Literary Mayfair and St James

We start at Green Park Station and end at Piccadilly Circus Station

Tickets: £35

Join us on a walking tour of aristocratic Mayfair and royal St James, where some of the world’s greatest literary legends lived, loved and left their indelible ink marks. We explore the worlds of writers from Jane Austen to Agatha Christie, Oscar Wilde to PG Wodehouse and James Boswell to Lord Byron.

Our literary journey begins on Half Moon Street where we have our first ‘Wilde’ encounter and perhaps catch a glimpse of Virginia Woolf shopping or Nancy Mitford working in one of London’s most exclusive bookshops We wander through a maze of wealthy Mayfair streets and squares that inspired Jane Austen’s sharp observations of Regency London before visiting the offices of Austen’s publisher who launched her to literary fame.

En route we’ll pass London’s oldest hotel (opened by Lord Byron’s valet) and take tea with Miss Marple as she solves a Christie mystery After a break for lunch (Fortnum’s perhaps?), we’ll continue our literary odyssey by delving into the clubland of St James, haunts of Dr Johnson & Boswell and where Lord Byron ‘awoke to find myself famous’.

On King Street, we don our fur coats to experience one of London’s worst blizzards in February 1895 as we attend the premiere of Oscar’s greatest play: The Importance of Being Earnest. No tour of literary London would be complete without passing by the London Library, a private lending library that has been a lifeline for countless authors including T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Harold Pinter and launched a thousand literary careers.

We conclude the final chapter of our writers walk at a glorious Georgian townhouse, once the home of Lord Byron, where we close the chapter on Oscar and gather a final Christie clue by gathering the suspects in the drawing room……

Our annual walk is often a sell-out so please email Alison Vaissiere at alison@arvaissiere.com to secure your tickets at £35 each. Confirmation will be sent together with bank details.