Victoria Research Web

Planning the research trip to Britain

The best preparation you can make for a research trip is to do as much of your research as possible before you ever leave home. There is little point in spending long hours at the British Library's newspaper library in Colindale poring over newspapers that you could have looked at in digital form in an online collection, or on microfilm, at a research library a lot closer to home. The British Library is wonderful, but inter-library loan can bring many of the same books to your own library. Likewise, a careful review of guides to manuscript materials can help you to determine which of those materials can only be found in Britain; U.S. archives, particularly, hold many important collections of Victorian literary and historical manuscripts.

Having decided what you want to see in Britain, it's time to do some serious trip-planning. Time is money, and you must make every day of your trip move you further along toward your research goals. For example, simply showing up at an archive expecting to look at some manuscripts is a recipe for disaster; it is essential that you contact the archivist well in advance, either by email or by post, indicating as specifically as possible what you would like to see and when you'll be arriving. Likewise, preparing to use the British Library in advance of your trip can save an enormous amount of time and frustration. Fortunately, you can use the online resources mentioned throughout VRW to find addresses, figure out directions, and schedule your time around the opening hours of a wide variety of other libraries and archives long before you arrive. Then it's a matter of figuring out the practical details -- where to stay, how to get around, and how to make your research dollar stretch as far as possible.

That's what this little site is for. What follows is a modest selection of resources and advice for anyone traveling to Britain on a budget, and especially for researchers.
Have a wonderful trip!

General Guides

A budget-minded guidebook to Britain and Ireland, like Let's Go or the Rough Guide, is an essential companion. As for guidebooks to London, the Eyewitness Guide from DK and Lesley Logan's Unofficial Guide are among the most useful. To find out about guidebooks to specific places and activities in Britain and Ireland, browse Amazon UK.

Online travel resources include:

Finding a Place to Stay

General resources

London is notoriously expensive, and has become even more so in recent years. For Americans, the decline in the value of the dollar versus the pound over the past ten years and more has made Britain one of the most difficult destinations to afford, though that may be changing. In any event, there are a lot more cheap, clean, comfortable places to stay there than most people think, giving researchers on a budget a fairly extensive range of options.

Bear in mind, however, that "budget" travel can mean very different things to different people. How much money you have available for the trip, what time of year you can go, how long you can stay, whether you're staying alone or with other people, where in the UK you need to be, and, finally, how much space and comfort you consider minimally acceptable in a lodging, will all play a part in determining whether a particular option will suit your needs. If you can only manage a short visit during the summer and you're working at the British Library, £30 a night for a nearby dorm room with breakfast might seem like a pretty good deal, whereas a grad student staying for a number of weeks might be horrified at the prospect of lodging anywhere that costs more than £100 a week. Where one researcher might find dormitory life so noisy and uncomfortable that it's worth finding ways to compress the length of the research trip itself so as to afford a more tourist-oriented hotel room or B&B, another may feel that the inconveniences of a youth hostel are a small price to pay for making possible a few more precious days in the archive. Whatever your requirements, you can be sure of finding something suitable if you start early enough and look hard enough.

For Britain generally, listings of hostels and bed-and-breakfasts feature rooms ranging from bunk-bed grungy to quaintly comfortable at widely varying rates. The spread of American-style chains like Travel Inn, Travelodge, and Premiere Travel Inn, as well as that of the French-based Ibis, has been a boon for tourist travelers. After several rate increases in recent years, however--most are over £100 a night for a single--they can no longer be considered practical budget accommodation for researchers, however reasonable they might seem by London tourist standards.

Among online guides, Smooth Hound's hotel database, which covers all of the UK, is worth a browse, as is Budget Travel's collection of links to budget accommodations around Britain. Booking at the last minute, while not usually recommended, is hard to avoid sometimes and can even come with distinct advantages if you book through LateRooms for the best price. For London, have a look at Time Out's hotel suggestions (scroll down under each neighborhood to find the cheap ones), and browse the extensive descriptions in the LondonNet guide to selected B&Bs. Links to a number of budget hotels in London (and a few more expensive ones) can be found on the LSE Guide; see below for a more detailed guide to staying in London on a budget. There are often bargains to be found by way of flat-shares and the like; if this appeals to you, check out the latest classifieds in LOOT or TNT (look for the "accommodation noticeboard"). Some travelers have had good luck bidding on lodging through services like Priceline; depending on the season and the tactic (study up on the bidding process at BiddingForTravel), you may be able to wrangle a relatively luxurious hotel room for the price of a modest B&B. Finally, don't overlook Gumtree, a UK-based classifieds service that's a better place than Craigslist to check for leads on "holiday rentals."

Before you book any unfamiliar hotel or B&B, it's a good idea to check the archives of the Fodor's forum (under "Europe") to see what experience others may have had with it. Most places are reasonably clean and well-run, but there are always a few that should be avoided.

