Publicity - Your London Travel Toolkit

We'd love to hear from you!

Planning a London itinerary? Discover why Canterbury is one of the best and easiest day trips from London.

Just 55 minutes by high-speed train from St Pancras, this UNESCO World Heritage city packs 2,000 years of history into a walkable afternoon. Explore the magnificent Canterbury Cathedral, follow the footsteps of Chaucer's pilgrims, see Roman ruins, visit England's oldest parish church, wander medieval streets, enjoy a traditional English afternoon tea, and have lunch in one of the country's oldest pubs. 

From hidden gardens and riverside walks to Shakespeare-era history and f...

We'd love to hear from you!

Where did The Kinks play their first gig? The Clissold Arms in Muswell Hill, North London — the same pub where the full band gathered for the last time, 36 years later.

Ray and Dave Davies grew up at 6 Denmark Terrace, directly across Fortis Green from the pub their father drank in. In this Love Letter to Pubs short, Expat Andy walks the North London streets where one of Britain's most influential bands was made.

You'll hear how a slashed speaker cone from a Muswell Hill radio shop produced th...

We'd love to hear from you!

London is incredible — and after three or four days, exhausting. Here's the move smart travelers make - take a day off in the middle of your trip and get out of town.

This episode is your blueprint for Portsmouth and Southsea — 90 minutes by train from Waterloo, and a world away from the city. Actual sea. Actual horizon. Eight hundred years of British naval history and a grand Victorian seaside resort packed into one walkable day.

Expat Andy, a Brit who spent his twenties living nearby, walks you thro...

We'd love to hear from you!

A 25-minute ride from Baker Street takes you to a 1901 pub, an ancient hilltop, and the school that shaped Churchill, Byron, and Nehru.

You've got your days in London mapped out — the towers, the museums, the markets. But what about the morning you want something quieter, older, and a little off the usual route? Expat Andy takes us to Harrow-on-the-Hill. A green hilltop in the city's northwest that people have treated as sacred for more than twelve hundred years, sitting just 25 minutes from Baker Street on the Metropolitan line.

We'd love to hear from you!

Thinking of taking a day trip from London to Brighton? In this episode, I cover whether Brighton is worth visiting for a day, how to get there by train, what to see and do, and how to make the most of one day in Brighton. 

An hour from Victoria sits "London by the Sea." Here's the one-walk, half-day Brighton plan—palace, pier, oldest pub in town—for your London trip. 

You've done the museums. You've queued. Your feet hurt and everyone around you is staring at their phone...

We'd love to hear from you!

Planning a day trip to Bath from London? This episode shows you how to spend one day in Bath, England, exploring 2,000 years of history, iconic architecture, literary landmarks, local food, and a traditional pub—all on foot.

Just 90 minutes west of London by train, Bath is one of England’s most rewarding day trips. The only city in the UK that's a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its entirety.

Discover the Roman Baths, Bath Abbey, the Royal Crescent, the Circus, Pulteney Bridge, the Pump Room, and the city...

We'd love to hear from you!

As London swelters through record-breaking June temperatures in 2026, we look back to another scorching June that changed the city forever. In 1858, soaring temperatures turned the Thames into a foul-smelling open sewer, creating the Great Stink and forcing Parliament to approve one of the greatest engineering projects in British history. Walk along the Thames Embankment with me as we visit two historic Westminster pubs that bookend the story of a Victorian public health crisis and discover how Joseph Bazalgette's engineering masterpiece transformed London's riverfront—and why every visitor to London still benefits fr...

We'd love to hear from you!

The Fox & Grapes - A London Country Pub by Wimbledon Common. “One of the few pubs in London that's best reached by horse,”  and, “About as rural as you can get in Zone 3.”  [Londonist]

London pubs are more than a place for a pint — they're the key to a whole neighborhood. 

In this Love Letter to Pubs short from Publicity – Your London Travel Toolkit, Expat Andy raises a glass to The Fox & Grapes, a Georgian country pub on the edge of Wimbledon Common that feels more English vi...

We'd love to hear from you!

