Audio guide
The National Portrait Gallery audio guide is currently being reviewed and restructured and a new improved system will be available for visitors at the end of October 2009. We are sorry that the audio guide will not be available during this time, but suggest that visitors consult the Portrait Explorer in the IT Gallery for more information about the Collection and to plan their visit.
Enjoy a personal tour of some of the Gallery's most well known portraits. The Audio Guide gives you instant access to recorded commentaries of 170 famous portraits on display. Commentaries of 75 portraits are also available in French, Spanish and Japanese.
The Audio Guide is available from the Gallery's Information Desk for a £2 charge.
What you can hear
Most of the commentaries are biographical in emphasis and last approximately two minutes. Using the portrait as a starting point for a brief description of the famous individual or group represented, they provide an account of the particular circumstances of the production of the portrait. Music of the period is used selectively to enhance some of the commentaries, with particular relevance for portraits of composers and performers.
National Sound Archive recordings
A special arrangement with the British Library National Sound Archive allows you to listen to recordings of the actual voices of 32 famous men and women in the Gallery's late 19th and 20th century galleries while viewing their portraits. Some of the recordings are from historic BBC broadcasts, others from pioneering gramophone records such as the splendidly robust Mr Gladstone congratulating Mr Edison on his invention. Following a brief biographical introduction, you will be able to hear Churchill describing the Iron Curtain, HG Wells predicting traffic problems, Virginia Woolf on the nuances of language, and many other classic voices, both familiar and unfamiliar, from our heritage.
Interviews with contemporary sitters and artists
For the portraits of our own day, the Sound Guide will enable you to hear specially recorded interviews with some of the famous sitters and artists represented. In these they describe their experience of the essentially collaborative relationship which produces a memorable portrait.
The Audio Guide logo appears within the captions next to the portraits on display
Audio Guide comments
"Superb audio guide! Greatly enhanced my visit in a constantly enthralling manner."
"Excellent, the commentary is informative, witty and very entertaining."
"One of the best audio guides I have ever experienced."
The National Portrait Gallery's Audio Guide is provided by Acoustiguide Ltd. Archive recordings courtesy of the British Library, National Sound Archive.
List of portraits covered on the Audio Guide
Tudor and Elizabethan
Stuart and Civil War
Georgian and Regency
Victorian and Edwardian
20th Century
Contemporary
