The stuffaboutlondon Review of 2025

And a very happy new year to everyone reading this. Time for my traditional look back at the posts that have had the most visits over the past 12 months. Click on any link to see that post.

1. Henry VIII’s Wine Cellar under Whitehall (always No. 1, but this year only 2% more than the second place post)
2. The London Peace Pagoda in Battersea Park (new entry!)
3. The Blue Bridge in St James’s Park (up 3 from 6)
4. The American Memorial Chapel, St Paul’s (down 2 from 2)
5. The Old British Library Reading Room in the British Museum (new entry!)
6. The Bomb Damage Maps (down 3 from 3)
7. Scientists’ Corner, Westminster Abbey (down 3 from 4)
8. The Riddle of the (Embankment) Sphinx (new entry!)
9. Boudicca, destroyer of London (new entry!)
10. Up on the roof (again): the ‘Beast’ (down 3 from 7)

If you’re interested in previous years Top Tens, here are the lists for 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021)

Also a reminder about my online talks that are coming up at the end of the month. Book now and you can get three for the price of two.

There were nearly 40 new blog posts this year (a lot more than usual). Some have done very well, others have had hardly anyone look at them. Dive in and see if there’s anything you’ve missed.

Books and Exhibitions

• Some more books worth your time
• Book Review: Echolands: A Journey in Search of Boudica
• Exhibition: London in the Second World War

Stuff in Museums

• The Old British Library Reading Room in the British Museum
• The Rolls Royce Merlin – the engine that won WW2
• Getting Medieval: Room 8 at the V+A
• ‘Gassed’ by John Singer Sargent at the IWM Blavatnik Gallery
• The Mexica Double-Headed Serpent in the British Museum

Sculptures and Memorials

• Piccadilly Sculptures – old(ish) and new(ish)
• The Queen Empress with the Dodgy Nose
• The Cenotaph – Lutyens’ ’empty tomb’ on Whitehall
• More Neo-Gothic Splendour: the Buxton Memorial
• Landseer’s Lions in Trafalgar Square
• The Bomb-Scarred Guards Memorial
• The Birdcage Walk Memorial to Australia’s ‘Shy VC’
• The missing statue of Robert Milligan
• The Myth of ‘London’s Nazi Memorial’
• Gerry Judah’s Great War Sculptures in St Paul’s
• The Churchill Screen in St Paul’s Cathedral

Buildings and Architecture

• Elsyng Chapel Tower on London Wall
• The Guards Chapel and its Post War Rebuilding
• A lot more than the Da Vinci Code: Temple Church
• 22 Farm Street, Mayfair – a tudorbethan house of history
• Westminster’s Medieval Jewel Tower
• The Barbican Conservatory: The Hanging Gardens of EC1*
• Up On the Roof (one more time) from The Lookout

Random Stuff

• Guards! Guards! (And the changing thereof)
• The Bright Red London Telephone Box
• The Body in the Lake: a Buckingham Palace Mystery
• Myths and Legends of the London Stone
• The Brewery Workers’ Attack on the ‘Hyena of Brescia’
• The Egregious Error of the Tower Hill Sundial
• Brendan Bracken and the Churchill Clock
• The Great Fire of London – Online Talk

Out of the City

• Days Out: Getting Anglo-Saxon at Sutton Hoo
• Days Out: Rochester – the Castle and Cathedral
• A Journey to the Source of the Thames

Here’s to another year of blog posts, online talks and real life tours. If you want to find out about what’s going on, just sign up for my monthly newsletter, or follow on Facebook or Instagram