Events And Tours - Latest news and reviews

Next Monday evening great fires will be lit all around London — or more likely small health and safety compliant candles — to mark one stage of the Diamond Jubilee. Although much of the media fuss will be on the…

Over the weekend, the inhabitants of Ongar in Essex got extremely excited as the disused railway linking the town to Epping returned to life again – as a steam railway service. The railway built around 150 years ago, and taken…

London’s underground railway can not unreasonably be summed up in two icons – tube trains and that famous map. Now the Transport Museum has put on a display of the famous tube map, from its early days through the Becks…

My now regular look ahead to events happening next month that would probably be in my events guide, if only they weren’t happening outside the psychological barrier of the M25 motorway. The Original English Olympicks 1st June The 400th anniversary…

If you live out near Ongar on the furthest north-eastern edges of London next this weekend, listen out for the sound of steam trains chugging along a disused part of London Underground’s Central Line railway. After a few years of…

This weekend is the annual Museums at Night event, with suitable venues around the UK opening up a little bit later than usual and often laying on a few extra goodies. My selection of the London venues is below: Friday…

Is it art or is is science? A display of drawings by a Renaissance artist would seem to be art, but they are the earliest known systematic studies of human anatomy, so they seem to be science. This is the…

Wellington Arch, the huge triumphal pile of stone at Hyde Park Corner has gained a tiny bookshop inside the arch itself – oh, and a new exhibition area upstairs. I doubt many people who casually wander past the huge archway…

The annual Rickmansworth Festival is in a couple of weeks time, and as usual, the London Transport Museum will be there with vintage buses to ferry people between Rickmansworth Station and the Festival at Batchworth Lock. Also, the restored 1938…

Just around the corner from Old Street tube station lies the main parade ground of the Honourable Artillery Company – and this evening (8th May) will be their annual military display which has a tendency to scare the heck out…

Lurking on the eastern most edge of the River Thames sits Foulness Island, a low lying marshy farmland that is also almost entirely controlled by the Ministry of Defence for weapons testing. Rather improbably, sitting in the middle of this…

Yesterday evening, just after the last of the tourists were removed (well, almost all of them), a marching band entered the Tower of London, and the Pageantmaster of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Beacons, escorted by Yeomen carried a “crystal diamond”…

Tomorrow is May Day, and each year the Fowlers Troop recreate the Deptford Jack parade in a different part of London. This year, it’s the turn of the City to witness a walking mound of greenery parade through it’s stone…

With the Royal Pageant taking place in a couple of months, it is opportune to learn a bit about the history of such grand events which were often the closest the great unwashed would get to see their Regal masters…

My now regular look ahead to events happening next month that would probably be in my events guide, if only they weren’t happening outside the psychological barrier of the M25 motorway.   Padstow Obby Oss Day 1st May Ancient parade…