London’s walls may have been built by the Romans, but when the Vikings encountered them in the tenth and eleventh centuries ‘they suffered’, as the anonymous Anglo-Saxon chronicler put it, ‘more harm and injury than they ever imagined that any town-dwellers would do to them’.

Excavations beneath the Royal Opera House have revealed stunning evidence of early London, both the homes and workshops of the inhabitants and also the defensive ditches that may have been built to protect against Viking attacks before the area was abandoned.

St Paul’s was the heart of early London. It was the burial place of King Ethelred (‘the ill-advised’) and also of unfortunate Archbishop Ælfheah whose body was stolen from its tomb by King Cnut The graveyard was once home to the London runestone, a rare monument to a member of London’s Viking elite.

Oval Tube Station is the setting where all characters come together in the alien comedy-horror “Attack the Block”.