London has played muse, backdrop and home to innumerable great writers. Some of these literary links are celebrated in a walking tour festival spanning the entirety of March.
Footprints of London — a collective of some of the sharpest, most inquisitive and adventurous tour guides on the London circuit — returns with Literary Footprints from 1-31 March 2025, exploring the thoroughfares, buildings and sundry nooks and crannies that've inspired many a great writer.
Redoubtable scribes are well represented across the festival: there are a handful of tours based on Johnson, Dickens and Shakespeare (multiple days); a Mrs Dalloway's Day walk following the route taken by Virginia Woolf's socialite as she prepares for a party (5 March); and a wander in the footsteps of architectural critic Ian Nairn (16 March).
Other tours that've caught our eye for 2025 include Mr Harris's List: The Book that shocked London, themed around the now-infamous Georgian 'catalogue' of prostitutes (2 March); a walk stopping at sites name-checked by Daniel Defoe in his classic A Journal of the Plague Year (6 March); and another on the various literary destructions of London (20 March).
Most of the tours are in-person, although there are a few virtual ones that you can enjoy from the comfort of your sofa, including one on Virginia Woolf's London (12 March).
Some tours — including one themed around the popular TV show Slow Horses, and another on the Bangladeshi East End of Monica Ali's novel Brick Lane — have already sold out, suggesting you should book early.
Literary Footprints 2025, 1-31 March 2025. Most full-priced tickets are £15 per in-person tour/£10 online, and after purchasing one tour you get a code which gives you 20% off all subsequent tours throughout the festival.
