By James Hadley in London

The greatest set in London is, of course, the cityscape itself. Wandering the streets, particularly off the main tourist pathways, you quickly find yourself witness to a Dickensian period drama, a contemporary urbane romantic comedy or a piece of Absurdist performance art. After all, when Shakespeare said that 'all the world's a stage' I'm guessing that London was the stage set for most of it.By James Hadley in London

The greatest set in London is, of course, the cityscape itself. Wandering the streets, particularly off the main tourist pathways, you quickly find yourself witness to a Dickensian period drama, a contemporary urbane romantic comedy or a piece of Absurdist performance art. After all, when Shakespeare said that 'all the world's a stage' I'm guessing that London was the stage set for most of it.So although some would say that going on a guided walk around London isn't theatre, it has so much in common with a piece of promenade theatre that the differences are almost academic. I've been on two guided walks in the city through the oldest and arguably the best of the various tourist focussed companies in existence - London Walks. They offer a host of walks around famous suburbs of London, always beginning from a tube station and taking about two hours. Even the Londoner who thinks they know the city back to front is likely to be taken to places they never knew existed. And because most of the tour guides are either historians or 'resting' actors, there's usually a certain degree of colourful storytelling, or even outright performance, along the way.

There are a selection of daytime and early evening walks every day of the week, including walks which reveal hidden Victorian London, sites of Ghost stories, sites relating to The Beatles, tours of London's historic pubs, walks through the collections of the large free museums of the city, and tours of the crime scenes of Jack the Ripper.

The first walk I chose to experience was titled The Blitz. It began at St Paul's tube station, and you repeatedly got glimpses of St Pauls Cathedral through the walk, as it gradually gained in symbolic stature within the tour guide's narrative. The guide recited eye-witness accounts of the Blitz which brought a tear to the eye, and showed us photos of the street we were standing in - now corporate and modern - when rubble and gaping open domestic living rooms. We stood inside the ruins of a bombed-out church which had been designed by Sir Christopher Wren - now a memorial rose garden. We laughed over spirited responses to war-time inconveniences, and the stubborn pride of a woman who ended up naked but unwounded underneath her bath tub in the middle of the street - refusing to be moved till someone handed her clothing. St Pauls emerged like a leading lady of the show, as a symbol of hope amid devastation that it's too easy to forget in the long rebuilt city centre. The tour guide gave a particularly dramatic account of the way the team of wardens assigned to protect the cathedral's dome removed an unexploded bomb in a cart, knowing it could go off at any moment. The accounts were so vivid and moving that the memory of the walk is just like thinking back over a play about the subject matter.

The other walk I experienced was a tour of the borough of Chelsea. Our guide (pictured) was a colourful Cockney who used to be one of the elephant keepers at London Zoo. She regaled us with anecdote after anecdote of the famous who have lived in Chelsea over the years, as we wandered past the houses where they once lived. The layering of history within this city becomes vividly alive when you're looking at a house where Pre-Raphaelite painters lived with their models/mistresses/wives, and a couple of doors down is a prior residence of Mick Jagger, with Oscar Wilde's first London residence around the corner, and the home of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh when newlyweds another block beyond. To me, there are all the thills of a play which edits different time periods together, like Tom Stoppard's 'Arcadia', to standing on the same sites that you know historical figures spent their everyday lives on. For a moment we even felt like papparazzi when a billionaire art collector left his house just as we were being told about him from the other side of the street.

These walks are a wonderful way to experience the city in more detail, and for the city's history to become even more alive than it is by just wandering around. More a historical pageant variety show than a solo show, many of them are fantastic theatrical adventures - and you're far more likely to get to know your fellow audience members too.

Read previous Sets and the City blogs

Feel free to get in touch with any questions (or if you're planning a London visit and want some theatre recommendations) to jamesstuarthadley@gmail.com

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07/01/09