A London resident for three decades, Steve Fallon has written or contributed to more than 100 different guidebooks, including 10 editions of Lonely Planet’s London guide, and qualified as a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide the year the XXX Olympiad graced these shores in 2012. Who could possibly know their city better than a guidebook author?

Steve is a dual US-Ireland citizen and lived in Paris as a student, taught English at a university in Poland before the Berlin Wall came a-tumbling down, worked as a journalist for a dozen years in Hong Kong and then moved to Budapest, from where he wrote Lonely Planet’s first guidebooks to Hungary and Slovenia.

But London is home and what he knows best. From big-ticket attractions like the British Museum, Westminster Abbey and London Eye – and all the stories and personalities behind them – to the back streets of East London and Hoxton/Spitalfields after dark, Steve will introduce you to a city that even most Londoners don’t know.