Planning a trip to London and looking for an easy day trip from London by train? Skip another packed day in the UK capital, and head two hours west to Cardiff, the grand coal-built capital of Wales. A whole other country, with its own language, anthem, and parliament. Yet no passport check needed! 

In this Day Break episode of Publicity – Your London Travel Toolkit, host Expat Andy walks you through  the best of Cardiff in a day. The Victorian fantasy of Cardiff Castle, the City of historic Victorian shopping arca...

We'd love to hear from you!

Planning a trip to London and looking to go beyond the usual tourist checklist? In this Summer Shorts episode of Love Letter to London Pubs, Expat Andy takes you to Stockwell, a South London neighborhood that offers a fascinating glimpse into the city's Victorian past. 

The Marquis of Lorne is just ten minutes from the crowds of Leicester Square by tube. One of London's most striking surviving Victorian pubs, wrapped in spectacular ceramic tilework and surrounded by stories of royal scandal, railway expansion, David Bowie, and London's largest Portuguese c...

We'd love to hear from you!

Tired of London crowds? Build a day off into your trip. London Travel Expert, Expat Andy shares the perfect escape from the tourist treadmill. A slow, self-guided day in Bow in the East End of London. Just a few Tube stops from central London but a world away from Westminster's queues and tour groups.

Wander without deadline through one of London's best under-the-radar neighborhoods. Tree-lined Victorian streets, canal-side parks, and historic pubs, with a relaxed pub lunch as the anchor of your day. Along the way you'll find the...

We'd love to hear from you!

Planning a trip to London? Publicity – Your London Travel Toolkit helps travelers build a London itinerary that hits the highlights without burning out.

All summer, two short series alternate weekly. Love Letter to London Pubs takes you inside one historic London pub and decodes the neighborhood around it. Day Break solves the mid-trip slump — when jet lag and sightseeing catch up — with a planned day trip anchored by a great lunch.

In the fall, Season Two of the main show returns with 30-minute episodes, new segments, and specia...

We'd love to hear from you!

Discover Old Isleworth, London's hidden Thames village, home to the 500-year-old London Apprentice pub, Lady Jane Grey, Syon House, Henry VIII, riverside walks, and one of London's most peaceful day trips. 

Planning a London trip and looking for hidden London pubs beyond the usual tourist crowds? Our podcast shorts series is perfect for quick travel research tasks and a great way of supporting London pubs.

In this episode of Publicity – Your London Travel Toolkit, Love Letter to London Pubs shorts, we explore The London Apprentice in Old Isl...

We'd love to hear from you!

King's Cross sounds like it should have an ancient, heroic origin story, but the name comes from a mocked 1830 monument demolished fifteen years after it was built. 

This episode traces the incredible arc of one of London's great train station neighborhoods. From open countryside to Victorian industrial powerhouse, decades of post-industrial abandonment, street prostitution, and a fatal Underground fire that killed thirty-one people. Finally reinvigorated as a global benchmark for urban regeneration. 

Along the way, our story takes in, a lot! Boudica's alleged burial ground at Platform 9¾. The...

We'd love to hear from you!

This bonus episode is our love letter to Ye Olde Mitre, one of London's most hidden and historically rich pubs. When we visited recently, the bar staff gave us one of the most friendly welcomes we've experienced in a busy city center pub. So, this episode is our return gift to you.

Tucked down a narrow alleyway off Hatton Garden, accessible only through a passage barely wide enough for two people. 

We trace the site's remarkable 700-year backstory. From a medieval Bishop of Ely's palace that hosted J...

We'd love to hear from you!

The Lord Raglan pub recently proudly announced the launch of their new food menu.

To congratulate the pub on this great news, we decided to gift them with a special, short, bonus episode featuring the history of their pub - The Lord Raglan, Holborn.

Enjoy and share the joy! Send this episode onto your network. It's a great way to support British tourism, and the host of small businesses that are our historic pubs.

We'd love to hear from you!

A preview of Episode 12 – King’s Cross, Up Down Up Again. 

