Bohemian Bloomsbury: A Guide to Literary London

It was famously said that the Bloomsbury Set lived in Squares and loved in triangles.

On this Bloomsbury walking tour, I'll show you how apt the saying is. I'll show you where many of the writers and artists who were part of the group lived their unconventional lives filled with books, Georgian Squares and fornication. We'll find many of these fine squares on our way while learning about the men and women who made up the group like Virginia Woolf. You'll encounter literary greats like WB Yeats, T S Eliot and George Bernhard Shaw, on this walk which starts with the architecturally spectacular Fitzrovia. It's just a stone's throw from Tottenham Court Road, where you'll visit the cosy English pub where Dylan Thomas met his wife. From there, we'll make our way to two of London's greatest intellectual and cultural institutions, London University and the British Museum, before ending our walk in a charming Dickensian alleyway. I'll also tell you about some of the other great writers who lived in the area and weren't a part of the Bloomsbury Set.

Along the way, I'll point out sites like:

• Fitzroy Square, where both G B Shaw and Virginia Woolf once lived
• The Fitzroy Tavern and The Wheatsheaf pub where Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin drank to excess
• Bedford Square, the best preserved of all the London Georgian Squares, with its architecture intended to resemble an Italian Palazzo
• The Senate House of the University of London, which was the model for George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in his novel 1984
• Woburn Walk, former home of W B Yeats, with its charming 18th Century shop fronts
• The houses where the Bloomsbury Group met for their literary soirees

By the end of the tour, you'll have gained a deeper appreciation of London's literary past. Give yourself at least an hour but feel free to go at your own pace and make stops along the way.