Looking for Christmas pressie inspiration? Here's our hand-selected gift guide, featuring exclusive London-themed present ideas. By the time you've read this article, you might have your festive shopping done!
London gifts for transport geeks
After London transport-themed goodies? Here are a few pressie ideas.
- Any transport lover will be au fait with the London Transport Museum shop and its embarrassment of transport-themed riches which cover all ages, from babies to veteran tube lovers. Next stop: a moquette tea towel... or sofa.
- A highlight of our cartographic year was Max Roberts' circular tube map, and guess what — he's selling it as a print.
- Adam Nathaniel Furman's trippy take on the classic London Underground motifs (designs including 'Bakerloo Boogie Woogie' and 'Mighty Metropolitan') make for eye-catching cushions, mugs, backpacks and sweaters. A refreshing change from the usual moquette designs which everyone now seems to be wearing as socks (us included).
- Friend of Londonist Luke Agbaimoni, aka Tube Mapper, has released a new calendar — each month featuring one of his finest tube snaps from the past year. Here's to a satisfyingly symmetrical 2025.
- Supperclub.Tube — in which you get to eat delicious Colombian food in an old tube carriage — is a memorable night out, and they've just launched a new menu. You can get gift cards here.
- Tube (and architecture) nerds will drool over London Underground 1967-99, John Glover's book published earlier this year, which is packed with slightly grubby looking images of non-painted tube stock. Phwoar!
- Another vintage transport book that'll look great on the shelf of any London transport geek is Tim Brown's London's Transport in the 1980s.
- Shopping for a bus anorak? London Bus Museum's online store has double-decker themed tea towels, calendars and jigsaw puzzles.
London walking tour gift vouchers
If you're after a present for someone who likes nothing more than wandering London's storied streets while gleaning new trivia, they'll surely appreciate walking tour vouchers.
- The ever-fascinating Look Up London sells gift vouchers for private guided tours, where you can choose from a long list of neighbourhoods, from Bankside to Soho to Waterloo. There's a much-lauded feminist Jack the Ripper tour, too.
- The sagacious Footprints of London team — with whom we've enjoyed numerous enlightening wanders over the years — offer a range of vouchers for public, private, and even virtual, tours exploring the city's nooks and crannies.
- You can also get gift vouchers of various denominations to go towards TfL's Hidden London tours. New for 2024, is the Holborn: The Secret Platforms tour. Just be aware these experiences can be on the spendy side.
Sponsor message
Creative gifts (and swoonworthy seasonal decor) from the National Portrait Gallery
If you're after an especially aesthetically-pleasing present, you can't go wrong with a gallery gift shop. And this one is up there with the best. The National Portrait Gallery has gifts for every age and budget, from eye-catching stocking fillers (we love these marbled playing cards), to incredible artist-and-maker collaborations, like its hugely popular Tracey Emin ceramics range.
As you might expect, the National Portrait Gallery shop boasts an extensive selection of portrait prints, including limited editions, available both framed and unframed. There are tons of art books, too. We're especially intrigued by Cocktails at Larry's, which includes some of the gallery's most iconic works alongside cocktails created in their honour. Of course, it’d be rude not to go and try one in the gallery bar afterwards — the clementine-spiked 'Maccarita' might just become our go-to festive tipple (sorry, egg nog).
Speaking of Christmas, it'd be remiss of us not to mention the seasonal decor up for grabs in the National Portrait Gallery shop! We’re talking intricate tree ornaments, vibrant paper crowns, and jolly fabric stockings. You can shop the whole range online, or visit the bricks-and-mortar store located just inside the Gallery's Ross Place entrance. Super-easy to pop in when passing through central London.
The National Portrait Gallery shop is open 10.30am-6pm, Sunday-Thursday, and 10.30am-9pm on Fridays and Saturdays. Alternatively, you can shop online at npgshop.org.uk at any time.
Gifts for London history fans
A gift subscription that history fans will drool over.
