Tower of London still a crowd puller

Ravens, Beefeaters and the Crown Jewels are three of the things most commonly associated with the Tower of London today. In the past the Tower was the most feared prison in the land as listeners to the City & South Bank Circular mp3 guided tour will discover.

Two of King Henry VIII's wives were executed here. His second wife, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded her in 1536. Her trial began on 15th May, 1536. She was executed on 19th May. She was accused of committing incest, sleeping with four men and, most seriously, plotting to kill her husband. In reality, her fate was sealed because she had been unable to give Henry VIII the surviving male heir he craved. Catherine Howard, wife number five, met a similar grisly fate. For her sins, Catherine was beheaded on 13th February, 1542, having pleaded guilty to treason by embarking on pre-martial affairs with Thomas Culpeper and Francis Dereham. Culpeper was publicly beheaded; Dereham was hung, disemboweled, beheaded and then quartered. Public executions were held on Tower Hill. They were great crowd pullers.

Another famous figure in British history, Guy Fawkes, was tortured, on the rack, in the Tower. His captors were impressed - and unnerved - by the calmness with which he had responded to questioning. It was only after torture that he revealed the names of his accomplices. Guy Fawkes, the most famous conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot of 5th Novemeber, 1605 was executed opposite the Parliament he tried to blow up. Visitors to the capital can learn about the Palace of Westminster (Big Ben et al) with the Palace Trail city guide. York born Fawkes converted to Catholicism as a young man. Discover what help radicalise him with The Best of York downloadable travel guide.

One man who escaped the gallows in the seventeenth century was Colonel Thomas Blood. Find out what he did - and how he lived to tell the tale - with The City and The Tower iPod travel guide. To hear an audio sample from The City and The Tower podcast guided tour please click here.

The Yeoman Warders - more commonly known as the Beefeaters - came into existence in the late fifteenth century. Up until recently all the Yeoman Warders were men. That all changed in September last year when Moira Cameron became the first female Beefeater.

There are five Walk Talk Tours of London. Each of the London tours is available in English, French, German and Spanish. Every tour comes complete with a downloadable map