Walk of the Week: Shakespeare & Dickens

Every Sunday we’ll pluck just one walk from the vast London Walks repertoire and put it centre stage.

You can check out the full schedule at www.walks.com.

But if you only take one walking tour this week, why not make it…

In keeping with this month's Literary London theme here on The DC…

SHAKESPEARE'S & DICKENS' LONDON The Old City

2 pm on Sundays from St. Paul's Tube exit 2

There's no need to book. A London Walk takes about two hours and costs £9 or £7 for concs. Kids under 15 accompanied by their parent[s] go free

London was to Shakespeare and Dickens what Paris was to Balzac. It held them in its thrall, was both their canvas and their inspiration, their workshop and their raw material. They in turn made it their own, imaginatively colonising it. And, like "special correspondents for posterity", bequeathed it to us. Today, despite the ravages of time, riot, bombing, and especially fire, traces of their London – shipwrecks from the past – still abound in the City. Everything from superb half-timbered Elizabethan dwellings to the magnificent early 16th-century gatehouse where Shakespeare went with his plays to the offices of the Elizabethan Master of the Revels. And from London's grandest Tudor manor house to crooked little alleys which fed the fires of Dickens' "hallucinating genius".

Shakespeare's and Dickens' London – the Old City takes place every Sunday afternoon at 2 pm

A London Walk costs £9 – £7 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all London Walks can be found at www.walks.com.