Have you discovered our weekly newsletter about London's history? Each week, Londonist: Time Machine digs deeper into a little-known chapter from the capital's past. We ask questions like "Who was the first person to ever ride the tube?". We see how Londoners of yesteryear imagined the 21st century city might look. And we colour in a lot of old maps.
AND there's an added level to Londonist: Time Machine. For a small subscription, you get to access additional newsletters, browse the full archive, get invitations to meetups and behind-the-scenes tours and be part of the Londonist: Time Machine community.
If you know somebody who's really into the city's history, consider getting them a gift subscription for Christmas. It's just £5 for a month or £45 for a whole year.
London gifts for kids
- Baby grows, snow globes, even mini guard's hats (which we're pretty certain aren't made from real bearskin): Historic Royal Palaces has a fab collection of London-themed kids gifts to peruse.
- Wimbledon, Stokey, Croydon, Hampstead, Brixton and a host of other London locales feature in the Colour Your Streets colouring book series. Children will love it, as will certain adults in your life.
Boozy London gifts
Suggestions for beer, wine and spirit drinkers. We've even got teetotallers covered:
- Beer: If you're buying London-crafted beer for someone, and don't know where to start, check out our list of taprooms and click on the web shops to see what they offer (lots sell selection boxes, which make a fine festive gift). A brewery tour makes a thoughtful present for a beer lover too; among London breweries offering them are Fuller's in Chiswick (one for the heritage lovers), Five Points in Hackney (one of the best), and Small Beer in Bermondsey (for those who like to appreciate beer in moderation).
- Wine: If it's vino you seek, make sure it's a London label: Blackbook make "bloody good wine" in their Battersea winery, thanks to grapes sourced from vineyards a stone's throw from the capital. Their "Londoner" 6 pack of wine would make for one stonking great present, or six very good ones. Otherwise, pick up a mixed case of reds, whites and sparklings from E17's Renegade Urban Winery, famous for their 'face' labels.
- Rum: In a rum mood? Cabby's Rum — distilled in London by a taxi driver — will perk up any festive punch. Or buy a bottle of Market Row rum, described as "Brixton in a bottle".
- Gin: We've heard good things about Fatty's organic London dry gin, crafted in small batches in Dulwich. (The magic ingredient, we're told, is dill.) You can find more mother's ruin-laced inspo in our Best London Gins... Delivered To Your Door.
- Whisky: Yes, London-made whisky is a thing. Although if the person you're buying for prefers the stuff sourced from north of the border, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society sells various memberships, giving access to their plush Hatton Garden tasting rooms.
- Pub calendars: As Lydia Wood continues on her quixotic quest to draw every single pub in London, she has produced not one but FIVE calendars for 2025, starring various pubs she's sketched. Her shop also sells prints.
- Alcohol-free: Drink gifts for the non-drinkers in your life? How about tickets to a Club Soda event or a tea tasting at Twinings.
London book gift ideas
2024's been another bumper year for books about London. Here's our shortlist of some which we think might tickle your fancy.
- Londonist editor Will Noble's debut book Croydonopolis: A Journey to the Greatest City That Never Was debunks the myth of Croydon as a 'concrete hell', instead uncovering a place that gave us experimental railways, the country's first international airport, and some of the greatest musicians the world has ever known.
- Take a jaunt into the hinterlands of London, with I Love Suburbia: The Joys of Life on London’s Outskirts, a book crammed with tasty pictures of under-appreciated art deco/modernist buildings off the beaten track.
- Tim Brown's Lost London is a treasure trove of snaps of the city as it was back in the 1980s. Some great perms going on too.
- Artists, landladies, strongwomen, spies: Darren Coffield's Queens of Bohemia: And Other Miss-Fits discovers the women who thrived in — and helped build — bohemian Soho.
- Leo Woodland takes a stroll down Edgware Road/through the centuries in Edgware Road: From Romans to Romanians and Everyone In Between, meeting murderers, mayhemmakers, mistresses and Great Train Robbers along the way.