The episode traces the neighborhood's arc from quiet rural crossroads to Victorian industrial powerhouse. We move through post-war decline and the grim decades of the 70s–90s, to the dramatic revival anchored by Eurostar's move to St Pancras in 2007. We end with Argent's massive £5 billion regeneration project. 

As always, the area's surviving pubs frame the whole story. 

We also make a broader announcement with a look ahead to Season 2. 

The show is rebranding...

We'd love to hear from you!

Before craft beer, before the taprooms, before the Saturday crowds with their route maps, Bermondsey smelled of rotting hides, urine, and dog filth. In short, industry! 

Episode 11 of Publicity - Your London Travel Toolkit  pulls us south of the Thames to trace the evolution of one of London's most overlooked neighborhoods. 

From stinky medieval tanneries banished across the river by the City of London, the world's largest brewery, Victorian railway arches built of sixty million bricks, post-war council estates that held a community together through decades of ind...

We'd love to hear from you!

Step into the bustling streets of old East London, where the air is thick with history and the scent of freshly baked pies, and discover the story behind one of the city’s most iconic comfort foods, now part of Britain's "Heritage Foods Movement". 

This bonus episode serves up more than just pie and mash—it’s a journey through generations of grit, flavor, and tradition, from eel-slinging street vendors to the tiled institutions still standing today. You’ll meet the legendary families who built this culinary empire, uncover the surpr...

We'd love to hear from you!

Join Publicity – The Guidebook Gap in our two-mile walking tour of Charlie Chaplin’s London neighborhood. Our walk maps how institutional poverty and family chaos produced the raw material of Chaplin’s art.

We’ll visit pubs, music hall sites, residences, markets, and street art in Walworth, Kennington, Lambeth, and Camberwell. Discover how Chaplin’s character of The Tramp was not invented in California but assembled from lived experience on these specific streets. 

We begin with Chaplin's disputed birth on East Street in 1889, run through his parents' separation...

We'd love to hear from you!

In 1850, a Victorian journalist walked into Bermondsey and wanted to head back for the door. His senses assaulted by raw hides, tanning pits, human urine, pigeon and dog feces, slaked lime, and ground oak bark. 

The unmistakable fragrance of a neighborhood that had been turning dead animals into leather for five hundred years.

Today it's barley malt over dead cows and dog feces, a significant upgrade for the community.

How do you get from bovines to barley, cows to craft beer in one postcode? We’re...

We'd love to hear from you!

A late 19th century South London childhood shaped by poverty, illness, and instability. These are the tough beginnings of a generational creative talent that would emerge into global stardom, and exile. 

On these South London streets, and in the backrooms of its pubs, the music hall begins.  Unruly, unforgiving audiences. If you wanted attention, you earned it. This is where Charlie Chaplin learned his craft – born out of survival.

A performer at aged five. Workhouses at age seven. On stage again before age ten. By his twenties, Chap...

We'd love to hear from you!

It's all about London's great street food in this episode. We start with a famous Earl who named the humble sandwich. John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, is remembered not for his long career at the Admiralty, nor for giving Hawaii its first English name, but for a piece of bread with meat inside it. 

We follow that legacy into the broader story of London's street food - from Roman oyster shells in the mud of Londinium to the eel pie shops of the Victorian East End, the surprisingly g...

We'd love to hear from you!

Bite Me – The Upper Crust & Underbelly of London Street Food

April 1779. A man waits outside a London theatre with two loaded pistols. A lady he’s enamored with is about to leave the building. The problem is she’s the mistress of another, well known man. What happens next will scandalize the city.

Who is this other well-known man? 

You probably had at least one of these snacks named after him already this week. 

This is Publicity – The Guidebook Gap. I’m Expat Andy...

We'd love to hear from you!

We're off to Marylebone - using the neighborhood's dark origins as a launch pad for a story of spectacular reinvention. 

Our walk begins at Marble Arch, where a barely-noticed pavement plaque marks the site of Tyburn Tree - London's primary gallows for nearly six hundred years and the execution ground for over 50,000 people. 

