Tour Company rec for British Museum

Use the RS recorded tour of the British Museum. No need to pay a tour guide.

We didn't have any issues doing the museum on our own without a tour but they offer quite a number of free ones, a 90-minute highlights tour (fee) plus rental audioguides. I'd go with these before hiring an outside guide.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/visiting/planning_your_visit/tours_and_talks.aspx

https://www.britishmuseum.org/visiting/planning_your_visit/audio_guides.aspx

London Walks has one, it’s only £10 and well worth it. I like it because it helps keep you focused for the two hours and then you can wander back to what interests you after the tour

We took the London Walks one as well and really enjoyed it.

The museum has half hour gallery talks every day. There's a notice board at the entrance that lists them all and/or you can ask at the info desk. There's no charge, all you have to do is be in the room. They are scheduled throughout the day. I've joined several and all were excellent.

Another vote for the London Walks tour. It gives a really good overview. I did it a few years ago now. The guide we had was Tom, who is one of the tour managers for the Rick Steves UK tours.

I've been happy with the free ones offered by the museum.

I also found the LondonWalks tour a good overview on a first visit.

I did the London Walks tour last month. I'll be the naysayer who suggests that it's not the best way to tackle the British Museum under current (grotesquely crowded) conditions.

I believe the tour was scheduled to begin at 2 or 2:30 PM. We waited at least 5 minutes for potential stragglers, which is standard practice on walking tours, in my experience. As always, the guide was good.

However, you need to be prepared for wildly crowded conditions--worst in the Egyptian area (where my tour began and spent a lot of its time), especially if the day is rainy.

It was a shorter-than-usual tour because the guide needed to put his backpack in a locker and gave folks time to use the toilets; there was a line for the women, of course. In the end we probably had about a 90-minute tour. It covered some Egyptian things, some large Assyrian statues (No, I'm not much interested in ancient history. Why do you ask?), the Elgin marbles and the Sutton Hoo treasure. The guide took us to the replica of the Rosetta Stone because he knew we couldn't get close to the real thing.

I have no problem with paying £10 for a 90-minute tour with a licensed guide, but if you have 2 hours (obviously severely inadequate for this museum in any case), you'll be able to see more if you do your own thing and/or take one or more of the museum's tours of areas outside the Egyptian hall.

I still haven't made a serious visit to the British Museum, so I haven't tried out its audioguide, but I think that must surely be a good way to go, because it allows you to spend time in parts of the museum that are relatively uncrowded at the time of your visit. That's unlikely to happen with a tour operating from a relatively fixed itinerary.

And I highly recommend trying to cultivate an interest in something other than the Egyptian artifacts.

It would be a great idea to visit the museum on a day with glorious weather, too. Hard to bring yourself to do that, though.