Lady’s London Taxi Tour Review

Today I want to share my review of a London taxi tour with you. This is a great way to see London in a classic mode of transport and learn a lot about the city along the way.

London Taxi Tour

The London taxi tour I took was a themed Dickens & Shakespeare tour. It was compliments of Graham Greenglass, a licensed black cab driver with a BA in history who gives taxi tours of London.

Graham waited for me near Holborn with a sign in the window of his taxi bearing my name. After quick introductions, we sped off to see some of the most famous Dickens and Shakespeare sites in London.

London Taxi Tour: Dickens Sites

The first of these was Furnival’s Inn. This beautiful red brick building is in the location where Dickens once rented rooms and started work on The Pickwick Papers.

Nearby were Saffron Hill and Bleeding Heart Yard. The former served as inspiration for scenes from Oliver Twist, and the latter featured in Little Dorrit.

Speaking of Little Dorrit, we also saw the church where she was baptized in the novel.

It’s called St George the Martyr and is conveniently located right next to the only remaining wall of the famous Marshalsea debtors’ prison where Dickens’ father spent time.

The last Dickens site on the London taxi tour was Snow Hill. The small street in the City of London was the location of a coaching inn Dickens stayed in before going to Yorkshire to do research for Nicholas Nickleby.

When he later wrote the novel, he had Nickleby stay in the very same inn.

London Taxi Tour: Shakespeare Sites

The next few stops on my London taxi tour were dedicated to Shakespeare. The first of these was Gray’s Inn, the location of the world premiere of The Comedy of Errors in 1594.

Graham stopped the taxi there and told me all about the history of Gray’s Inn, from its early days as a coaching inn to its current role as the home of one of London’s four Inns of Court.

Another Shakespearean site in London is Ely Place. The street, which is lined with beautiful Georgian buildings, was the setting of John of Gaunt’s famous speech about England in Richard II.

On most Shakespeare tours of London, Graham takes passengers to Shakespeare’s Globe on the South Bank.

But since I’ve already been there several times, we skipped it and went straight to Southwark Cathedral. The famous church was the final resting place of the bard’s brother, Edmund Shakespeare.

Other Taxi Tours

After seeing the sights on the Dickens & Shakespeare tour of London, Graham showed me a few highlights from his other London taxi tours.

These included his London horror tour. We first stopped at the gate in Charterhouse Square where the severed arm of the leader of the square’s priory hung after he was executed for resisting Henry VIII’s break with the pope.

After viewing the gate, I found out we were standing on a plague pit. Eerie.

We then stopped at nearby Smithfield, where the square across from the famous meat market was the site of many public executions during the reigns of Henry VIII and his daughter, Mary I (aka Bloody Mary).

Apparently the former preferred to have his enemies boiled alive, while the latter had a penchant for having hers burned at the stake.

But perhaps the most famous execution to take place in Smithfield was that of William Wallace in 1305.

After dying, he was apparently the first person in London to be granted the honor of having his head displayed on a spike on London Bridge.

According to Graham, London’s famous skyscraper, The Shard, is supposed to resemble that very spike.

Taxi Tour of London: The Verdict

At the end of the two-hour London taxi tour, I felt like I had seen quite a lot of sights and learned more than I ever knew about their history.

Graham was enthusiastic and knowledgeable about his subjects, and seeing London with him was a great way to pay homage to Dickens and Shakespeare. If you take a taxi tour with him or another driver, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Find this post helpful? Buy me a coffee!

New here? Join thousands of others and subscribe to the A Lady in London blog via email.