Zeppelin!
On 8th September 1915, Kptlt Heinrich Mathy piloting Navy Zeppelin L13 crossed the English coastline at the Wash and turned south towards London. His would be the most destructive assult on London since the Vikings invaded. This tour follows Mathy's bombing run as he blasted and burned his way eastwards. From Grays Inn Fields to Liverpool Street. And just as with the bombing run, we'll also be missing the Guildhall by a matter of a few feet.!   [flyer]


General Montgomery
Monty was Britain's most famous WWII warrior. He inflicted the first land defeat on Hitler's armies at El Alamein. See his campaigning caravan, his tank, and where he planned D Day in West London - Adolf went after him in Feb '44 - you can still see the devastation on the ground.

Winston Churchill
In his day, the greatest living English man. Writer, wit, statesman. And half American to boot! Visit his home at Chartwell, south of London and the new museum dedicated to him in Whitehall, complete with cigars, uniforms and the original door to Number 10 Downing Street, the official residence of Britain's prime ministers.



Suffragettes/Women Behaving Badly
In 1906 the battling Pankhursts arrived in London from Manchester ’to raise the South’. Few women before the First World War in Britain had the vote, so Mrs Pankhurst and her three firebrand daughters, with their genius for ’stunts’, took smug self-centred male-orientated London Society and shook it by its starched winged collars - by getting violent. Temple to Trafalgar Square. [Article: Reviewed in Time Out.]



Mayfair
The Mayfair Mitfords. 1920s High Society, seen through the eyes of an exceptional family. The Mitfords went on to become a national institution, producing writers, campaigners, socialites. Writer Nancy, the Duchess of Devonshire, revolutionary Decca, fascist Unity, saintly mother Stanley, mad Uncle Matthew, beautiful Diana and her fateful love for Oswald ’Tom’ Mosley - we try and get them all in.



Brackenbury and Brook Green
Two islands of calm, tucked away on either side of the Shepherds Bush Road, with their eclectic mix of the grand and the humble. Here are two of London’s great public schools, Godolphin & Latymer, and St Pauls Girls School. A district with great stories to tell, from Oswald Mosely and Gustav Holst, to Alice Perrers and Ralph Fiennes.



Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia was Bohemia. Between the wars this was ’it’, the haunt of Dylan Thomas, Augustus John, George Orwell, Aleister Crowley and the rest. The Bohemians had only one purpose in life - to shock the Middle Classes. So they fought, they drank, they stole, they shagged. They called it Fitzrovia because it was the little world that surrounded the Fitzroy Tavern in Charlotte Street, their favourite boozer. This is where the war was fought, and won, to wrest control of the intellectual soul of Britain off the upper classes.  



British Black History
There have been Black people in Britain since at least Roman times. Come and meet Slaver Sir Nicholas Crisp, and those abolitionist superstars William and Ellen Craft. We pass the Palais du Dance where Bob Marley sang, and where The Clash urged punks and rastas to throw off repression in ’White Man In Hammersmith’, Next, the world’s most multi-racial fighting force - General Montgomery’s victorious British 8th Army, including the Caribbean Regiment. We hear about the murder of Kelso Cochrane in the Riots of the late 1950s, a martyr whose death finally swung White Londoners behind their new Black neighbours, and we finish with that visionary statesman, Marcus Garvey, inspiration for the Rasta movement and the man who wanted a new start for Africa.





Your Personalised Tour
Simon can prepare tours - and talks - for almost any group or interest.