London Literary Tours

How society sees women and women see themselves colours everything Woolf wrote, from essays like 'A Room of One’s Own' to experimental novels like Mrs Dalloway and Orlando, which blossomed from her affair with Vita Sackville-West.

The writer of poems like 'Strange Meeting' and 'Dulce et Decorum est' is widely regarded as the greatest poet of the First World War. Killed within a week of the Armistice, Owen’s fame grew posthumously, thanks in large part to Edith Sitwell.

Fleming’s wartime experience in Naval Intelligence gave him the inspiration for one of the most famous characters in fiction and film. James Bond was a kind of alter ego for his creator; they shared attitudes, traits and tastes, including a fondness for St James’s.

Essays and novels poured from Huxley’s pen, driven by the need to support his family. In the 1920s, his society friends -- including the adored and despised Nancy Cunard -- found embodiment in novels like Antic Hay, Point Counterpoint and even Brave New World.

Sitwell was one of the most adventurous poets of the twentieth century with works like Façade and Gold Coast Customs. A self-proclaimed eccentric, she presided over London literary society through her salons and as a passionate champion of new poets.

Married but perpetually unfaithful, Greene could never square his adultery with his Catholicism, providing material for novels such as The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair. His work for the secret service inspired spy fiction like The Human Factor.

An unbending conservative and Catholic, and eventually a curmudgeon, Waugh found much in modern society to lament or skewer hilariously in novels such as Brideshead Revisited and Vile Bodies, including his first wife's desertion of their marriage.

Cunard grew up with a silver spoon that she spat out to write radical poetry and start her own publishing company. Counting many writers and artists as her lovers, she was a relentless political activist who campaigned against fascism and racism.

Graves was married in St James’s during World War 1, when his humour and poetry had earned him the affection of Sassoon and Owen. As his fame grew with Goodbye to All That and I Claudius, his personal life would take some dark turns and his friendships suffer.

Novelist, essayist, critic, Macaulay created works like The World My Wilderness and The Towers of Trebizond from the stuff of her wartime adventures, solo travels to distant lands, struggles with her Anglican faith and a long secret affair with a married man and former priest.

The playwright and actor of high society plays like Private Lives and Blithe Spirit, Coward could be relied on to amuse and provoke,  making friends with Ian Fleming, antagonising the Sitwell siblings and keeping the British chin up in the midst of World War 2.