'Book Tour' to see available dates.
- Private tours - on day and time of your choosing - available by appointment.
- Discounts for student groups.
- Can be purchased as a gift - see below.


THE ST JAMES'S JAUNT
Where Mrs Dalloway meets James Bond
Available Saturday mornings and Wednesday afternoons
3 hours
With its clubs, shops and galleries, and a library at its heart, swanky St James's has been a magnet for writers over centuries. Scenes have been set here, plays performed here, and masterpieces penned here.
Our St James’s Jaunt ranges from World War 1 to the Cold War, from the poems of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon to the spy novels of Graham Greene and Ian Fleming. We celebrate brave, experimental women like Virginia Woolf, Nancy Cunard and Edith Sitwell, and we relish the biting wit of Noel Coward and Evelyn Waugh. The wry prognostications of Aldous Huxley and Rose Macaulay complete a picture of a St James’s bristling with intellect and intensity.
- The price is £25 per person and pre-booking is essential. Click on 'Book Tour' to see available dates.
- Private tours - on day and time of your choosing - available by appointment.
- Discounts for student groups.
- Can be purchased as a gift - see below.
This tour is seamlessly crafted by the guides themselves who are passionate aficionados of the interwar literary landscape. Not only do they recite and perform excerpts that transport you to the London of that era, in so doing Mike and Cindy offer insight into the socio-political climate of the time. The warmth and charisma with which Mike and Cindy welcome us into this world nurtures a sense of connection and belonging irrespective of biblio-credentials, and when the tour concluded it felt like bidding adieu to family.
Róisín McGrogan
Never has learning been more fun! Cindy and Mike were amazing guides, their knowledge is extraordinary and the passion they have for their subject is infectious. Not only did they bring these incredible characters to life in the places they lived and worked, but they showed how their lives were interwoven and regaled us with scandalous stories of what they all got up to! They gave me enough of a taste of the writers' work, at times moving and at others hilarious, to make me want to go out and read, read, read...
Gunna Finnsdottir
AND FOR YOUR FRIEND WHO LOVES BOOKS...
Simply click on either the gold 'Book Tour' button at the top of this page, or the floating 'Book Now' button at the bottom and you'll have the option to purchase a gift card.
The recipient(s) can then get in touch with us to come on a tour of their choice, on a date that works for them.
WHY NOT MAKE A GIFT OF ONE OF OUR TOURS?

WELCOME
London Literary Tours exists to spread passion for brilliant writing on the streets of the city that we love and call home.
We follow in the footsteps of some of our greatest literary figures, tell scintillating stories about them peppered with extracts from diaries, letters and reviews, and perform extracts of their writing in places where they lived, loved, worked and unwound.
Regardless of what you've read or not read, there will be plenty for you to discover about both popular and lesser-known writers.
Expect to be wowed and have a good laugh along the way!

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