London Residence Halls

For short stays at peak travel times, university halls of residence are hard to beat on price; a number of British universities rent out dormitory rooms to students and budget travelers during summer and Easter vacations for £35 or less (sometimes a lot less) a night, and some offer weekly rates. School terms end and start later in Britain than in the U.S., for example, so these kinds of rooms aren't usually available until the last week of June at the earliest, and then through to about mid-September; Easter vacation (like "spring break" only longer) typically runs from the last week in March to the last week in April. The easiest way to check for these is to look up the website of the university in question and seek out a link to its "accommodation office." An outfit called STA Travel also hosts a search engine for student lodgings around Britain; though oriented toward longterm student residence, it features notices of use to researchers looking for places to stay, especially on long trips.

London itself, of course, has a lot of "student" housing available at these times, and you don't have to be a student to avail yourself of it; universities these days are actively seeking non-students to fill their dorms in the summertime, and some have actually built new dormitories, or given old ones a face-lift, with holiday visitors in mind. This trend has had some upward effect on prices, while on the other hand doing away with some of the grubbinesses of traditional dormitory life.

King's College London, for instance, has a particularly wide range of residences at competitive rates. The London School of Economics likewise offers rooms in Bloomsbury, Islington, and Bankside at rates beginning at about £27 for a single, as well as "self-catering" (i.e., kitchen facilities, no breakfast) rooms in Holborn. Many of these have improved a lot in recent years: even grotty old Passfield Hall, the LSE residence nearest the British Library, has now been fully refurbished, and offers single rooms with breakfast for £37. Imperial College in South Kensington has similar offerings for summer visitors. City University's Finsbury Residences, off the tourist track, are able to offer summer rooms for as little as £19. University College London (UCL) halls available in summer include the self-catering Astor College in Charlotte Street, at £29.

The East End offers some especially good deals. Queen Mary's College in Mile End, about 20 minutes from Central London, features excellent weekly rates for en suite or self-catered single rooms. In Hackney and Bethanl Green, respectively, rooms at Sir John Cass Hall and Claredale House (re-opening 2010) can be had for as little as £18 a night, an appealing tariff even when you consider the cost of travel to Central London.

The University of London site has a very useful halls of residence database that tells you when various halls (not just those for UL) have rooms available and how to contact them. The "intercollegiate halls" listed there are all in Bloomsbury, which is particularly handy for working at the British Library in St Pancras.

Remember that with the cheapest student housing the conditions tend to be spartan: although many of these are newly built, some are aging dormitory rooms, which often means no lifts (try to get a room as close to the ground floor as possible), no air-conditioning, no phone or basin in the room, some noise, and dragging yourself down a hallway to use the busy communal bathroom every morning. (Tip for Yanks: bring your own washcloth.) On the other hand, more expensive small hotels and B&Bs may offer only marginally better amenities, if any, while charging you two or even three times as much. In any case, don't worry about feeling self-conscious if you're too old to pass for a student--of a summer you'll see plenty of other older folk in these affordable places.

London Student Housing

The London Student Halls Directory offers guidance to this similar style of budget dormlike accommodation, which can vary considerably in comfort and atmosphere. Cheap but sometimes noisy is the International Students House in Great Portland Street, which also has long-term (three months minimum) budget accommodation available. More subdued places offering economical London lodgings for students include the International Lutheran Student Centre at 30 Thanet Street, London WC1H 9QH, tel. 0207-388-4044 (address inquiries to the Warden), a short walk from the British Library. The Methodist International Centre, in Euston, offers long-term lodging for students who make it through their application process; avoid the "hotel floor", which is hotel expensive.

B&Bs near the British Library

Pricier and cozier than student lodgings and somewhat more suited to mature tastes are such long-established Bloomsbury hotels as the Thanet Hotel, the Ruskin, the Morgan, and the Penn Club. Small, clean, and (if you can get a room on the back garden) quiet, these B&Bs, long favorites of academics, charge anywhere from about £50 to £75 a night for a single (with breakfast) and are perhaps a 15-minute walk to the British Library at St Pancras. Likewise, each of the budget B&Bs in nearby Gower Street--among which are Arran House, the Arosfa, the Langland, and the Cavendish-- has its own distinct personality. Members of the Imperial Hotels chain offer good value, for as little as £43 a night at the County Hotel in Upper Woburn Street. A few blocks north of Russell Square and even closer to the BL, in a lovely Georgian crescent called Cartwright Gardens--Sidney Smith, Rowland Hill, and Edwin Chadwick each lived here at one time--are several pleasant B&Bs that can be a great value at any time, and sometimes run specials. These include the Jenkins (whose proprietors' friendly dogs are part of the atmosphere), the George, the Avalon (which offers special deals for students), the Crescent, and the Mentone. Many of these have such amenities as telephones and TV; uniquely, residents of the Cartwright Gardens hotels have access to the tennis courts across the street (balls and racquets provided on request).

