Lending money for profit is one of the oldest financial practices we know. Over four thousand years it has been capped, condemned, disguised, licensed and finally built into the foundations of modern banking.

Roman law permitted lending at interest. In medieval England, Christian lenders faced a prohibition on charging it. In 1545, more than a thousand years after Roman rule ended in Britain, Henry VIII’s Parliament permitted interest up to ten per cent a year. This article follows that journey, from the clay tablets of Babylon to the Bank of England, and the people who supplied credit along the way.

Babylon: where interest begins

Interest-bearing loans appear in some of the earliest written laws. The Code of Hammurabi, from Babylon around 1780 BC, set maximum rates: a merchant could charge thirty-three and a third per cent on a loan of grain and twenty per cent on a loan of silver.¹ Temples were major lenders, alongside merchants and wealthy families.²

Babylonian scribes understood exactly how debt grows. The standard rate on silver was one-sixtieth a month, and their rule of thumb was that a silver debt doubled in five years.³ A clay tablet from around 2000–1700 BC appears to set a school exercise: how long does a loan take to double at compound interest?⁴

Babylon also laid the foundations of banking: deposits, payment by written order and debts that could be passed from hand to hand.⁵ Some of Babylon’s wealthy business families, such as the Egibi, whose archive of clay tablets spans five generations, even paid interest to the people who deposited money with them.³

Debt cancellations

At twenty per cent a year, a silver debt doubled in five years, faster than any harvest could grow. A farmer could usually repay what he borrowed; the growing interest is what pushed families into bondage and off their land.^6,7

Babylon’s kings responded by capping interest and periodically cancelling debts. These decrees were called misharum, meaning “justice” or “straightening out”. Hammurabi declared at least one early in his reign, and his successors issued more. The fullest surviving decree, by King Ammi-saduqa around 1646 BC, cancelled debts and freed people who had been sold into debt slavery. Loans made to fund business partnerships stayed in force.⁸

The kings presented these decrees as a duty to the gods, restoring balance to society.⁸ They also kept farmers on their land, paying taxes and available for labour and military service.⁶ It was a moral choice and a practical one.

The Bible inherited this idea of release. The Hebrew word for the jubilee release in Leviticus 25, deror, is related to the Babylonian andurarum, a royal debt release.⁷ The economist Michael Hudson argues that societies charging interest without caps or resets eventually tear themselves apart.⁶

Three faiths, shared concern

Judaism, Christianity and Islam all arise in the Middle East, within a few hundred miles of Babylon. They are called the Abrahamic religions because all three revere Abraham as their common ancestor.

Abraham’s story begins in Babylon’s own world. Genesis says his family set out “from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan”. Ur was a city of southern Mesopotamia, in present-day Iraq, about 140 miles south-east of Babylon, and tradition places Abraham there in the age of Hammurabi. His homeland had learned, at great cost, that interest compounding beyond the means to repay could ruin families, and Babylon’s kings capped it and cancelled debts. The three faiths that trace themselves to Abraham inherit that lesson, and all three restrict interest.

Judaism

The Torah forbids interest on loans between Jews and links the rule to protecting the poor: “that your brother may live with you” (Leviticus 25).⁹ Deuteronomy permits interest from a foreigner: “You may charge interest to a foreigner, but not to your brother.”¹⁰ Later, rabbis developed the heter iska, a contract that turns a loan into a business partnership in which profit and risk are shared.¹¹

Christianity

Christians read Jesus’s words in Luke 6:35, “lend, hoping for nothing again”, as extending the Hebrew rule to everyone, friend or foe.¹² A loan was an act of charity to a neighbour in need. In the thirteenth century Thomas Aquinas, drawing on Aristotle, added an argument from justice: money is used up when it is spent, like bread or wine, so charging for its use as well as its return meant “to sell what does not exist”.¹³ The offence lay in a fixed return on money, as if money itself could breed.¹²

Islam

The Qur’an forbids riba, interest, and sets it against trade: “Allah has permitted trading and forbidden interest.”¹⁴ The ban applies to all lenders. Islamic finance uses profit-and-loss-sharing partnerships such as mudarabah, in which one party provides capital and the other runs the business.¹⁵

	Approach to interest	Main reason
Babylon	Permitted, capped and periodically reset	Justice and a stable society
Judaism	Forbidden between Jews; jubilee release	Care for the community and the poor
Christianity	Forbidden for all Christian lenders	Charity, and money as “barren”
Islam	Forbidden for all lenders	Justice, and the lender sharing the risk

All three faiths treat a guaranteed return on lent money as unjust, and all three accept profit earned by sharing the risk.

