When I was four, I remember standing in line with my dad for The Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum. That was probably London’s first blockbuster show, with queues stretching for blocks. Also in Bloomsbury is Nicholas Hawksmoor’s eccentric St George’s Church, its stepped spire somewhere between a mausoleum, a pyramid and an obelisk. Hawksmoor — “the devil’s architect” — was famously a freemason and a short stroll away you’ll find Freemason’s Hall with a stepped tower seemingly inspired by St George’s Church and an interior rich with Egyptian iconography. A few minutes’ walk from there is Sir John Soane’s Museum, London’s most remarkable house, with a basement anchored by the huge alabaster sarcophagus of Pharaoh Seti I, which the architect bought in 1824 after the £2,000 price tag proved too much for the British Museum.