Guide Profile
Click to enlarge
Anna McKeown
Last updated 06/07/2012
View Anna's 'London in Depth' Information
Email:
Address: 68 Auden Place Primrose Hill London NW1 8ND
Mobile: 07958611248
Year qualified: 1974
Other qualifications: BA (Hons) Classics
LGSM Drama
Native language: English
Other language: French
Biography: Anna traces her roots back to East Anglian Cromwellian stock. According to family tradition, she was conceived on a boat at the foot of Sutton Hoo during WWII, which she claims gives her a special affinity with the Ship Burial in the British Museum. She attended schools in Suffolk, captaining cricket and lacrosse teams, and studying violin and piano. She won a State Scholarship and Exhibition to London University, followed by a Toynbee scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. For her degree, she specialised in Greek and Roman history, language, art and drama, playing the part of Electra in the original Greek for the Classical Association. She obtained a Nuffield bursary to travel in Greece and Turkey. While at university, Anna taught herself Italian, and assisted in compiling the Orlandi dictionary. After a career in theatre and film in the Swinging Sixties, she studied art history at Birkbeck College, with an emphasis on early renaissance Italian art, and combined work as tourist guide, mother of three, and lexicographer (OUP, art consultant Chambers Biographical Dictionary, etc). Anna has travelled extensively in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, the USA, and Cuba. She is a founder member of the Institute of Tourist Guiding, and takes a leading role in building professional standards and trade union organisation. She is also active in her local borough of Camden, where she chairs her residents' management committee. For the good of society, Anna no longer sings, and has passed her piano and fiddle on to her grandchildren!
Region for which accredited: London
London sites for which accredited: British Library, British Museum, City of London, Docklands, East London, Greenwich, Hampton Court Palace, National Gallery, Parliament, Somerset House, St. Paul's Cathedral, Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tower of London, Victoria & Albert Musm., Westminster Abbey
Sites outside London for which accredited: Bath, Oxford, Salisbury Cathedral, Stonehenge, Stratford-upon-Avon, Winchester Cathedral, Windsor Castle
Special interests: Anna’s skills and rich experience of life in Britain and abroad have equipped her for a varied and sustained guiding career. Languages include French (accredited) and Italian. Anna holds special qualifications for guiding in Parliament, Somerset House and Courtauld Institute, and modern developments in Docklands. London is her passion, where she is most at home sharing with visitors the Capital’s history and cultural scene – its churches and palaces, museums and galleries, theatres and concert halls, its back streets and its river. Her preferred British historical periods are: Roman, Norman, Tudor and Reformation, Civil War and Restoration, scientific Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, and Second World War. Anna’s style is without gimmicks, conversational and fun, but she can be as serious and in-depth as you require. Whatever your interest – American or Commonwealth, student, OAP or trade union, teachers, librarians, lawyers, public servants, family groups, travel agents – Anna will inform and inspire you.
Here are some recent reviews:
“ Thank you for a most excellent, entertaining and informative tour of Parliament. We couldn’t have had a better guide! You made our day!”
(From ‘the Norwegian, Danish, Scottish threesome’)
“Thank you so much for the tour [to Windsor Castle]…You were fabulous”
(lady ‘from the back of the bus’ from USA)
“Thank you for your excellent pub advice…Your tour was the best”
(Al Brown, USA)
“I enjoyed your poetry…this trip was built around seeing [friend’s] father’s grave from WWII. She never saw her father. He was deployed before she was born. It has been exciting. Thank you for your contribution”. (Nurse and friend from the ‘Navajo Nation’, USA)
Anna will do walking tours.
Anna will take extended tours.
Regions offered as British Isles Tour Manager: South East England (Essex, Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire), East Anglia (Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Constable Country), Midlands (Cotswolds, Coventry, Black Country, The Potteries, Peak District, Chester, Robin Hood Country), West Country (Dorset, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, King Arthur Country), Yorkshire (Brontë Country), North West (Cumbria, Lake District, Manchester, Liverpool, Carlisle), Northumbria
Countries offered: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Cuba, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Holy See (Vatican), Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Morocco, Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, United States