Roman Britain

Rome regulated interest in the Babylonian tradition .The Twelve Tables, Rome’s earliest written law code fixed a maximum rate, and later Roman practice settled on one per cent a month, or twelve per cent a year.¹⁶

Christianity spread through Roman Britain during the fourth century. Christians in Britain lived under Roman civil law, which permitted interest within its limits. The Church set its own rules for its own clergy: in AD 325, the Council of Nicaea ruled that any clergyman lending at interest would be deposed from office.¹⁷ Civil law and Church law were separate authorities, each with its own rules.

The Christian Roman Empire continued to regulate interest after Rome withdrew from Britain around 410. Under Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, ordinary lenders could charge up to six per cent, merchants up to eight per cent, and the highest-ranking dignitaries up to four per cent.¹⁸

Anglo-Saxon England

As the Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity, the Church’s rule on usury came with it, and in England it reached the laity as well as the clergy. Around 690 the penitential of Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury, a handbook guiding priests in setting penances, prescribes three years on bread and water for anyone who exacts usury. The penitential of Egbert, Archbishop of York, sets the same penance.²²

In 786 a papal mission held councils in England whose decrees were read out in Latin and English to clergy and laity together: “We also prohibited usury.” They cite the Psalm praising the man “who has not put out his money to usury”, and St Augustine: “Where there is profit, there is loss: profit in the coffers, loss in the conscience.”²³

Kings probably upheld the ban as well. A twelfth-century legal compilation, the Laws of Edward the Confessor, credits Edward with banishing usurers from his kingdom: a convicted usurer lost all his possessions and was outlawed.²⁴

Medieval England: the prohibition

In medieval England, Church and Crown treated usury as a wrong committed by Christian lenders. Usury then meant any return above the sum lent on a loan.

A twelfth-century legal compilation attributed to Edward the Confessor a law under which a convicted usurer lost all his possessions and was outlawed.¹⁹ The treatise known as Glanvill, written under Henry II, gives a clearer picture. A lender “commits usury if he receives more in return”. The penalty arrived at death: if an inquest found that someone had died guilty of usury, his goods went to the king and his land returned to his lord.¹⁹

Even the mortgage fell under suspicion. In 1175 a Church council at Westminster considered prohibiting mortgages, and Glanvill called them “unjust and dishonourable”, a type of usury, though the king’s court allowed them.¹⁹

Credit remained essential. Merchants financed trade, landowners borrowed against future harvests and kings borrowed to govern and fight. Christian lenders earned a return through other arrangements, such as fixed penalties for late repayment.¹⁹

Jewish lenders under the Crown

Jewish communities settled in English towns after the Norman Conquest of 1066.²⁰ The Crown allowed Jewish lenders to charge interest openly.¹⁹

Their lending was officially recorded. From 1194, loans were written as chirographs, documents divided between the parties, and copies were kept in official chests called archae.²¹ A branch of royal government, the Exchequer of the Jews, recorded debts and collected taxes from the community.²²

Royal protection came at a high price. The Crown taxed Jewish wealth heavily, and Magna Carta limited the interest collected on debts owed by heirs who were still under age.¹⁹ In 1275 Edward I’s Statute of the Jewry outlawed Jewish lending at interest, and in 1290 he expelled England’s entire Jewish population.²³

Italian bankers and hidden interest

Italian merchants, often called Lombards, were Christians and bound by the same prohibition on usury. They supplied large sums to English kings all the same, using international trading networks and carefully worded contracts.

