To celebrate International Women’s Day, the St James's Guided Walks - showing the people and places that have shaped the area - are back. This time, inviting you to discover the women who defined St James’s over the centuries and those still making their mark on the area today.

Over three hundred years in the making and still evolving, St James's is an iconic area of central London and to guide you through the history of the women who lived, worked and played there, is your very own Blue Badge tour guide from the British Guild of Tourist Guides.

Blue Badge guides are internationally recognised for excellence in their field and offer the gold standard when it comes to local knowledge. Our guides will host two walks beginning at St James’s Market Pavilion and lasting an hour and a half.

Women, alongside their male contemporaries, have played an integral part in making St James’s what it is today, leaving their mark in the fields of art, science, fashion and food. Explore this one of a kind area and unearth it's secrets as you learn where Ada Lovelace worked on the first algorithm and computer programme, where Virginia Woolf wrote her most famous works and where Alison Smithson’s iconic brutalist architecture is to be found amongst many other secrets of St James's.

The tours leave from the St James’s Market Pavilion at 11 am and 2pm, running 1.5 hours. Please arrive 10 minutes before the start.

Please note: Routes will vary according to the guide and group mobility.