From there, we traces how the area shed its grim "Tyburn" identity through a medieval rebranding around a church dedicated to St Mary, eventually becoming the elegant Georgian grid of Harley Street, Portland Place, an...

We'd love to hear from you!

Trailer for Episode 8 - Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Marylebone Style

This is Marylebone. Its story - told through its pubs - is one of execution and resurrection, bodysnatching and high society, muddy fields and marble halls. 

What? 

You expected Sherlock Holmes, didn’t you? Well, your guidebook will cover the detective, we’re going to be detective, as today, we decode Marylebone, the Publicity way… 

I’m Expat Andy, broadcasting from Miami in the Sunshine State. You’re listening to Publicity – The Travel Guideboo...

We'd love to hear from you!

In this episode, we rip the polished Instagram filter off Covent Garden and ask a far more interesting question than “Where’s the Apple Store?”

We ask what scene this place is playing. 

Beneath the street performers and opera crowds lies a district that has shape-shifted more times than London itself. From monastic vegetable patch to aristocratic social experiment, from chaotic fruit-and-veg battlefield to theatreland playground of actors, rogues, and bare-knuckle brawlers. 

Designed as a pristine piazza for “Gentlemen and men of ability,” it veered way off scri...

We'd love to hear from you!

What if the secret to understanding a London neighborhood and its pubs… were the grocery stores?

In this episode of Publicity – The Guidebook Gap, Expat Andy takes us to the City of London - where historic pubs and modern finance meet. We reveal a travel planning superpower - The Publicity M&S Litmus Test. By learning to decode the type of Marks & Spencer nearby, we’ll know exactly what kind of neighborhood we're in - and what kind of pub experience to expect.

This i...

We'd love to hear from you!

Brutalist estates, haunted pubs, Roman temples, and a river you've never seen—Part 2 of our world exclusive Walbrook walk dives deep into the hidden heart of London. 

Join Expat Andy as he traces the true, long-lost path of the Walbrook to its mouth on the Thames. Along the way: buried tributaries, literary ghosts, the city’s first coffee shop, and a riverside mystery that ends at a freight terminal. This isn’t just history—it’s a revelation beneath your feet. 

We'd love to hear from you!

Beneath London’s bustling streets flows a river you’ve never seen—and until now, we’ve all been walking it wrong. In this world exclusive, Publicity uncovers the true path of the lost Walbrook River, hidden for over 600 years. 

Join Expat Andy as he follows this buried waterway from Roman Londinium through plague pits, pubs, and surprising side streets. From Islington’s ghostly springs to Shakespeare’s stomping grounds, this is history with a pint in hand and a story around every corner. 

We'd love to hear from you!

A guided walk through 275 years of urban failure, reinvention, and the long, slow gentrification of Notting Hill - told through the pubs that developers built first (usually before they went bankrupt). 

From gravel pits and pig farms to punk gigs and overpriced pints, we trace how these buildings reveal the neighborhood’s real story. 

Featuring forgotten racetracks, bad drainage, Joe Strummer, Tsarist Russia, and one wildly confident pub that stood alone on a muddy hillside. 

Welcome to the pubs that built Notting Hill - and survi...

We'd love to hear from you!

Why did Bermondsey’s working-class pubs serve up pints to tanners reeking of dog poo. While Hampstead boasts literary haunts filled with poetry and spa visitors? 

It’s not luck. It’s topography - for the answer is buried deep. From glacial gravel, to wandering water, to the winds of fortune, this episode takes you on a rollicking ride through the forces that shaped London’s pub map long before the first pint was pulled.

From gravel terraces and Victorian fogs to posh mews pubs and riverside alehouses...

We'd love to hear from you!

Welcome to Publicity - London By Pub - the travel podcast that helps you actually experience London, not just tick off landmarks.

In this debut episode, we crack open Chelsea - London’s posh-meets-punk neighborhood -where our host Andy (a British expat now based in Miami) retraces a trip that should’ve been epic… but ended in full-on travel regret. 

With Expat Andy on board, we’ll get to revisit Chelsea but with a walking tour of five iconic pubs, each one a portal in...