Interest was often hidden in the accounts. The king granted lenders “gifts” or allowances, and one royal clerk described payments promised to the Florentine Bardi from 1309 as “gifts in the name of usury”. Historians who have reconstructed these loans estimate that kings usually paid fifteen to twenty per cent in peaceful years and thirty to forty per cent or more in wartime.²⁴

The Ricciardi of Lucca served Edward I as his principal bankers from 1272 to 1294. The Bardi held a leading role for nearly thirty years until the firm failed in 1345.²⁴

In Venice, bankers moved money between customers by book transfer and lent out part of their depositors’ money while keeping enough on hand for withdrawals. In doing so they created money, a practice known today as fractional reserve banking (a practice that developed in the 13th and 14th centuries).²⁵

The Knights Templar

The Knights Templar, a religious military order, provided some of the most advanced financial services in medieval Europe. Their London headquarters at the New Temple held deposits, transferred money and made loans.²⁶

Henry II entrusted them with funds in 1172. King John borrowed from them repeatedly and placed the Crown Jewels in their keeping. Under Henry III, the royal treasury itself was kept at the Temple.²⁶

The Tudor turning point

The sixteenth century brought the decisive change. Usury had once been a matter for the Church courts alone. Under Henry VII, Parliament began to legislate on it: his Acts of 1487 and 1495 made usury an offence in the King’s courts as well.¹²

The Reformation gave Parliament authority over the Church itself. The Act of Supremacy of 1534 made Henry VIII Supreme Head of the Church of England, and from then on changes to the Church’s organisation or beliefs required Parliament’s approval.³⁰

In 1540 the Habsburg Netherlands permitted interest up to twelve per cent on commercial loans. In 1542 Henry VIII’s Parliament passed England’s first bankruptcy statute. When a debtor fled or hid at home to avoid paying, the Lord Chancellor could seize and sell his property and share the proceeds among his creditors “according to the quantity of their debt”. In 1545 Parliament permitted interest of up to ten per cent a year on all loans. Anything above that remained usury, punished by forfeiture of three times the sum lent and the interest. Together the two Acts gave lenders a way to recover their money and the right to earn a return on it.

For Christian lenders in England, this was the crucial step: they could now charge interest openly, within a legal limit. Religious thinking was shifting too. In a letter of the same year, the reformer John Calvin wrote that usury was forbidden only where it was “repugnant to justice and charity”, leaving room for fair commercial lending.

The change was contested. In 1552 Edward VI’s Protestant government revoked the statute, declaring usury “by the worde of God utterly prohibited”.

In 1571 Elizabeth I’s Parliament restored the ten per cent ceiling, while still describing usury as sin. The Act became permanent in 1598.

Religious thinking was shifting too. In a letter of 1545, the reformer John Calvin wrote that usury was forbidden only where it was “repugnant to justice and charity”, leaving room for fair commercial lending.³¹

Thomas Gresham

Thomas Gresham served Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I as the Crown’s financial agent in Antwerp. He encouraged Elizabeth to borrow from merchants and wealthy people in the City of London, reducing the Crown’s dependence on foreign lenders. Historian John Guy calls this a “revolutionary new model” in which borrowing at home became the government’s normal practice.³²

Gresham was also the mind behind the recoinage of 1560–61, which restored a currency debased by Henry VIII and Edward VI.³² His Royal Exchange, modelled on the Antwerp Bourse, opened in 1571, the same year Parliament restored the interest ceiling.³³

By 1600 England had legal interest, London lenders to the Crown, trusted coinage and a commercial heart in the City.

Tally sticks and the king’s promise

From the twelfth century to the nineteenth, the Exchequer recorded sums owed and paid using tally sticks. Notches cut into the wood recorded the amount, and the stick was split lengthways. The lender kept one half, the “stock”, and the other party kept the “foil”. When the halves matched, the account “tallied”.³⁴

In 1665 George Downing took the system further with interest-bearing tallies. Each came with an order assigning repayment from a named source of revenue. They could be transferred by endorsement and were repaid in strict sequence, so they circulated much like money.³⁵

Their value rested on Charles II’s word. In 1672 he suspended payment on these orders in the Stop of the Exchequer.³⁶ Fourteen goldsmith-bankers held almost £1.3 million of them, and eleven failed within a few years. By early 1694 the government could find nobody willing to accept new tallies in payment for naval supplies.³⁵

The tally was a sound instrument. The problem was a promise that the king could break whenever he chose.

The goldsmiths themselves had become London’s first bankers. They took deposits, issued notes and lent out part of what they held, developing fractional reserve banking in England.³⁷

1694: a promise lenders could trust

Parliament had authorised the Crown to raise taxes for centuries. After 1688, it also authorised government borrowing and set aside tax revenues to pay the interest. The Act that founded the Bank of England in 1694 shows how:

Named revenue: new duties on ships’ tonnage and on beer, ale and other drinks created a yearly fund of £140,000. Of this, £100,000 a year went to the Bank’s subscribers, eight per cent on the £1.2 million they lent.
Parliament controlled repayment: Parliament controlled the terms: the Bank of England was established in 1694 as a temporary institution. Under the original Act, after 1 August 1705 the government could give a year’s notice, repay the loan and any overdue annual payments through Parliament, and bring the Bank’s existence to an end.
The king’s reach was limited: the Bank faced penalties if it lent to the Crown without Parliament’s authority, though in reality this would have helped to protect the Banks when looking back at history.