The rooms in all of these Bloomsbury hotels are quite small, and usually you should expect to pay a good bit extra if you want one of the few available "en-suite" (shower and/or toilet included) rooms; nevertheless, each place has its special charms and can claim many loyal fans among budget travelers. Few of these B&Bs feature lifts (elevators), so it pays to ask, when booking, which floor your room is on--at Arran House, for instance, all the single-occupancy rooms are at the very top, four flights up. If nighttime noise concerns you--and in the summer you'll want your windows open at most of these places, for the breeze--it can't hurt to ask, too, for a room "at the back," away from the street. Often these back rooms look out on a quiet garden, a nice place to relax outside after a busy day; just ask at the desk for a key.

Directly across from Euston Station, in Grafton Street, the noisy but clean Travelodge offers website-only promotional rates as low as £19, and is only a few minutes' stroll from the British Library. Even closer to the Library are such B&B's as the Fairway and the Alhambra, both in Argyle Street. The only downside to places that are that near the BL is they are likewise very near King's Cross station, a major terminus and a somewhat tawdry area to be in after dark. Bloomsbury is on average a good bit quieter, and so may be worth the short walk.

As you ramble about Bloomsbury you will certainly pass by the Hotel Russell on Russell Square, and should pause to admire this exuberant late-Victorian brick and terra-cotta extravaganza designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll and opened on Derby Day, 1900. Do not, however, stay there.

The Goodenough Trust

Also in Bloomsbury but in a class by itself, the London Goodenough Trust offers longer-term accommodations (commonly an entire school year) for academics, particularly graduate students. They have single and double rooms and even a few suites for families, social activities, a box at the Albert Hall, and a refectory where you can schmooze with other academic types. If they're booked, get your name on the waiting list, as vacancies do turn up. Send inquiries to the Accommodations Officer, London House, Mecklenburgh Square, London WC1N 2AB, telephone 207-837-8888. You may want to ask, too, about shorter-term lodgings at Fellowship House, as there are often some available.

London Apartments

These days many people are finding that London apartment rental can be a good alternative even for a relatively short stay, and though most of these aren't really "budget" accommodation, at the low end of the scale some aren't more expensive than the more modest hotels and offer the advantages of privacy and a place to store and cook food. The price advantage is clearest, of course, when you're traveling with others, although some studio flats are available. There is a myriad of agencies, including Home from Home, Tourist Apartments, Central London Apartments, Holiday Rentals, Short Stay Apartments, London Serviced Apartments, Nick Price, The Independent Traveller, and Holiday Apartments. (But by all means avoid the outfit calling itself YourStay.com, a source of chilling horror stories.) For a more complete listing, contact the British Tourist Authority (1-800-462-2748 in the U.S.) and ask them to send you their brochure, "City Apartments." And, again, to avoid disappointments it's a good idea ask around a bit online before booking anything.

A sort of hybrid between flats and hotels are "serviced" or "self-catering" apartments such as Vancouver Studios in Bayswater and Astons Apartments, a set of converted Victorian townhouses in South Kensington. Hyde Park Suites (formerly London House), near the Lancaster Gate tube stop, offers studio apartments for about £400 a week, with wireless Internet available for an extra fee. A new entrant, base2stay in Kensington, refines this concept, offering air-conditioned studio flats with broadband and flat-panel TV for £89 a night. With all of these options, it's a good idea to shop around, be as specific as you can about your needs and price range, and pay close attention to the location.

Home stay

Another possibility (with some pros and cons) for budget London accommodation is arranging to stay in private homes. These fall roughly into two categories: professional and student/budget. The first works through such booking agencies as Host and Guest Services, At Home, Homestay, or Welcome Home. A well-recommended service that caters to academics and medical professionals is Doctor in the House. If you're a scholar planning a research sabbatical, you may want to investigate Sabbatical Homes, a commercial classifieds service intended expressly for academics looking for flat rentals, home exchanges, and home sits. As those advertising are the owners themselves, the length of your stay can often be negotiated beforehand to suit your schedule.

The second kind of "home" stay is much more a matter of locating a spare room or a flatmate, and unlike services oriented specifically to academics, these can work out to be much cheaper than even student residence halls. Sites like Spare Room, Flatmate, Flatmate Click, and Find Flatmates show you what's available within a specified radius of where you want to be. Rates can range from about £70 to £150 a week. And, again, Gumtree and other classifieds can be good places to check for "holiday rentals" for short as well as longer-term stays.

As with all other London lodgings, the farther you're willing to travel to get into the central part of the city, the cheaper the tariff; many rooms are quite a distance out from the center, so daily travel costs, and general hassle, should be carefully calculated in advance.

Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh

If you're planning to spend much of your trip in Oxford, working at the Bodleian, the University of Oxford Accommodation Office may be able to give you up-to-date information about private housing near the university. Also worth checking are the "To Let" advertisements in the Oxford Gazette. For shorter stays, Oxford hotel and B&B listings can be found here, here, and here (and, no doubt, elsewhere). One quiet gem to consider for a longish stay is Commonwealth House, across from Christ Church, run by the Oxford Pastorate Association. Researchers at Cambridge libraries may find that university's Accommodation Service helpful in finding a place to stay. Some short-term options also turn up in the classifieds of the Cambridge Evening News; look under "Property" for "Accommodations to let." The official tourist website for Cambridge allows you to browse B&Bs and book online; if you decide to go the B&B route, you might take note of the fact that several of them, like the Regency and the Victoria, are converted Victorian townhouses.

In both of these university towns, if you're not staying in a college and don't have a car, pay very close attention to how far you'll have to walk to get from your lodging to the archive you're working in, how steep the terrain may be along the route (Headington Hill springs to mind!), and what buses may be available to help you get back and forth in bad weather. You may find that the "easy walk to the city centre" promised by many B&B websites isn't so easy, after all, and can quickly turn into a daily chore.

Scholars planning work at such Edinburgh treasure-houses as the National Library of Scotland, the University of Edinburgh Library, or the National Archives of Scotland will want to know that the University of Edinburgh's Accommodation Services has thousands of rooms available during Easter and summer vacations. Contact Edinburgh First, the outfit within the University that handles non-student accommodation for Pollock Halls, the University's main residential buildings; these are clean, modern dormitories with small but cleverly designed rooms and a dining commons. The NLS is a fairly comfortable walk from Pollock Halls, and there is also bus service. Edinburgh First also offers a number of self-catering flats elsewhere in Edinburgh; their "medium term lets" (6 weeks or more) are an especially good bargain. For a more tourist-oriented but still reasonably affordable experience, such lodgings as the surprisingly well-appointed Smart City Hostels, or the Tweedies' Georgian guest house at No. 53 Frederick Street, may better suit your needs and are centrally located. The city's tourist board site features a number of similar options. Here's another Edinburgh-on-a-budget tip: for a reliably cheap and tasty lunch, seek out the refectory in the basement of St Giles Cathedral on High Street, a short walk from the NLS.

The National Archives

Finally, if you aim to do much of your work at the National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office), which occupies startlingly beautiful quarters in Kew (about 40 minutes from central London by train, then a 10-15 minute walk from the station), be sure to have a look at the list of accomodations in Kew. These small B&Bs, many of them within walking distance of the National Archives, charge about £25 a night; also worth checking is Travelodge Kew Bridge, about a 25-minute walk to the National Archives. Worth checking, too, is the guide to accommodation in nearby Richmond upon Thames. As long as you're in the neighborhood, you must, of course, go to the gardens; student season tickets are only £15.

Getting Around

Airport transportation

The Heathrow Express service can take you to or from Heathrow and Paddington Station in 15 minutes for the startlingly high price of £16.50 one-way ("single"). Less than half the price and little more than twice the travel-time is the newer service, Heathrow Connect, which makes a few stops but still gets you to Paddington in comfort in about 25 minutes, for only about £7 each way. You'll see a lot more signs for Heathrow Express than for Heathrow Connect, particularly at Paddington, but it is well worth seeking out; since the demise of the venerable Airbus service, Heathrow Connect is by far the best way to get from the airport to central London at a reasonable price. With both services, of course, you then have to use the Tube, bus, or taxi to get to or from Paddington and your lodgings, so don't forget to factor in that time and cost.

Similarly, travelers to and from Gatwick can take the Gatwick Express train to and from Victoria Station and avoid King's Cross altogether. Those taking Gatwick Express to the airport will be glad to find that Victoria, like Paddington, also has a facility for checking your luggage at the station for some airlines--look to the right of the escalators as you approach the boarding platform.  But there is now a half-price service to and from Gatwick, as well: First Capital Connect, which makes stops and can be crowded, but is a comparative bargain.

If you're in the mood to splurge a bit or are traveling in a group, you may want to consider a car service like Airport Transfers, London Transfers (Ray Skinner), Swiss Cottage Cars (207-431-2700), Just Airports, or Airline Car Service.  A car service is almost always cheaper than a taxi, especially if you are sharing with other people, and you can often save by paying in cash instead of  credit card.  Be sure to book in advance.

The Tube, of course, is much cheaper, but also much clumsier--long stairs to climb, narrow turnstiles to squeeze through, no luggage racks, often shut for repairs on weekends, and impossibly crowded at rush hour. Many budget travelers would never consider using anything but the Tube to get into London from the airport, and it does allow you to avoid the hassle of negotiating Paddington and then finding your way to your lodging. If you happen to be staying near Victoria Station, which is a straight shot from Heathrow, or if all you're carrying is a backpack, it's worth considering. But be forewarned: if you're towing even one moderately heavy bag, and especially if you have to change lines, the Tube can be a real misery to cope with after a long flight.

