Twickenham is a prosperous riverside town in southwest London, best known as the home of English rugby. Twickenham Stadium — "Twickers" — seats 82,000 people and hosts the England national team as well as the Premiership Rugby final and the occasional concert. On match days the town turns into a sea of white shirts and good-natured noise; on quiet days it's a pleasant Thames-side suburb with Georgian houses, a couple of good riverside pubs, and more history than it gets credit for.
The Thames is the defining feature of the town. The stretch between Twickenham and Richmond is one of the prettiest on the whole river: wooded banks, Ham House across the water, the odd rowing club. Eel Pie Island — an actual island in the middle of the Thames — was once a famous music venue where the Rolling Stones and the Who played in the early 1960s. It's private now, but worth knowing about.
Orleans House Gallery is one of the better free galleries in outer London, housed partly in a spectacular early 18th-century baroque pavilion where Louis Philippe of France once lived in exile. Nearby Marble Hill House is a perfect small Palladian villa with grounds that run down to the Thames. Strawberry Hill House — Horace Walpole's Gothic fantasy and the building that invented the Gothic Revival — is a 20-minute walk west. All three are easy to combine in an afternoon walk along the river.
Twickenham works well as a base for Richmond, which is a 15-minute walk or a few minutes by train. The Richmond deer park, the town centre, and Kew Gardens are all close by.