Christmas Lights Free Tour of London

What to expect

London puts its best coat on in December, and ninety minutes is enough to see most of it. We start under the lights of the West End and walk between the displays, the market huts and the shop windows that pull crowds in from all over the country every winter. As we go we talk about how the British came to keep Christmas the way they do: the food that turns up on every table, the traditions that are far younger than people assume, and the years when celebrating it at all was against the law. We follow the festival from the Middle Ages to the present, and look at how much of what feels timeless was in fact invented by the Victorians. The route takes in the Regent Street lights, Piccadilly Circus, and the wooden huts of the Leicester Square market, before turning into Cecil Court — a narrow lane of antiquarian booksellers with a strong claim on the imagination behind A Christmas Carol. We finish at Covent Garden, under one of the biggest trees in the city. Wrap up warm, bring a camera, and don't eat first: the stalls are hard to walk past.

Meeting point

Equestrian Statue of Charles I

Your route

1. 1

   Trafalgar Square

   Where we meet, beside the equestrian statue of Charles I and in sight of the tree Norway has sent London every year since 1947.

2. 2

   Regent Street

   The street that started the fashion for Christmas lights in London, and still puts on the largest display.

3. 3

   Piccadilly Circus

   A century of advertising, and the crossroads that has drawn crowds on winter nights since the lights first went up.

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