Railways

If you're going to be doing a lot of tourist traveling within Britain during your visit, or hitting a number of local record offices in a short period, a BritRail travel pass may prove a real bargain. North American travelers should note that most kinds of passes can only be bought in advance of your trip, at a discount not available once you've arrived in the UK. (If you're in the U.S. and prefer calling about the pass there's a toll-free number: 1-877-677-1066.) Also check out this Fodor's FAQ. Because these passes begin to expire from the first day of use, they work best for a period of days or weeks of consecutive travel, not for trips spaced at various times during your visit.

Otherwise, the main thing to remember is -- book well in advance, and pay close attention to the time of departure, as the rates can vary widely. Advance booking can make the difference between, for example, £135 pounds for a London-Edinburgh one-way trip (booked on the day of travel), and £22 (booked 8 to 12 weeks in advance), depending on departure times. If you can't book ahead, especially for day trips, the late Ben Haines's concise primer on finding cheap rail tickets remains a useful guide. In making inquiries to Britain, remember that there is no longer any such thing as "British Rail," and never was one called "BritRail" -- referring to such non-entities will only annoy the people you're asking to help you. You can check the Web for information about this post-privatization world of railway schedules and fares or call 800/677-8585 (from the U.S.) or + 44 131535 8054 (from elsewhere outside Britain). National Rail's online journey planner lets you retrieve timetables for travel on any date between any two destinations in Britain, and lists a range of available fares. (Within the UK you can also make arrangements to access timetables by mobile phone.) The Train Line, a booking service set up by Virgin, is a good place to check for discounted APEX fares, which must be purchased at least three weeks in advance; note that there is a small fee for overseas bookings. Another booking service is the tersely named Qjump. To book trips from London to York, Edinburgh, and other points northeast, visit National Express, East Coast. For day trips near London, check the Days Out Guide for tips on discount fares.

It's a good idea to check the National Rail Service site for notices about disruptions of service. En route, subscribe to Ben Smith's Twitter-fed wiki, @uktrains, for up-to-the-minute news of delays or cancellations.

Cars

Don't even think about driving a car in London. Difficult as it was before, the introduction of the congestion charge for central London -- you must pay the £8 on the same day you drive there, or face rapidly mounting fines -- has made doing so all but impossible for visitors. If you insist, at least read about it here ahead of time.
 
In the rest of Britain, travel by car can make it easier to visit places you might well miss otherwise. If you're setting out from London, picking up your rental car at the airport (e.g., Heathrow), which entails a small extra charge, avoids the nightmare of London traffic. You may find that rates for car rental are somewhat cheaper if arranged through U.S. firms, though overseas consolidators can often offer good rates, as well; check out Kayak, for instance. In any case, it pays to shop around and to book in advance of your trip. You don't need a special driver's license (your one from home will do fine) but you may need supplemental insurance--check with your auto insurer and your credit card company. You may want to consult the interactive website devoted to giving advice on managing that most nerve-wracking of all UK road phenomena, the roundabout. Americans who have never driven in Britain before and are nervous about it should consider paying extra to get a car with automatic transmission, as it makes the whole "keep left" re-learning process much easier.

Buses

Trains are fast and cars are handy, but don't forget the advantages of the bus system, especially for exploring out-of-the-way places. Slow but cheap (£89 for two months), the Stray Coach (formerly "Slow Coach") bus service (71 Bradenstoke, Wiltshire SN15 4EL, tel. 01249-891-959) runs a perpetual clockwise circuit of Britain between April 1 and November 1, and you can get on and off where and when you please. Other long-distance bus options are available through the National Express system, which offers various discounted fares. For coach travel in Scotland, check out the Explorer Pass from Citylink.

London

For its size London is a remarkably walkable city, but the busy or footsore researcher will have frequent recourse to other modes of transport. The Tube, as the London Undergound rail system is universally known, now has its own very useful website that includes a fun journey planner. The old array of travel passes has now been replaced by the new Oyster card, a prepaid card that gives you the cheapest available fare and can be "topped up" as necessary. No photo is required, and all you do is tap it against the bright yellow pad at the tube gate (or as you get on the bus) and then tap it again as you exit. (Don't forget that exit tap, or you'll automatically be charged the full fare.) Off-peak, one-way tube fares in Zones 1 & 2, for instance, are £1.50 with the Oyster, while bus fares within the same zones are just 90p. One of the best things about the Oyster is that, with sufficient money on the card, you never have to worry about being rejected or running up a big bill -- the fare "caps out" at a certain amount for each day, after which the travel is free. Unlike the old travelcards, the Oyster doesn't expire and can be used indefinitely, so be careful not to lose it.

Planning Tube travel on weekends calls for caution these days, as various lines have got into the habit of shutting down for repairs over the weekend, particularly during the summer; check the Journey Planner for service updates. Finally, iPod Touch and iPhone users can now make use of the fun interactive app Tube London for planning their journeys.
 