The Bank was founded as a private bank to act as banker to the government.³⁹ Its loan cost the state eight per cent, while the government’s other long-term borrowing, through annuities and lotteries, cost up to fourteen per cent.⁴⁰ Douglass North and Barry Weingast describe this as the government gaining the ability to commit credibly to protecting property and honouring its debts.⁴¹

Interest, war and empire

Once lenders trusted Parliament’s promise, Britain could borrow on a huge scale. Its debt rose from five per cent of national output in 1692 to over two hundred per cent by 1815.⁴²

Most of that money went on war, and much of the war was overseas. England fought 39 per cent of its wars overseas between 1600 and 1700, rising to 65 per cent between 1700 and 1850. British naval strength overtook the Dutch in the late seventeenth century and the French in the early eighteenth.⁴³

A cycle took hold. Trade paid the taxes, the taxes paid the interest, the interest secured the loans, and the loans paid for the navy that protected trade. Between 1689 and 1714, 43 per cent of Parliament’s tax bills mentioned both military aims and traded goods.⁴³

The East India Company

The East India Company, chartered in 1600,⁴⁴ shows the shift from loans imposed by the king to bargains struck with investors through Parliament.

In 1641 Charles I forced the Company to hand over its pepper stock, valued at £63,283, as a “loan”. Half of it, £31,500, was still unpaid after his execution.⁴⁴

Red Dragon on the ship of the first East India Company Ship

In 1698, merchants and investors seeking to challenge the existing East India Company’s monopoly lent the government £2 million at eight per cent. In exchange, they obtained parliamentary backing for a rival trading company—the New East India Company.⁴⁰˒⁴⁴

This followed the Bank of England’s model: a loan to the state in return for a charter. The contrast was clear: Charles I had taken goods and promised repayment—a forced loan to the Crown; the later government obtained money through a bargain backed by Parliament.

In 1709, the old and new East India companies merged to form the United Company. As part of the merger terms, Queen Anne required the United Company to provide an interest-free loan of £1.2 million.⁴⁴

Until 1715 the government’s long-term debt was held by three great corporations—the Bank of England, the East India Company and the South Sea Company—and the public owned shares in them.⁴⁵

The East India Company’s victories at Plassey in 1757 and Buxar in 1764 gave it control of the revenue of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.⁴⁶ The Company became a territorial power as well as a trading business.

When the Company fell into financial crisis in 1772, the Bank of England supported the markets by buying more bills of exchange—turning future payments into immediate money—and lending to selected bankers.⁴⁷

In 1773 the direction of lending reversed: Parliament now lent money to the Company in exchange for recognition of the British state’s ultimate authority over its Indian territories.⁴⁶

Falling rates and new cushions

With interest legal, Parliament lowered the ceiling to encourage trade. The maximum fell to eight per cent in 1624, six per cent in 1651 (confirmed in 1660) and five per cent in 1713.²⁹ In 1651 Parliament also began using the neutral phrase “interest of money” in place of “usury”.⁴⁸

From 1751 the Bank of England issued consols, perpetual government bonds paying three per cent, which became one of the most important securities in the world.⁴⁹

The Usury Laws Repeal Act of 1854 removed the general limits altogether.⁵⁰ England also built cushions that protect the debtor:

Bankruptcy, 1542: England’s first bankruptcy statute.²⁸
Limited companies, 1855: the Limited Liability Act, one year after the usury laws were repealed.⁵¹
Freedom from debtors’ prison, 1869: the Debtors Act largely abolished imprisonment for debt.⁵²
Economic growth: a growing economy lets incomes keep pace with debts.

Babylon reset the debt itself. England took a different approach: it developed ways to limit the harm a debt could do.

