The authors of the terrific new book, Curiocity: In Pursuit of London, have written a very special circular walk around Covent Garden just for Stanfords!
Cut down Rose Street passage alongside Stanford’s and take the first left along Floral Street.
GET AN EARFUL
The walls have ears on Floral Street: look outside Ted Baker (9–10) and Agnès B (35–36). These protruding organs were cast from the artist Tim Fishlock’s own lugholes. He installed about 50 ears across Covent Garden in 2000, but these are the only two still earwigging. (In Covent Garden, the walls also have noses. Look for one on Endell Street, near the junction with High Holborn.)
Turn right down James Street, towards Covent Garden Market. Head left across the plaza towards Russell Street.
RUB A BOLLARD
Pause outside 8 Russell Street, now Balthazar’s Boulangerie, where Boswell and Johnson first met in 1763. ‘Had his other friends been as diligent and ardent as I was,’ wrote Boswell in his Life of Samuel Johnson, ‘he might have been almost entirely preserved.’ Johnson used to touch bollards for luck. You are advised to do the same for the rest of this walk.
Turn left up Bow Street.
SING FOR YOUR SUPPER
Order a rare steak at the Royal Opera House. Legend has it that John Rich, an 18th-century Opera House manager, would grill steaks with friends in his private room. The group called themselves the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks and their motto was ‘Beef and Liberty’. If the ticket office won’t sell you a sirloin, go to Sarastro restaurant on Drury Lane, where your opera-singing waiter will serve you in a private box.
Continue up Bow Street and turn right along Broad Court. At the end, turn left on Drury Lane and immediately right on to Great Queen Street.
MEET THE MASONS
If you walk along Great Queen Street in the late afternoon, you’re likely to see small groups of men in black suits, each carrying a briefcase. These men are Freemasons, and their cases contain a small apron, a pair of white gloves and a magic wand. The Grand United Lodge of England on Great Queen Street was founded in 1717 and is the oldest Masonic Grand Lodge in the world. Stride in and browse the free Museum of Freemasonry.
Return and continue north on Drury Lane. Turn left on Betterton Street and walk to the end.
FIND ROSIE
At the back of the verdant Cross Keys pub you’ll find a framed letter from a 17-year-old David Beckham to his old ‘bud’ Lee Kinkaid, a school friend and fellow glass-collector at Walthamstow Greyhound Stadium. Beckham had just moved to Manchester to play for United: ‘I’ve been doing really well with my football,’ he writes. Above the letter is an original Beckham sketch of a greyhound called Rosie Red.
Come out, turn left up Endell Street and left again down Shorts Gardens.
CHECK THE TIME
The pointer of a sundial is called a ‘gnomon’, meaning ‘the one who knows’. The central column of Seven Dials is an architectural gnomon: the six sundials on the dialstone are accurate to within ten seconds and the column itself turns the circular shopping district into the seventh dial. (A plaque at the bottom of the dial explains how to convert readings to GMT.)
Pursue Earlham Street (west) to Shaftesbury Avenue, and turn right up Charing Cross Road.
LIFT A GRATE
Little Compton Street only exists under London. You can see its street sign by looking through a grate on the traffic island in the middle of Charing Cross Road at the junction with Old Compton Street. Wait until you’re unobserved before lifting the grill and climbing down.
Return down Charing Cross Road and turn left along Great Newport Street and Long Acre to Stanford’s.
END WHERE YOU BEGAN
The travel bookshop Stanford’s has been operating since Edward Stanford created his ground-breakingly accurate Library Map of London in 1862, still in print after 150 years. Today the shop has the world’s largest stock of maps and travel books under one roof, and its floors are laid out as a stack of maps: on the ground floor you walk around the world; on the first floor you trek across the Himalayas; and in the basement you stroll across a giant A–Z map of central London.
Find out more about the brilliant Curiocity: In Pursuit of London
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