London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
And a very good evening to you. A very good evening from London. It’s August 8th, 2024.
Today’s pin – well, needless to say the big story is summed up in the Daily Mail headline, “Far right protests thwarted…the Night Anti-hate marchers faced down the thugs.”
Thug. Now there’s a word that’s got previous. As words go, thug is straight out of central casting for a police line-up. The word thug has been skulking, lurking around in English for just over 200 years. But what you got to love in the circs. – I mean it’s richly ironic this – what you got to love is the word thug is an immigrant word. Comes from India. A thug was a member of a gang of murderers and robbers who strangled their victims. The word’s done a pretty good job of covering its tracks. Linguistic detectives think it might come down to us from a Sanskrit word meaning cunning or fraudulent. Its great grandpappy – furtive, shady through and through – might be the Proto Indo-European root ‘steg’ meaning to cover. Cover. That’s what a lot of our 2024 thugs do: they cover their faces. And since the extended meaning of thug is ‘ruffian, cutthroat, violent lowbrow’ it’ll come as no surprise that they cover their faces. I mean they’re hardly going to wave to the camera and say “look at me, I’m a violent lowbrow.”
So let’s not look at them. Let’s look at something that’s a good deal more pleasing. Today’s International Cat Day so of course Ann ran her Cat Tails – A Feline Take on London History walk. And that pretty well obliges me to go with the whacky, wild card headline. I found it meowing away across the front of today’s Daily Star. And let me preface this with an outburst ‘pon my soul these British headline writers have to pun. The Star headline reads: You’ve really hurt our felines. It’s subtitled, Boffiness claims cats aren’t the aloof, sociopathic mouse killers that some cynical dog-lovers think they are. Story begins, “Cats may want you to think they are aloof, self-sufficient, dead-eyed killers who don’t give a damn – but they are actually sensitive souls.”
Anyway, that’s our pin for the day.
Next up, today’s Random. All this political news from the other side of the Atlantic has got me wondering whether the sales of George Orwell’s dystopia novel 1984 will ring the bell again if Trump is re-elected. It wasn’t so much pour me a stiff double as send me a copy of 1984 asap. Bearing in mind that first time round, The Donald’s inauguration inflated Amazon sales of the novel by something over 900 percent.
Ok, Ongoing. Going to keep this one close to home. Time to welcome a new London Walk on board the Good Ship London Walks. And not just a new walk, but into the bargain a new guide. Yes, new guide – author Catherine – is now blooded. Catherine debuted her new walk On the Scene at the Great Fire of London yesterday. And the results are in. If it were Olympic gymnastics the scoreboard would have recorded a perfect 10. Catherine had just over 20 people on the walk. Four of them wrote rave reviews. Walker after walker putting up a perfect 10 – that’s almost unprecedented. Primis inter pares, Karen Kedem’s review. Karen said: “Catherine was knowledgeable, entertaining, intriguing and the tour was a fabulous experience. I brought my 13-year old granddaughter with me who had read her (Catherine’s) book, The White Phoenix, and she too thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Highly recommended.”
And I loved Catherine’s note to me afterward. Yet another reminder that it’s important for us veteran guides to keep the rust off. You never forget your first walk. It’s lark rising. That bloom of freshness perfumes everything. Something new blossoming. Great guides are like great actors – they can keep it fresh, make it new every time.
Anyway, here’s what Catherine said: “I’m thrilled with the reviews. They were a great bunch. Right with me all the way round. Gave me a huge round of applause at the end. I loved it. I am not exaggerating when I say that I’ve been fascinated by the history of the Great Fire since I was 7 years old, so today was a bit of a dream come true, to be honest!”
Anyway, Catherine will be on the scene at the Great Fire of London again on August 21st.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com –
home of London Walks,
London’s signature
walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size
walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it,
London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science:
you get what you pay for.
And just as surely,
you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started
we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question:
Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world
you do whatever you have to do
to attract and keep
the best guides in London –
you want them guiding for you,
not for somebody else.
Bears repeating:
the way we’re structured –
a guides’ cooperative –
is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following,
a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases
distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor
(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated –
Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa –
both of them CBEs –
are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z,“internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star team of guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former Museum of London archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes
criminal defence lawyers,
Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors,
a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)…
well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament,
every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar
and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note…
come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning
one and all. See ya next time.