COME WITH ME TO THE TOWER OF LONDON

My favourite bits of one of my favourite places

It was a dizzyling beautiful morning beside the river Thames, where my travels today brought me to the Tower of London. After a long and dreary winter the February sky was a faultless blue. The sun was bright. Spring does not seem far away.

Unlike many of the Tower of London’s more celebrated inhabitants, I have only happy memories of this capital fortress, founded by William the Conqueror in the eleventh century and still iconic on the London skyline today, even as it is loomed over by skyscrapers of the modern City.

Here I have filmed television shows and given lectures. Here I once failed to stop the controller of a TV channel from leaping over the barrier keeping visitors off his heroine Anne Boleyn’s execution site. Here, in the giftshop, I once was refused sale of a replica sword, on the grounds that east London had quite enough knife crime as it was, without me walking into the streets carrying an unsheathed three-foot blade.

So today’s visit - here for a quick meeting - turned into a little bit of a nostalgia drive. I wandered. I took photos. I had happy memories. Here are my favourite bits of the Tower of London. I hope you like them too.

The White Tower