From Westminster with Love: Where Now’s Guide to London Spies

Your mission, if you choose to accept it... is to snoop around the city centre on this London walking tour, and learn all about the dangerous and debonair world of espionage.

Starting outside Waterloo Station, the original home of M16, this 90-minute London tour will take you around the city, through Covent Garden to Westminster. Along the way, you’ll hear all about the writer John Le Carré’s ‘George Smiley’, Robert Ludlum’s ‘Jason Bourne’ and, of course, the most famous fictional super-spy ever, James Bond.

You’ll also hear about the real people who inspired the characters. Every corner has a story to tell, from covert operations to moments of espionage, and you’ll hear them all – going as far back as the 1500s with Queen Elizabeth I’s original spy-master.

As you venture around the city, you’ll see:

• Somerset House, which doubled as an eastern European location for James Bond
• Theatre Royal Drury Lane, where a certain nursery rhyme about a Muffin Man originated
• Piccadilly Circus, where a sexy secret agent danced into stardom
• Malaysia House, where Timothy Dalton’s Bond picked up cool gadgets from Q
• Whitehall, where the Prime Minister lives on Downing Street, and the Old War Office Building where, in the Bond franchise, British intelligence plot out their missions
• Westminster Bridge, where some explosive James Bond action scenes were shot in the shadows of Big Ben, and our tour ends
• Rules Restaurant, London’s oldest, where you can dine in style with a glass of Martini... shaken not stirred

There’s an exciting story of daring exploits by secret agents on every corner. So grab your fedora and radio transmitter but watch your back for double agents.