Andrew Warde is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors as well as a qualified London Blue Badge Guide, City of London Guide, Palace of Westminster Guide and a member of the Institute of Tourist Guiding.

 

I qualified for the Blue Badge in 1977 and remain fascinated by the sights and sounds of London. I have worked in central London for more than 30 years seeing many changes over the years, but London has to keep pace with the modern world. Whether you live here or are just visiting I want to help you make the most of the art, architecture, entertainments and history that London has to offer.

 

My wife Dina’s father, Freddie Brampton was awarded the MBE for his services to guiding. Freddie died in 1994, aged 83, but he taught me a great deal. His career as a guide dated from the 1920s, when he began to take visitors from the Bloomsbury Hotels to see the sights of London. He wrote:

 

“I found that in Southampton Row visitors would ask you for directions mostly to Dickens House or the Old Curiosity Shop. After dinner in the hotels they would come out for a stroll and on the corner of Southampton Row and Theobalds Road, as I found out, is about where they ask such questions, so I began to offer to escort them on walks down to Lincoln’s Inn, the Middle Temple and Fleet Street, and I would tell them something about the history of this area.”

 

 

                                                                           The late Freddie Bampton MBE