The court performances of the early seventeenth century presented an image of perfect political harmony; but backstage the reality was very different.

Join the crowds at a royal joust in honour of Elizabeth I.

Two blue plaques, almost side-by-side in Tavistock Place, commemorate very different people. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the founder of the USSR with no sense of humour, and Jerome K Jerome, a British humourist with a sceptical take on Socialism.

Until the C16th, the area next to the river in Lambeth was home to the so-called Bankside Stews, a collection of bathhouses that doubled as brothels.