London buses are under-used by tourists, but they're a great way to get around, and once you've mastered the system are actually much more convenient than the Tube for many trips. Be sure to load up on route maps; here are downloadable versions. For short hops and a bit of traditional ambience, London's black taxicabs can't be beat. Other maps, schedules, and helpful bits of information about the entire range of London travel options--tube, bus, "light railway," ferry, and so on--can be found (if you look hard enough) on the London Transport pages. One of many fan-supported pages for the bus system is the handy London Bus Routes page.

For the especially curious traveler, the Victorian and subsequent history of each line of the Underground is covered in astonishing detail in Clive Feather's venerable Underground Guides. (Though to revel in Tube folklore, a visit to the long-abandoned but still fun "Going Underground" will be necessary.) The folks at MultiMap provide online maps of Britain and London that let you zoom in on any location.

Staying Connected

A few words about your laptop

Just about any laptop made in the past fifteen years will be dual-voltage (the power brick will have something like "100-220V~50/60Hz" stamped on it) so there's no need to worry about buying an expensive voltage transformer. All you'll need, if you're coming from North America, is a plug adapter, and these can be found at Radio Shack, travel stores, airport shops, or even Boots. The adapter is cheap--don't waste money on a set of assorted "international" or "universal" adapters, just get one of the grounded "2-prong to 3-prong" kind that look like this--and, even though it's a little bulky, you would be wise to make a habit of keeping it in the same bag as your laptop.
 
Most libraries and archives are laptop-friendly these days--the British Library reading rooms, for instance, all have handy places to plug them in--but some smaller, less frequently visited archives may be wary of them, so ask ahead of time to be sure. For peace of mind when you need to leave your table for a few minutes, a security cable like the ones sold by Kensington and Belkin is a wise investment; usually you can just loop it around your chair's armrest.

Wireless

If your laptop is equipped for wireless networking ("Wi-Fi") and you can find a "hot spot", you're all set to get online. After a slow start, Wi-Fi coverage in London has grown considerably in the past few years, with more and more hotels and cafés going wireless. However, free wireless access is a rare find in London. Starbucks, for instance, began by offering free wireless Internet in 2005, but now charges a fee. In the spring of 2007, the entire City of London (the square mile down where the Barbican and the Bank of England are) became one big hotspot -- but, again, at a price.

Hearteningly, the British Library has begun to lead the way to free Wi-Fi.  All the reading rooms and public areas, including the café, are covered by a wireless network, and since October 2008 access has been free-of-charge to everyone. At the National Archives in Kew, an internet café near the entrance likewise offers free access to connected terminals, while free Wi-Fi is available in the adjoining restaurant. Increasingly, even small hotels and B&Bs are offering wireless, although they often add a fee if you choose to use it. Be sure to check beforehand -- some hotels charge ridiculous prices for this service. Wi-Fi standards, operators, and coverage in the UK are still very much in flux, and if all you want to do is check email now and then, dropping into Internet cafés and public libraries may still be the easiest solution. But if you're bringing the laptop along anyway to take your research notes with, you can probably find a wireless network in London that will suit your needs at a bearable cost. Even so, go ahead and pack along a short length of Ethernet cable just in case, especially if you're planning to stay in a student residence hall; plug-in Internet connections are much more common in dorm rooms than Wi-Fi.

Internet cafés

The face of Internet access in London changed dramatically with the advent back in June 1999 of the loonily-named easyEverything, an "Internet shop" for the millions that had hundreds of fast terminals, let you get online for less than one pound an hour, and stayed open late. Since re-christened the easyInternetcafé --look for the big day-glo orange sign--the chain's flagship is right across from Victoria Station, and other London outlets can be found in 14 locations around the city. Outside London, there's a 450-terminal outlet in Edinburgh, near Waverley Station, and another on St Vincent St. in Glasgow.

Though cheerless and sterile and often crowded, easyInternetcafé nevertheless remains a smoke-free, convenient, and relatively cheap place to check your mail and do a little web-surfing. Note, however, that the outlets now close at midnight, and no longer allow any printing, uploading, or downloading -- a great shame. For cheapest access, avoid the early evening crowds, and be sure to save your access ticket so you can use your remaining computer time on your next visit.

The smaller, independent cyber cafés offer another, more Bohemian experience, and after nearing extinction several years ago, they are making a comeback. Some that never went away include the Internet Lounge in the Portobello Gold restaurant in Notting Hill and Café.Net, tucked beneath a Thai restaurant in Sheen Lane, SW14. The Internet Exchange chain has opened modest outlets in the public libraries serving such London boroughs as Battersea and Kensington.

