Ale and Agitation: A Bloomsbury Pub Walk Through Reformers, Writers and Suffragists

Bloomsbury spent the best part of a century arguing with itself, and it did most of the arguing within walking distance of a decent pint. Reformers, suffragists, economists, novelists, pacifists and one very famous mummified philosopher are crammed into a handful of garden squares, and the blue plaques recording them get read on the hoof, in a rush, on the way to the British Museum. This route slows all that down: about two miles, half a dozen plaques, and a pub within sight of most of them.

The route in brief

• Start: Russell Square station
• Finish: Doughty Street (Chancery Lane or Russell Square for the tube home)
• Distance: roughly 2 miles, flat throughout
• Time: two hours of walking and looking, or a whole afternoon if you take the pubs seriously
• Best day: Saturday, when the museums are heaving but the squares are quiet

Russell Square and the Bedford estate

Begin under the plane trees. Russell Square was laid out in the opening years of the nineteenth century as the centrepiece of the Bedford estate's development, and its sheer size — one of the biggest squares in London — tells you exactly what the Russells thought of themselves. The plaque hunting starts a few streets east.

Bedford Square: education as sedition

Walk east to Bedford Square, the best-preserved Georgian square in Bloomsbury, and find number 47. In 1849 this was the first home of Bedford College, founded by Elizabeth Jesser Reid as the first higher education college for women in Britain. It opened with a handful of students and a great deal of scepticism from the neighbours, and it is the quietest radical stop on the walk: no statue, no crowd, just a handsome townhouse where the argument about women's education was won one lecture at a time.

Gower Street: Bentham in a cabinet

Turn south-west to Gower Street. UCL's Wilkins Building is grand enough, but the real draw is in the Student Centre, where Jeremy Bentham sits in a wooden cabinet with his walking stick, his wax head and an expression of mild surprise. It is free to see and open to anyone who can walk through the door. Bentham's utilitarianism was genuinely dangerous thinking in its day, and the university he helped inspire was founded on admitting students whatever their religion — a novelty in England at the time.

Pint one is minutes away: the Museum Tavern on Great Russell Street, all mirrors and dark wood, directly opposite the British Museum gates. The pub's own legend has Karl Marx drinking here while working in the reading room. Treat that with the usual caution, but the beer is real and the position is unbeatable.

Gordon Square: Virginia Woolf's doorstep

Head north up Gower Street and turn into Gordon Square. Number 46 carries a blue plaque for Virginia Woolf, who moved here in 1904 with her siblings and promptly started the Thursday evening gatherings that became the Bloomsbury Group. This square is the heart of the walk: Woolf, Keynes, Strachey, Bell and Forster all circle these gardens in one way or another, and the houses are elegant enough to make the whole thing look like a house party rather than a revolution in English letters.

Tavistock Square: Gandhi and the right to refuse

Two minutes east, Tavistock Square does the heavier political lifting. There is a statue of Gandhi, who studied law in London before, much later, becoming the square's most unexpected resident in bronze. More affecting and far less visited is the stone commemorating conscientious objectors, unveiled in 1994, which stands as a memorial to everyone who has established and maintained the right to refuse to kill. Give that one a minute. The British Medical Association building looms over the square and offers a useful contrast: institutions get plaques too.

Best pint nearby: the Lord John Russell on Marchmont Street, a proper corner pub with a few hand pumps and a small outdoor space. If it is full, the Plough on Museum Street is a sound second choice.

Lamb's Conduit Street and Queen Square

Cut south-east to Lamb's Conduit Street, named after the sixteenth-century water conduit built by William Lamb to supply the area — a reminder that before any of the plaques went up, Bloomsbury's most radical act was plumbing. The Lamb at number 33 is the pick: Victorian, wood-panelled, with snob screens you can still peek through. The Perseverance across the road has a back garden for warmer days.

Then Queen Square, with its statue of Queen Charlotte and the Queen's Larder on the corner, named so the story goes after a room where the queen's food was kept while she was being treated nearby. It is the least radical pub on the route and much the most comfortable, which by hour two is not nothing.

Doughty Street: Dickens and the finish

End at 48 Doughty Street, where Charles Dickens lived from 1837 and wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. The house is now the Charles Dickens Museum, and the blue plaque is a good one to sign off on: a writer who spent a career campaigning about poverty, workhouses and the courts, and did it from a Bloomsbury terrace. The Rugby Tavern on Great James Street is two minutes away and does a decent lunch if you have timed the walk for a Sunday.

Best pint near each stop

• The British Museum and that Marx legend: the Museum Tavern, Great Russell Street — Victorian mirrors, cask ale, tourist pricing.
• Gandhi and the conscientious objectors' memorial: the Lord John Russell, Marchmont Street — the local's local.
• Virginia Woolf's Gordon Square: the Plough, Museum Street — small, plain, reliable.
• Lamb's Conduit Street: the Lamb, number 33 — snob screens and a well-kept pint.
• Queen Square: the Queen's Larder — wood, gossip, a corner table.
• Dickens's Doughty Street: the Rugby Tavern, Great James Street — lunch rather than just a drink.

Practical notes

The Charles Dickens Museum charges admission and is best booked ahead. UCL's auto-icon is free and available during building hours, the squares are public and free, and the whole route is step-free — the only obstacles are kerbs and other people's dogs. Start at Russell Square rather than Holborn if you want to end near a station. It is not a loop, which is a polite way of saying there is a reason the pubs sit where they do.