The Reading Lists · Music, Drama & the Performing Arts
The conservatoire route in London
London's conservatoires operate on a logic older than the university itself: small cohorts, master-apprentice teaching, and a city that doubles as the stage. The Royal Academy of Music (1822) and the Royal College of Music (1882) sit either side of the park; between them they hold a century of concert-hall history and most of the world's great orchestras within audition distance.
For drama, the constellation is RADA, LAMDA and the Royal Central School — three houses whose names appear on more London playbills than any drama school on earth. Guildhall trains musicians and actors side by side in the City; Trinity Laban keeps music and dance across two riverside campuses in Greenwich and Deptford.
Admission is by audition, always, and the rejection rates are brutal — but no city offers the consolation prize that London does: fringe theatres, session work, and the slow apprenticeship of actually doing it.
The houses that teach it — 14 of 36
Est. 1826 · Charter & Court
University College London
UCL · Bloomsbury
Founded on principles of secular, inclusive education — the first university established in London, and the first in England to admit students regardless of religion. Its Bloomsbury quadrangle conceals the Petrie Museum and the Grant Museum, both free.
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Est. 1829 · Charter & Court
King's College London
KCL · Strand
Chartered as the established church's answer to godless Gower Street. The Strand campus faces Somerset House across the world's most learned street; its medical schools descend from Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals.
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Est. 1891 · Charter & Court
Goldsmiths, University of London
Goldsmiths · New Cross
An art-school temperament grafted onto a former naval school in New Cross. The department that reshaped twentieth-century criticism sits beside the studio that launched the YBAs — and Blur formed in its halls of residence.
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Est. 1841 · Civic & Campus
University of Roehampton
Roehampton · Roehampton
Four Victorian colleges — Whitelands (1841, among the first institutions of higher education for women), Froebel, Digby Stuart and Southlands — federated on a parkland campus beside Richmond Park.
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Est. 1860 · Civic & Campus
University of West London
UWL · Ealing & Brentford
Ealing's teaching colleges, the London College of Music (1887) and a nursing lineage from Queen Charlotte's Hospital, federated as Thames Valley and renamed West London in 2010 — with Ealing Studios just down the road.
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Est. 1878 · Civic & Campus
Middlesex University
Middlesex · Hendon
Grown from Victorian teacher-training and art colleges in the northern suburbs — St Katharine's (1878) and Hornsey art school among them. Its Trent Park campus kept a country house and, in the war, a secret listening post for captured German generals.
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Est. 1984 · Civic & Campus
Regent's University London
Regent's · Regent's Park
A private, non-profit university inside Regent's Park — on the campus built for Bedford College, the women's college whose Egham successor fills another page of this guide. American in style, London in situation.
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Est. 1822 · Atelier & Stage
Royal Academy of Music
RAM · Marylebone
Britain's oldest conservatoire, founded in 1822 beside Regent's Park — with a museum of instruments whose Strads are played by students, and Arthur Sullivan as its first scholarship boy.
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Est. 1861 · Atelier & Stage
London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art
LAMDA · Barons Court
Founded as a music academy in 1861 whose drama department quietly took over the family business. Now at Barons Court, west of the river — and the oldest drama school in Britain by most reckonings.
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Est. 1872 · Atelier & Stage
Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance
Trinity Laban · Greenwich & Deptford
Music at Wren's Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich; dance in Deptford, in Herzog & de Meuron's translucent colour-washed building by the Creek. Formed by merger in 2005; the only conservatoire of its pairing.
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Est. 1880 · Atelier & Stage
Guildhall School of Music & Drama
Guildhall · City of London
The City of London's own music and drama school, founded by the Corporation in 1880 and now seated between the Barbican's concrete estate and its arts centre — stagecraft in the middle of the maze.
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Est. 1882 · Atelier & Stage
Royal College of Music
RCM · South Kensington
Founded by royal charter beside the Royal Albert Hall — its students rehearse a few steps from where they will debut. Holst, Vaughan Williams and Britten are the alumni triumvirate.
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Est. 1904 · Atelier & Stage
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
RADA · Bloomsbury
Herbert Beerbohm Tree's drama school, founded in 1904 in Gower Street townhouses. The smallest institution in this guide by student count — and among the most name-checked on any cast list.
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Est. 1906 · Atelier & Stage
Royal Central School of Speech & Drama
Central · Swiss Cottage
Founded by Elsie Fogerty at the Royal Albert Hall in 1906 to train the voice, moved to Swiss Cottage in the fifties. The conservatoire for acting, stage management and the technical crafts — Judi Dench's school.
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Faculty listings reflect the guide's editorial reading of where each discipline is principally taught — many houses teach more than appears here. Always consult the official course pages before applying.
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