In 1873 Walter Bagehot’s Lombard Street set out how a central bank should act as lender of last resort: providing emergency loans when other lenders withdrew. It should lend freely to banks able to repay but short of cash, charging a high interest rate and taking sound assets as security.⁵³

Interest in the modern system

The Babylonian principle of a legal ceiling survives today. Since 2015, UK lenders of high-cost short-term credit can charge up to 0.8 per cent a day, and total repayments are capped at double the amount borrowed.⁵⁴

Today, banks create new deposits whenever they make a loan, and most money in circulation begins this way.⁵⁵ The Bank of England steers the cost of that borrowing through Bank Rate, which fell to 0.1 per cent in 2020 and now stands at 3.75 per cent.⁵⁶

When rates reached their lowest point, central banks turned to quantitative easing, creating money to buy government bonds and push down longer-term interest rates. The US Federal Reserve began in late 2008, and the Bank of England followed in March 2009.^57,58

Who benefits from interest today

The arithmetic that Babylon’s scribes understood still works in favour of those who own capital. At the end of 2025, the 1.5 per cent of the world’s adults with more than a million dollars owned 38.8 per cent of all wealth, while the 42 per cent with under ten thousand dollars owned 0.6 per cent.⁵⁹ In Britain, the richest tenth of households hold 42 per cent of household wealth.⁶⁰

The economist Thomas Piketty argues that when the return on capital exceeds the growth rate of the economy, existing inequalities of wealth tend to widen over time.⁶¹ Piketty himself presents this as a tendency shaped by policy and history.⁶²

Living standards have risen alongside. The share of adults worldwide with under ten thousand dollars fell from almost three-quarters in 2000 to just over 41 per cent in 2025.⁵⁹

Conclusion: From clay tablets to central banks

Across four thousand years, societies have confronted the same tension: debts can grow beyond the capacity of borrowers to repay them. Babylon addressed it through interest limits and debt cancellation. Religious traditions placed restrictions on lending and obligations on creditors. England developed institutions that sustained borrowing and contained financial crises. Each approach reveals how deeply debt shapes the relationship between wealth, authority and the people who must pay.

England’s arrangements helped finance trade, war and empire. Parliamentary backing strengthened lenders’ confidence, while the Bank of England became a source of emergency money during financial crises. Together, these institutions extended the reach and durability of credit. Their success also expanded the scale of the obligations that future income would have to support.

This history places interest within a question of economic limits as well as moral responsibility. A debt is a claim on future income; its repayment depends on the livelihoods, production and resources that generate that income. When those claims exceed the capacity to pay, the consequences spread beyond individual borrowers, affecting the stability of the society itself.

The investigation therefore returns to the problem recognised in ancient Mesopotamia: how far can financial claims grow before they undermine the people and productive foundations on which repayment depends? The institutions have changed; the relationship between debt and the capacity to pay remains central.

The follow-up article, The Prophets of Interest: Answers to an Ancient Problem, examines the responses proposed across history and what they might mean for money and finance today.
dragonloretours

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Amy Kapczynski, on Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century – http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/f1les/Kapczynski2015.pdf
Thomas Piketty, “Putting distribution back at the center of economics” (2015) – http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Piketty2015JEP.pdf

What Our Customers Are Saying

Uncovering a Hidden history of London Uncovering a Hidden history of London — We were not exactly sure what to expect when we signed up but got more than we anticipated for this tour of hidden symbolism. The guide kicked things of with a conceptual overview of lay lines, nodes, and rivers, which grounded the walk... More reviews read less

Karina & Lance Hunt
7/31/2023

Where the worldly meets the spiritual I fully enjoyed this well-thought tour. Arjun is a very knowledgeable, friendly and passionate guide who will take you into an esoteric journey through the tangible and the untangible, managing to connect Gods, traditions, money... And so much more!
Defenitely not your typical tour, but one which will surely stick with... More reviews read less

Oscar Vidal
7/21/2026

I want to come back and do this again! The Dragon Tour with Arjun was so rich, deep and truly heart and eye opening. I would do it again tomorrow! Thank you, Arjun for taking us on this journey through the City of London, through time and history and into the true nature of reality. Such an opening experience... More reviews read less

Amy
9/09/2024
Great, engaging and informative tour The guide was exceptionally knowledgeable and took great care to individualize the information. Good with a 10 year old with a lot of questions. Saw a few more churches than we expected but they were spectacular and ones we would have missed on our own. Symbolism of icons was presented... More reviews read less

