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.

The story of the church of St Dunstan-in-the-East, surviving and not surviving disaster after disaster since its foundation around 1100. Expect the devil having his nose burnt, the Great Fire doing its worst, and Samuel Pepys narrowly avoiding a couple of armed rogues.

For Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway the clocks of Big Ben and St Margaret’s, Westminster do more than just tell the time.

Recounts the story of Thomas Griffin who, in 1899, was scalded to death at a Battersea sugar refinery while trying to rescue his mate.