 Sometimes one needs more than an Internet connection, and a number of Internet cafés have added such services as printing and scanning. There are also, if you look for them, a good many hole-in-the-wall Internet/computer/telephone outfits with no café amenities that nonetheless offer handy basic access and services; the Comms Port on Earl's Court Road (and several other locations) is a slightly fancier version of these, while other examples can be found near the South Kensington tube stop, and in many other places. Be very careful to check the rates for connecting time, however, as these may not be prominently posted and some can range sharply upwards from £1 for 30 (or even 15) minutes, charges that can add up with startling speed. FedEx/Kinko's has several locations, including 1 Curzon Street in Mayfair, 326 High Holburn, and 145 Tottenham Court Road, and offers 24-hour access for about £3 an hour; you can also connect there with your own laptop.

If you need to make quick check of your email and don't mind standing in a booth to do it, you can now dash into one of the BT phone booths that the company has retooled as an "internet kiosk." The price for this convenience is one pound for 15 minutes.

IHR

A pleasant Bloomsbury alternative: if your university maintains a membership in the Institute of Historical Research in Senate House, Malet Street (and if it doesn't, it should) you can drop in and use the IHR's computers to connect to the Net, and make use of its photocopier, too. Individual Institute memberships are fairly inexpensive; it costs just $45 for the year to join the "Friends of the IHR," which gives you the run of the place. Through its well-stocked historical library, its pleasant tea room, and, especially, its seminars and lectures, the IHR is a wonderful place to get to know other scholars and students.

Online storage

If you want to protect your valuable notes or digital images, or to make certain that various e-documents are available to you while you're traveling, you should seriously consider signing up for an online file-storage site that lets you store and access your files on the Web from any PC, anywhere. Such storage may already be available free through your current ISP; if you're student or faculty, check with your university's computer people about web-accessible storage through your university account.  Otherwise you'll want to look into free online file-storage services like FileSavr, FileDen, Driveway, and SkyDrive, which offer substantial space at no charge. Besides offering 2G of free space, Dropbox will also sync your files across different computers and the web, a big improvement over carrying a flash drive around to make sure you're working with the latest versions of your files. For a modest monthly fee, you can combine file storage with a project-management environment like Backpack or Basecamp, or use such free versions as Google Docs or Zoho.  In a pinch, you can simply email yourself documents as attachments, an option that the two Gigs of mail storage offered by free email services like Google's Gmail, or the substantial space available through Yahoo or Hotmail, makes a practical alternative.

Flash or USB drives in various sizes have now become so cheap and versatile that it would be foolish not to take at least one along so that you can store an extra copy of essential files and make backups, as well; some even allow you to run your own programs on public computers like the ones found in Internet cafés.  If you are making scans or photographs in an archive, or an archive is making them for you,  a capacious flash drive can be the handiest way to carry them away.  But the tiny size of flash drives comes with a downside: they are very easily lost, stolen, or misplaced.  (For example, it's quite common for the distracted or absentminded scholar to leave a flash drive plugged into some library's or cyber café's computer, a lapse that may not be noticed until many hours or miles later.)  This vulnerability is all the more reason to keep copies of your most important notes and reference files on a file server somewhere.  With online storage, you can upload your files in moments to some secure and easily accessible corner of cyberspace, and enjoy the peace of mind of knowing that even if your laptop crashes or is stolen, or every single one of your DVD or flash drive backups bites the dust, all of your precious notes are safe and sound.

Remote access

There are also various ways of accessing your home PC remotely. Services like GoToMyPC and I'mInTouch offer access to your DSL- or cable-connected computer at home from any Internet-connected computer anywhere, for a monthly fee, but the free version of a program called LogMeIn works surprisingly well for most purposes, as does the somewhat more sophisticated (but equally free) Teamviewer.  You'll need to configure your home machine ahead of time, of course -- and be sure to leave it turned on! With these services, a screen-within-a-screen lets you run programs and manipulate files just as if you were sitting at your computer's keyboard at home, which can come in very handy if you've forgotten to bring a particular file along or need to look up an archived email.

Digital cameras

Increasingly, libraries and archives are coming to realize that photocopying not only eats up staff time, but is also much more likely to damage fragile materials than simply allowing patrons to snap pictures of those pages with a digital camera. The British Library, to its continuing shame, still will not allow digital cameras to be used in its reading rooms, nor will the Edinburgh University Library, and some others. Yet many other institutions will, and you should check in advance with the library you are planning to visit to find out what its policies are. Typically, a library will require that you sign a form promising not to publish the images without permission, and then will allow non-flash photography without a tripod, usually only in certain areas of the library so the clicking sounds don't annoy other patrons; some will make a copy stand available for you to use. Libraries are more likely to allow you to take photos of printed materials than of manuscripts; the Bodleian, for instance, also insists on the curious restriction that you can only take photos of printed materials that were published after 1900. UK repositories that currently allow digital photography include the National Art Library of the V&A, the library of the London School of Economics, St Bride Printing Library, the National Archives at Kew, Leeds University Library, the Guildhall Library, and the University of Birmingham library's Special Collections.

