I have always loved poetry and often use it on tours – less so, these days, as I am more self-conscious about appearing over-intellectual. That was not something which worried W B Yeats, the greatest of Ireland’s poets, who chronicled the move of Ireland to independence in the late nineteenth and […]
Diary of a Tourist Guide:
Archives for May 2018
WHO CRACKED THE CODE?
The Rosetta Stone is really a very boring object and yet it is arguably the most important one in the British Museum. It is a piece of granite forty five inches tall proclaiming an edict by King Ptolemy the Fifth in 196 BC and discovered […]
THAT WAS THEN THIS IS NOW
I actually paid to go on a tour the other day, which is almost unknown in the high season. Still, I was intrigued by the premise and coughed up my £20 to go on an alternative tour of the National Portrait Gallery. […]
SUFFRAGETTE AND SUFFRAGIST
Our Prime Minister Theresa May took a break last week from the problems of Brexit (unavoidable) and the Windrush scandal (self-inflicted) to be present at the […]
LONDON’S LONGEST RUNNING SHOWS
Blue badge guides often have to take groups to the theatre and, even if they do not do this regularly, it is a good idea to know what is running in the west end in order to advise people. With this in mind, I thought it would be fun to see which were the longest […]