Churchill and Greece is a story most Londoners have never heard, yet the places where it happened are all a short walk from a good Greek lunch. With the Wallace Collection’s show of Churchill’s own paintings closing on 29 November and a plan to pedestrianise Parliament Square in the news this week, this is the moment to follow the trail in one day, with a Greek stop at every turn.
Everyone knows Churchill the war leader. Fewer know that in 1941 the Greek king and his government in exile moved to London, that on Christmas Day 1944 Churchill flew into a besieged Athens to broker a deal, or that in his last years he cruised the Mediterranean as the guest of Aristotle Onassis. The thread of Churchill and Greece runs through Marylebone, Westminster, Mayfair and Kensington, and every stop below has a Greek List member nearby.
Hertford House on Manchester Square is the home of the Wallace Collection, and until Sunday 29 November 2026 it is also home to Winston Churchill: The Painter, the first major show of his canvases in decades. More than 50 works are on the walls and over half come from private collections, which means most have rarely been seen in public. Expect sombre wartime scenes, sunlit Mediterranean coastlines and views of his home at Chartwell. Standard tickets are £18, with reductions for under 26s and concessions, and the permanent collection stays free. On 23 November the museum also hosts a ticketed talk, Meeting of the Minds, on Churchill, Roosevelt and the road to Allied victory.
Getting there: Bond Street (Central, Elizabeth and Jubilee lines) or Baker Street, both about 7 minutes on foot. Open daily 10am to 5pm.
Beneath the Treasury on King Charles Street, the Churchill War Rooms are the underground command centre where the war was run, opened to the public in 1984 and left much as they were in 1945, with the Churchill Museum next door. For a Greek visitor they carry extra weight. In December 1944, with British troops and ELAS fighting in the streets of Athens, Churchill flew to Greece with Anthony Eden and landed on Christmas Day. He sat in a conference chaired by Archbishop Damaskinos with every party at the table, including three representatives of EAM and ELAS. It did not end the fighting, but it produced the one idea almost everyone accepted: a regency under Damaskinos, with the king’s return left to a plebiscite. Back in London, Churchill pressed King George II to agree, and he did. It is the strangest chapter of Churchill and Greece, decided by a man who could have been eating Christmas pudding in Downing Street.
Getting there: Westminster or St James’s Park, each about 5 minutes on foot. Tickets are timed, so book online before you go; children aged 5 to 15 pay half price.
A two minute walk from the War Rooms brings you to Ivor Roberts Jones’s bronze of Churchill in his greatcoat, leaning on his stick and glaring at the Houses of Parliament. It may soon be easier to reach. On 9 November IanVisits reported that Parliament, Transport for London and Westminster City Council are jointly championing a Parliament Square Streetscape Project that would remove general traffic from the south and east sides of the square by closing Abingdon Street to vehicles. A public consultation could follow early next year, and a partly pedestrianised square could be in place by 2031. Greeks like to quote a line about heroes fighting like Greeks and attribute it to Churchill. The Churchill Society has never confirmed he said it, so enjoy the sentiment and keep the quotation marks loose.
Getting there: Westminster station is on the square. Free, open all hours, best light in the late afternoon.
Walk up through St James’s Park and Green Park to Mayfair, where the Greek side of the story lived. After the invasion of 1941 the Greek government in exile passed through Crete, Egypt and South Africa before settling in London in September 1941, where it stayed until March 1943. King George II headed it from here, and Claridge’s on Brook Street, the red brick hotel that sheltered several exiled European royals during the war, is the address most associated with him in London. The Greek connection did not end with the war. From 1956 Churchill was a regular guest of the shipowner Aristotle Onassis, whose yacht Christina he called the most beautiful structure he had seen afloat. Between 1958 and 1963 he made eight long cruises aboard her, calling at Athens among other places. The friendship is one of the warmer footnotes of Churchill and Greece, and Mayfair is where it was toasted.
Getting there: Bond Street station is 4 minutes from Claridge’s. The walk from Parliament Square through the two parks takes about 25 minutes.
Greek stop nearby: Chill House Coffee on Shepherd Street, in the quiet Shepherd Market corner of Mayfair, for a freddo espresso and Greek pastries about 12 minutes from Claridge’s and right on the Green Park route.
The final stop is a quiet cul de sac off Kensington Road, opposite the park. 28 Hyde Park Gate was Churchill’s London home after the war and the house where he died on 24 January 1965, aged 90. The houses are private, so this is a respectful look rather than a tour, but it closes the circle: the man who flew to Athens at Christmas and sailed with Onassis spent his last winter here. Many Greeks remembered 1944 with mixed feelings, and that tension is why Churchill and Greece is still argued about at Greek dinner tables in London, which is as good a reason as any to end the day at one.
Getting there: High Street Kensington or Gloucester Road, each about 10 minutes on foot, or cross Hyde Park from Lancaster Gate in 15 minutes.
Greek stop nearby: Halepi on Leinster Terrace, straight across Hyde Park in Bayswater, for Greek Cypriot classics that have been served there for decades, and It’s All Greek To Me on Praed Street by Paddington for souvlaki and grills until late.
With a second day, the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth is free and its Second World War galleries put the Mediterranean campaign in context, and Chartwell, Churchill’s home in Kent, is run by the National Trust and keeps his painting studio. If the subject gets you reading, the Churchill Society’s Finest Hour archive has a detailed account of the Athens visit of December 1944.
If you are planning the weekend around this walk, check the Greek List events page, the most complete list of Greek events in the UK, from concerts and talks at the Hellenic Centre to Greek nights and exhibitions at Cyprus House. Organisers can list an event for free, and it reaches the whole community within hours.
The restaurants and cafes in this guide are Greek List members. More than 100,000 Greeks and Cypriots in the UK read Greek List every month on the website, through the newsletter and in the Ellines sto Londino Facebook group, and Greek List listings rank first on Google when people search for Greek businesses in their area. If you want your business to be the Greek stop in the next guide, join them.
Did we miss a Greek corner of Churchill’s London? Tell us in the Facebook group Ellines sto Londino and share your photos from the walk.
