Dr Johnson's Lantern-Lit Valentine's Ramble

A theatrical lantern-lit Valentine’s voyage through the literary, convivial world of Dr Johnson’s London, the city containing “all that life can afford”, beginning with an exclusive whirlwind tour of Dr Johnson’s exquisitely preserved townhouse at 17 Gough Square.

Free chocolate and fizz!

London, 1755. It’s Valentine’s Day and Dr Johnson is ripping his hair out in despair. As he wrote in the preface to his dictionary, “I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please, have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds.” Shut away in Hampstead, his beloved wife Tetty has drunk herself to death. His soulmate, poet Richard Savage, has perished in the debtors’ gaol. Now his rakish Scottish biographer James Boswell and his sinister black cat Hodge must vie for the affections of the gouty lexicographer.

This is the heartwarming story of how one gouty, pox-marked, half-blind, Tourette’s-suffering truck of a man, whom William Hogarth mistook for a fool, came to London to fulfil his dreams, trouncing the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and emerging as a titan of the English language and the arch-conversationalist of the age.

Beginning on the porch of his exquisitely preserved Georgian house off Fleet Street and finishing with a fireside pint at his favourite tavern, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, pursue Dr Johnson through the cobbled backstreets, riverside gardens, and labyrinthine alleys Georgian London as he recites poetry under the stars, shames idle lords, emancipates African slaves, spars with his debauched biographer James Boswell, collects oysters for his wily muse Hodge the Cat, and reigns from his “throne of human felicity”, the tavern.

Bask in dramatised excerpts from his writings set to beautiful violin music, and attend to his mournful reflections upon love, loss and London.

From the team behind the critically acclaimed Medieval Wine Tour this is the perfect way to kick start your Valentine’s night – or to meet a like-minded soul amidst the hallowed streets of historic London.