A quiet London walk through Russell Square, the British Museum, Bedford Square and the University of London’s elegant streets
Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat present a walk through the part of London where more novels have been started, and finished, than anywhere else in the English-speaking world.
The Bloomsbury Books & Brains Walk
Bloomsbury is a square mile of Georgian terraces, leafy garden squares, universities, museums, and bookshops. This is where the Bloomsbury Group (Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E M Forster and friends) plotted modern literature over tea and slightly more wine than was polite.
Start and Finish
Start: Russell Square Station.
Finish: Tottenham Court Road or Holborn.
Distance: About 1.8 miles.
Time: 45 minutes walking, a full day with the British Museum.
Exact Directions
Exit Russell Square Station and walk west into Russell Square Gardens, one of London’s largest garden squares, complete with a central fountain that is less Roman than it thinks. Walk diagonally across.
Exit the south-west corner onto Montague Street. Turn left and in 200 metres you are at the back of the British Museum. Continue around to Great Russell Street and the main entrance. Admission is free. The collection is vast, the Elgin Marbles debate is ongoing, and the Great Court’s glass roof by Norman Foster (2000) is one of Europe’s best public interiors. See britishmuseum.org.
From the British Museum entrance, walk west on Great Russell Street, then turn north onto Bedford Square. This is one of the best-preserved Georgian squares in London, all unified terraces in brown brick with black railings.
From Bedford Square, head north onto Gower Street, the spine of University of London. Walk past UCL’s neoclassical main building. Continue north to Torrington Place and angle west toward the Waterstones flagship.
Finish south-west at Tottenham Court Road, or south at Holborn. For literary completeness, detour to the British Library (King’s Cross, 15 minutes walk north) to see Magna Carta and a Beatles lyric on the same floor.
What to See
Russell Square Gardens. British Museum. Bedford Square. Senate House (University of London, 1937, which Orwell used as the inspiration for the Ministry of Truth in 1984). UCL main quadrangle. Waterstones Gower Street. Tavistock Square (Virginia Woolf blue plaque). Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street (dickensmuseum.com).
Coffee, Toilets, Survival
Coffee: Store Street Espresso, Gail’s, Tap Coffee. Food: Salumeria Napoli, Holborn Dining Room, the British Museum’s own cafe. Toilets: British Museum, Senate House, Waterstones, any pub with a decent exterior.
The Humour Interlude
Bloomsbury is where you will find a man on a bench explaining 18th century political theory to nobody, a group of international students photographing a door that Virginia Woolf may have briefly walked past, and at least three very confident people carrying a copy of Middlemarch for display purposes only. You will respect them for it.
The British Museum is free, which means it is simultaneously one of the world’s greatest institutions and one of London’s best-ranked rainy day options. A London museum satirist has noted that the Rosetta Stone has been stared at by more humans than any rock in the solar system.
Local Wisdom
Weekday mornings for the museum (quieter), Sunday afternoons for garden squares, autumn for leaf drama. The British Museum’s Great Court remains open until 20:30 on Fridays, which is quietly one of the best cultural bargains in Europe.
For academic satire at its most elegant, see McSweeney’s.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
Staff Writer at The London Prat
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