You will want to experiment with the settings for your camera before your trip to find out how to take the best pictures of printed materials, and should bring an extra memory card or two just in case you run out of room. The "no flash" requirement means that you'll do best with a camera that can cope well in low light; auto-focus and optical image stabilization can help, too. You'll also want to take careful bibliographical notes as you photograph, or insert tags in the image itself, so that you can properly sort out the pictures later. (From the indefatigable genealogists, some handy tips on all this; other tips from historians here, here, and here.) Be sure to check your photos before you leave, to avoid finding out months later that a page (and it will always be the most crucial one) is too blurred or dim to make out. As with your notes--see above about online storage--you can't be too careful about making sure that extra copies of the digital photos you take in a library or archive are immediately stored someplace where they can be kept safe from theft or accidental erasure.

Phone home

It's perfectly possible to get by in the UK for a short visit by buying calling cards or an international calls service number to phone home now and then on a pay phone, or to call an archive or B&B or whatever . But if you've grown accustomed to having your cell phone (British translation: "mobile phone") near at hand every day back home, you'll probably want to enjoy the same convenience during your research trip. If you already have a "GSM" phone from T-Mobile or Cingular, you can see about having your phone "unlocked" so that you can buy SIM cards in the UK that you can use in your phone. Otherwise, you can either rent a mobile phone in the UK or buy one to use while you're there. Renting a phone from a carrier like Travel Cell will set you back something like $20 a week, plus the cost of shipping the phone to you.

Nowadays, though, simply buying a phone to use in the UK is the most popular and potentially the cheapest option for most visitors from abroad. Low-end GSM mobile phones are getting quite inexpensive, and the SIM cards to run in them -- you buy a card with X amount of time on it--are frequently offered at steep discounts. An important advantage to buying a phone is that you'll be able to use it on future trips, as well. There are plenty of places to buy a phone online, such as Call in Europe, Carphone Warehouse or eBay--expect to wind up paying about $50 altogether--or you can save on shipping charges by waiting and buying your phone once you're in the UK. In London, mobile phone sellers like the popular Orange shops seem to occupy every street corner, and you can also find cheap prepaid (PAYG, or "pay as you go") phones in stationers like Ryman or even in grocery stores like Tesco. Rates to phone the U.S. vary considerably, but with a little shopping and the help of promotions you can get it down to well under 10p a minute.

And then there's Skype. If you don't mind waiting until you have a good, strong wireless connection before you make a call, you can use your PC to talk with the folks back home. You can call out to landlines or cell phones for as little as a few cents a minute; calls between Skype-enabled computers are free. All you need is an inexpensive headset that combines a microphone and headphone or earbud (Logitech, for instance, makes several highly rated models, including some that are small and packable). Through the SkypeIn service, you can also establish a Skype UK number that friends and family back home can call as if (that is, at the same rate as if) they were calling your home number. In March 2009, Skype also became available as an app for the iPhone. But Skype isn't the only game in town: for other Wi-Fi online communication options, check out Fring and Google Voice.

 

Fun Stuff

Don't get so caught up in researching that you forget to have fun! Luckily, there is a lot of fun to be had, and some of it is even downright educational. London is a city rich in free public events, including public talks by many of the world's foremost experts in their fields. The late Ben Haines routinely compiled lists of hundreds of these lectures twice a year; a similar database of lectures around the UK is browsable by date, place, subject area, etc.

Exploring on foot? Literary guides like Andrew Goodman's Gilbert and Sullivan's London (2000) and Grevel Lindop's Literary Guide to the Lake District (1993) can be wonderful handbooks for self-guided pilgrimages. (A personal favorite: George Williams's Guide to Literary London -- long out of print, but well worth seeking out.) Ben Haines came up with a set of history walks around London that is great fun, as well as a set of sites associated with working-class history. Also be sure to explore experienced guide Janet Digby's enormously informative London Footprints site for a wide range of interesting walks and sightseeing tips. The guided walking tours offered every day of the week by the venerable London Walks are another delightful way to get to know the city better. Far from the usual tourist track is Clive Bettington's fascinating set of walks around the vanishing Jewish East End. VICTORIA members' suggestions of places to visit range from Port Sunlight to The Carlyle House, while Bob Speel's lively guide to Victorian art in England can help you find your way among the museums. (See also his sculpture walk down the Strand and Fleet Street.) Playgoers can find current schedules and order tickets at What's On Stage and the London Theatre Guide; there's even a theatreland walking tour. And of course you can always take a tour of Parliament to pay a call on the shades of Gladstone and Disraeli.

Here's a grab-bag of other online sources for planning some 19th-century sightseeing:

Many cities and regions in Britain are represented by home pages that include information about local sights, lodging, etc. Here is a small sampling:

For other cities not listed here, try the CityNet Guide.

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Copyright 2009 by Patrick Leary.