A Great Fire of London Museum in an Old Public Toilet

Adam is standing outside a public toilet next to the Monument in the City of London. Except it isn't a toilet any more... It's the Monument Micro Museum, a brand new museum all about the Great Fire of London, and it might just be the smallest museum in the world. Will, who spent three years making…

Victorian Surgery at London's Oldest Operating Theatre

Adam climbs a narrow spiral staircase, fifty-two steps of it, into the roof of an old church by London Bridge. Up there is the oldest surviving operating theatre in Europe... It was built in 1822, in the attic where the hospital apothecaries had been drying their herbs, because the space sat right…

Skeletons and a Jar of Moles at the Grant Museum of Zoology

Adam is in Bloomsbury this week, at the Grant Museum of Zoology. It is part of University College London, it is one room, and that room is packed floor to ceiling with skeletons, jars and glass cases... It is one of the few university zoology museums left in the country, which means the collection…

Riding the Mail Rail Under London

Bex heads to the Postal Museum in Clerkenwell, and then underneath it. Mail Rail is a tiny railway built to carry post across London, running in tunnels below the streets since the 1920s, and you get to ride through the original tunnels on a train that runs on the same track... Up above, the museu…

Sweet Wrappers and Cereal Boxes at the Museum of Brands

Adam is in Notting Hill this week, at a museum made almost entirely of the things most people throw away. The Museum of Brands has kept the packaging: cereal boxes, sweet wrappers, toys, comics and adverts going back to the Victorians... The heart of it is the Time Tunnel, a corridor that starts i…

A Thousand Years of History at Oxford Castle and Prison

Adam visits Oxford Castle and Prison to step back in time and explore the city's past. There has been something standing on this spot for a thousand years, and a costumed guide walks you through the lot, from Viking raids and the Norman conquest to the beginnings of education in Oxford and the cit…

The Curious Tale of the Horniman's Walrus

Adam is off to Forest Hill in south London for the Horniman Museum and Gardens, and the curious tale of a very overstuffed walrus... The walrus arrived in London in Victorian times, and the story goes that the taxidermist who prepared it had never seen a live one, so he filled out every last wrink…

Exploring the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford

This week Adam is wandering around the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, finding out what is on offer for visitors of every age. The Ashmolean opened its doors in 1683, which makes it the first public museum in Britain, and what is inside now covers half a million years of art and archaeology. Egyptian …

Deep Beneath London at the London Mithraeum

Adam heads into the City of London and then goes down, well below the modern pavements, to investigate the capital's Roman past at the London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE. Underneath the building is the temple of Mithras, put up by Roman Londoners around 1,800 years ago and dug up again in the 1950s.…

Feeding the Giraffes at Woburn Safari Park

Adam is off to Bedfordshire for a day at Woburn Safari Park, and he has landed one of the park's very special VIP experiences. That means getting far closer to the animals than most visitors ever manage, including the moment he gets to feed the giraffes... Woburn comes in two halves. On the Road S…