Jack the Ripper Walk - sounds corny but, believe me, it isn"t.

Jack the Ripper Walking Tour
020 7624 3978; www.jacktheripperwalk.com

I know this sounds as corny as the waxworks at Madame Tussauds, but trust me, it ain’t. It’s my favourite walk offered by the Original London Walks, the group that organizes hourly tours with subjects ranging from Charles Dickens’s London to Princess Diana’s London, from the Old Jewish Quarter Tour to the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour. Show up at the tube stop, meet your guide, pay your £8, and you’re off. In two hours, see and learn more about London than most Londoners will ever know in a lifetime. Jack the Ripper Haunts meets Sunday nights at 7:30 p.m. at the Tower Hill tube and is often led by Donald Rumbelow (the world’s leading “Ripper-ologist”). He escorts his group through the East End of London, describing in gory detail the wheres and hows of each murder, finishing at the Ten Bells, the pub where the prostitute-victims drank their final gins. Despite initial protestations from visiting friends, they invariably return to my flat in a Victorian frenzy saying, “That was the best thing we’ve done in London.”

Glen Roven, four-time Emmy winner, has performed with orchestras around the world.