Margaret
11/23/2023

In somewhat of a leisurely Jules Verne sequence, the tour was a voyage across time. It gave us glimpses of Londinium in present day London. Our tour guide Mr Arjun, a prolific researcher and storyteller, dotted the landscape and ancient buildings with characters, events and turning points. ... More reviews read less

Aditi
11/03/2024

Tour Tour — I had the most wonderful tour today. This is a knowledgable guide who has put a lot of hours into research and is still looking for feedback and improvement and developing new things constantly. This tour tells a story that is captivating and so rich in details. He... More reviews read less

Montana Groenendaal
9/03/2024
Unusual and interesting perspective up to historical information Unusual and interesting perspective up to historical information — The tour was very interesting. The history of the city and country was delivered from out-of-bitten track angle. During the tour a lot of information was delivered as well as considerable area was covered. Several churches and museums were visited with... More reviews read less

Zhamilya
8/21/2024

Best Tour Yet. Best Tour Yet. This was the best tour I've been on yet. I came to England with specific sites I needed to visit and Arjun delivered on all of them. He was very accommodating, informative with such interesting history/knowledge, kept excellent pace and listened to the things that were important... More reviews read less

E3814PXjennifers
7/01/2025

A very entertaining guided walk by Arjun A very entertaining guided walk by Arjun who has a deep and extensive knowledge of the subject and of the history and geography of the City of London. I was born in Central London and have worked in the area covered by the tour, but I was unaware of much... More reviews read less

Keith
9/30/2024
Calling all seekers… A deeply thoughtful investigation into the meaning of symbols and the stories they tell about us —who we are , who we were—from antiquity to present time. Arjun is not only a wonderful storyteller but an intellectual. Fellow seekers, no matter what dragons you may have to slay, this tour... More reviews read less

Kiley E Moran
5/30/2025

Review Of course — here is the review with the name spelled Arjun:

I had an incredible experience with Dragon Lore Tours! The tour was truly memorable, and our guide, Arjun, was exceptional. He was incredibly knowledgeable, passionate, and brought so much depth and meaning to the experience. His understanding of the... More reviews read less

Lisa
7/21/2026

A Fascinating Walk Through the City of London. A Fascinating Walk Through the City of London. Would you like to time travel to the origins of one of the world's best loved cities? Our guide, Arjun, has created an interesting and intriguing event that should not be missed! Find out how the positions of the earth's energy lines... More reviews read less

A4941RAanneb
3/01/2025
Mystical, fun and deeply informative This is definitely not your typical tour. It is fun, mystical and educational on many levels. Arjun is deeply insightful and has a broad knowledge of both the historical and the metaphysical aspects of the places we visited. You can tell he loves taking his groups on an adventure, and... More reviews read less

Cinzia Sarigu
8/06/2026

This was a great walking tour of hidden... This was a great walking tour of hidden and ancient sites within the City of London. Highlights included the London Stone, Mithraeum and the Inner Temple of the Knights Templar. I'm grateful to Arjun for his interest in the stories that lay beneath the surface and his ability to share... More reviews read less

Robert
2/01/2026

Memorable voyage across time. Memorable voyage across time. In somewhat of a leisurely Jules Verne sequence, the tour was a memorable voyage across time. It gave us glimpses of Londinium in present day London. Our tour guide Mr Arjun, a prolific researcher and storyteller, dotted the landscape and ancient buildings with characters, events and... More reviews read less

aditii86
11/01/2024
Guide gives you a great information and makes... Guide gives you a great information and makes you think of things from another perspective. However it was a bank holiday so not one place was open we just looked at pictures on his phone. Should have been noted when booking that nothing was open as I wouldn't have gone.... More reviews read less

Wendy H
8/01/2024

I am so glad I joined this tour... I am so glad I joined this tour of mythical symbolism, history and finance in the Square Mile. I'm very resistant to being told what to do and think, so this was a revelation for me! Arjun created a compelling narrative that encompassed the founding of the City of London,... More reviews read less

Peter Archibald
8/07/2025

Our whole family thoroughly enjoyed the unique city... Our whole family thoroughly enjoyed the unique city of London tour with Arjun. We booked a private tour after our friend recommended Arjun, but we asked him for a mix of historical and mystical (bespoke tour), and he delivered! The information he shared was intriguing and interesting to both our... More reviews read less

Mireille Azar
8/01/2025

A History of Interest – From Babylon to the Bank of England