The National Portrait Gallery was founded in 1856 to bring together the greatest names in British history and culture from the late Middle Ages to the present day. Its main collection now totals almost 10,000 works, from panel paintings to video portraits, from miniatures to larger-than-life sculpture.

The Visitor's Guide is both a companion for the visitor walking round the Gallery, and an introduction to the Gallery's collection and the full range of its resources and activities. Beginning with the Gallery's exceptional Tudor portraits, it guides the visitor on a chronological tour of the building, floor by floor, featuring some of the most important faces of the last 500 years. Highlights include the Ditchley Portrait of Elizabeth I, Rubens' portrait of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel and Surrey, Lady Venetia Stanley by Van Dyck, self-portraits by William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gilbert and George, the only contemporary portraits of Shakespeare, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, George Beresford's haunting study of the young Virginia Woolf, Andy Warhol's homage to Elizabeth II, and Helmut Newton's giant icon of Margaret Thatcher.