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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
in a Tudor gatehouse next door to tell their
story from the Crusades through to their role
today with the St. John Ambulance and the
Eye Hospital in Jerusalem.
The tour is available weekdays from
September 2012 .
Adults & Seniors: £17.95
This price is valid for all trips that take place
on or before 31 March 2013.
The Book Club
This trip was new in last years brochure
and although it isn’t in this year’s
brochure it is still available. On this trip
your members buy their own morning
refreshments and a cup of tea at the end
of the day but at lunchtime a two course
lunch with coffee is included in the tour
fee of £18.95 per person.
Our tour guides have picked out a Top
Twelve that forms our Book Club list, a
copy of which will be given to everyone on
your coach. Some of the books describe
the London of the past including Lindsay
Davis’s description of Roman Londinium
as the back drop to her detective novels
about the Roman private eye Falco and
CJ Sansom’s Tudor London brilliantly
evoked in his Matthew Shardlake series.
No tour of London in Books could ignore
Charles Dickens but we recognise that
nowadays, especially when it comes to
Dickens and other “heavyweights” we do
a lot of our reading on the telly! So you
don’t have to have a coach full of avid book
lovers for this tour to be enjoyable for all.
Many of the books we talk about will be instantly
familiar from television adaptations and films.
The London of our parents and grandparents
is represented by writers such as George Orwell
who though best known for 1984 and Animal
Farm also wrote some very readable novels that
conjure up a rather austere making-ends-meet
sort of world. And your members will find some
of the tour content quite nostalgic with books that
describe the fast changing London of the 1950s
and 1960s.
Come and meet the tour guide at the church
of St. Martin in the Fields at Charing Cross at
10-30/10-45am to buy morning coffee in the
Crypt Cafe. We are going to start the day with
a short but sweet trail through part of London’s
book district. As Dr. Johnson observed:
“.. The full tide of human existence is at Charing
Cross”. Writers notice such things.
You’ll see the slightly foxed word of the second
hand bookseller, the specialist traders and the
rather well-to-do antiquarian and first edition
booksellers as well as seeing an extraordinary
memorial to Oscar Wilde before the coach picks
you up for a coach tour of London in Books from
the classics to crime fiction. It’s entertaining stuff.
For lunch we arrive in Fitzrovia and an
interesting old house where George Bernard
Shaw and his mother once lodged and later
the prolific American sci-fi pulp fiction writer
L. Ron Hubbard lived and worked. Lunch is
chicken (or a vegetarian option) with new
potatoes and steamed vegetables followed
by apple pie and ice cream with tea or coffee.
Fitzroy House doesn't have an alcohol licence
but you are welcome to bring wine if you want,
glasses will be provided.
In the afternoon we visit the public galleries at
the new British Library on the nearby Euston
Road. Glass walls in the core of the building
reveal the mountainous leather bound library of
George III. In the Sir John Ritblat gallery there
are sacred texts, maps and musical manuscripts
from over the centuries and around the world.
Settle down for a cup of tea in the library cafe
before heading for home at 4-45pm. This tour is
available daily throughout the year although on
Sundays few of the bookshops are open.
It’s a good choice for the colder months.
Adults & Seniors: £18.95
This price is valid for all trips taking place on