Westminster without rushing: the Abbey, Parliament and Whitehall
A walk through royal and political history, with distinct options for interior visits and a street-only route.
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2034 articlesA day in Greenwich: ship, museums, park and meridian
Choose Greenwich’s sights, manage your energy and understand what you are booking.
The Princes Who Vanished in the Tower
In the summer of 1483 the young king Edward V and his brother Richard disappeared from public life after entering the Tower. Their uncle became Richard III, yet no confession or…
Anne Boleyn's Last Dawn
Anne Boleyn was executed on Tower Green on 19 May 1536 after a trial for adultery, incest and treason whose credibility historians have long questioned. Henry VIII obtained an…
The Nine-Day Queen and the IANE Inscription
Lady Jane Grey occupied the English throne for nine days in the summer of 1553, a pawn in the Protestant elite's attempt to prevent Mary Tudor's succession. She was held in the…
Catherine Howard: The Queen Without a Monument
Catherine Howard, Henry VIII's fifth wife, was confined in the Tower after an investigation into premarital relationships and alleged adultery. An Act of Attainder enabled her…
The Execution the Axeman Could Not Finish
Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was among the last Plantagenets and the mother of Cardinal Reginald Pole, an opponent of Henry VIII's religious policy. She spent more than…
The Death of Henry VI in Wakefield Tower
Henry VI was deposed during the Wars of the Roses and returned to the Tower after the Lancastrian defeat at Tewkesbury. The official story said that he died of displeasure and…
Sir Walter Raleigh's Thirteen Years in the Bloody Tower
Walter Raleigh did not live in the Tower as an anonymous prisoner. During his first long confinement he wrote, cultivated plants and worked on his History of the World, while…
Charles I's Last Walk
On 30 January 1649 Charles I passed from St James's Palace through the Banqueting House to a scaffold erected outside in Whitehall. The execution of an anointed reigning king…
The Gunpowder Plot Beneath Parliament
On the night of 5 November 1605 the authorities found Guy Fawkes in an undercroft beneath the House of Lords near barrels of gunpowder. The Catholic conspiracy led by Robert…
Catherine Howard's Scream in the Haunted Gallery
Catherine Howard was arrested at Hampton Court in November 1541 as the investigation into her past reached the king. In the palace's best-known legend she escaped her guards and…
