Discover Official Walks & Talks

Dr. Samuel Johnson Guided Walks: Twice Monthly

Come and explore the 18th century London of the writer, critic and lexicographer, Dr Samuel Johnson. Although he was born and brought up in Lichfield, Samuel Johnson spent most of his adult life in the City of London where he came to dominate the 18th century literary world, which was growing up around the established Fleet Street offices of numerous publishers and printers.

Johnson produced a large number of works of many different kinds but is best known for his Dictionary of the English Language published in 1755. These walks concentrate on the life and works of Dr. Johnson, the people he knew and what the City of London was like at the time.

We offer a choice of walks, which takes place on alternate months on the first Saturday and the third Friday of each month. They all start at 2pm.

Walk 1 - Dr Johnson's Fleet Street: Discover Johnson's life and work in and around Fleet Street and the people he knew there.

Walk 2 - Dr Johnson's City: Explore the Fleet Valley, Ludgate Hill and St Paul's Churchyard areas as Johnson knew them.

Both walks start and finish outside Dr Johnson's House in Gough Square where Johnson compiled his famous Dictionary.

£12 tickets are available via via Eventbrite.  Booking is not essential, however. Please bring cash for tickets not purchased in advance. We meet outside the house five minutes before the walk commences.

Photos: courtesy of Niki Gorick

We offer daily, weekly and monthly walks around the City of London 

Our daily walks run from the City Information Centre, just south of St Paul's. You need to book via Eventbrite to secure you place. Note: the cut-off time for booking our daily walks is 21:00hrs the night before. If we don't have any bookings then the walk will not take place.

Our weekly walks have individual booking pages and earlier cut-off times, please see the individual listing.  

New:

Local London Guiding Day Saturday 7 October

Tours of the Old Bailey on Saturdays in October

Some of our walks offer concession rates: valid for over 65s and students. All Eventbrite bookings have a booking fee. We try to make our walks as inclusive and accessible as possible.

Private tours

If you'd like to organise your own walk, lecture or a virtual tour, then please use our Find a Guide section. If you're a member of an Arts Society or a U3A or other group we'd love to take you on a tour of the City. And if you're a company based in the City who'd like to organise a social event for your work colleagues, why not book a walk with us? 

If you've been on a walk recently we'd love to hear from you. Why not leave a review on our TripAdvisor page? We've been awarded TripAdvisor's Travellers' Choice for 2023!