- A novel for you now — Andrew Hunter Murray's A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering is a fast-paced comical crime romp, bristling with house-interlopers, dodgy estate agents and dream apartments overlooking the Thames. A wonderful send-up of what is a ludicrous property market.
- Lucy McMurdo's 2024 book Secret Islington and Clerkenwell spills the beans on some of the lesser-known sights of the area, from luxurious cinemas to Lenin.
- Franco Pfaller has captured dreamy shots of the Thames galore in his 2024 coffee table tome London's Riverside in Photographs.
- What we would give to have the talents of Paul Tracey, who's compiled a book of his stunning paintings of London's theatres: 100 Theatres: Portraits of the Playhouse.
- This is also the place to remind you that we have not one, but two incredibly-illustrated tomes: Londonist Mapped (a gorgeous cartographic voyage around London Trivia), and Londonist Drinks, which overflows with knowledge on liquid London — from gin to craft beer to milk rounds.
- Last year, Londonist's Editor-at-Large Matt Brown brought out an epic coffee table book, Atlas of Imagined Cities — which'll delight anyone with an iota of interest in film, TV or literature. (That's everyone, right?)
We featured these book because we know it's the kind of thing our readers will enjoy. By buying them via links in this article, Londonist may earn a commission from Bookshop.org — which also helps support independent bookshops.
Tickets for London theatre shows in 2025
The answer to the question: 'What do I get the person who has everything?' is so often: 'Tickets to a show!' Even if said person has seen EVERYTHING so far on the theatreland stage, they can't possibly have ticked off the shows that launch in 2025. To name a few:
- Play On! The Bard and the Duke go shoulder-to-shoulder in this jazz musical based on Twelfth Night. It first hit Broadway way back in 1997 and now — with direction from Talawa's Michael Buffong — comes to the Lyric Hammersmith at the start of 2025.
- The Lonely Londoners: Sam Selvon's 1956 touchingly hilarious novel about a group of Windrushers and their experiences in London has been adapted into a rave reviewed play by Roy Williams and Ebenezer Bamgboye. When it's back in London — this time at the Kiln Theatre from January — it'll ne a hot ticket.
- Richard II: Speaking of hot tickets, Bridgerton heartthrob Jonathan Bailey's star turn as Richard II at the Bridge Theatre is sure to get bums on seats in the new year. Buy a pair of these for the Anthony fan in your life.
- Clueless the Musical: As if! The trend for spinning 1980s/90s movies into stage musicals (Hello Back to the Future, Sister Act, Heathers, Mrs Doubtfire...) continues, as an all-singing, all-dancing Clueless arrives in the West End in February.
- Just For One Day: Most people will know the soundtrack to this musical off by heart, without having seen a second of the actual show. This stage production of the Live Aid story premiered at the Old Vic in 2024, and takes up residency at the Shaftesbury Theatre from May 2025.
Londony stocking fillers
Simply looking for something small to slip in a stocking? Here are a handful of suggestions.
- Taking the concept of London neighbourhood-inspired aromas, and running with it is Soapsmith. This Walthamstow-based setup crafts soaps and bath soaks with names including Brick Lane, Lavender Hill, Marble Arch, and Hackney Marshes.
- For something dainty (and relatively cheap), have a look at Open City's gift shop, where there are smart municipal-themed socks and soap bars, as well as construct-it-yourself cardboard models of the Trellick Tower, Tolworth Tower and Dawson's Heights. Swoon.
- Blue Crow Media have a knack of producing maps you instantly need to buy; in their collection they have Londony maps on Black history, art deco, brutalism, alleyways, Christopher Wren and more.
Londonist merch (aka the shameless plug section)
From t shirts to prints to mugs to tea towels, the Londonist shop is brimming with Londonist merch that you won't find anywhere else. Plenty here for smashing secret santas, stocking fillers and main pressies, even if we do say so ourselves.
Still got some bits and pieces to tick off your shopping list? Read London's Best Christmas Markets And Festive Fairs.
