London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good evening to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Saturday, September 6th, 2025.
London Calling Book Club Corner first.
In the Chair today – third consecutive day – actor and Blue Badge Guide Sam Bond. He who’s got a license to thrill… license to thrill you with history.
The third book Sam’s got on the go is E.H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World.
Sam says, “I realised at the end of last year’s busy guiding period that as guides, doing the daily Westminster Abbeys, Tower of London’s and British Museums etc…we take a lot for granted. I know our Blue Badge Training set a “gold standard” in delivery. Never take for granted certain understood historical truths…but sometimes when we explain them we over complicate the history…still…. And this wonderful book is a reminder to keep it simple….stupid.”
Amen, Sam.
Ok, moving on. Main course.
Never have I felt so much like Hamlet as I did today. Hamlet with his sidekick Horatio at his side. How’s that famous line go, “there are more things in heaven and earth Than are dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio.”
Well, if Horatio had been riding shotgun with me today, wide-eyed and gawping, I would have had probably 50 occasions to tell him, “there are more thing in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.”
Except I would have rephrased it ever so slightly. There are more things in London than are dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio.
And why would I have had to steady Horatio with that line over and over again today? Here’s why. The Ultimate London Walk got underway today. The walk that’s going to walk all the way across London, from the Hertfordshire border in the north to the Surrey border in the south. Walk it in 14 stages. We did the first two stages today. And Horatio’s mouth was hanging open the whole time. I could hear him murmuring, “this can’t be London.” Charlie took us through a London undreamt of in Horatio’s philosophy. We walked through a couple of huge forests. We walked through hayfields. We walked alongside and crossed streams. We saw village greens. And village ponds. And the oldest tree in the United Kingdom. And a tithe barn. And the ghost of an 18th-century landscaped estate. And ancient churches. And a Tudor coaching inn. And sweeping panoramas, looking all the way down to central London, many miles from our promontory. And every kind of housing, from grand country estates to cosy cottages. We were in London but it wasn’t a London any of us had ever seen before. Let alone walked through. You get right down to it, what was served up to us wasn’t so much London as it was England. Pretty much all of England. And there it was in London. “There are more things in London than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.”
Have I left anything out? Well, lots actually. This is just a quick pan across some of what we saw.
And that question, have I left anything out…well, that leads to another famous quotation. A famous question. Dr Livingstone, I presume.
Yes, we saw Dr Livingstone’s cottage. There it was, tucked amid the tranquil greenery of the tiny village of Monken Hadley. Great name, Monken Hadley. Hadley means a clearing or meadow on the Heath. Monken refers to the monks of Walden Abbey. The land belonged to them in medieval times. So put together, Monken Hadley means the heathland clearing belonging to the monks. And there’s the two hundred and some year old Livingstone Cottage, a Grade II listed gem, paired with Monken Cottage, there on Hadley Green Road, looking out over the sweep of Hadley Green. Stuccoed elegance, dormer windows and that lovely plaque.
How did Charlie put it, “See that stoic little house by the green? That’s Livingstone Cottage — where David Livingstone, fresh from crossing Africa, set up camp in 1857. No grand mansion, just stuccoed bricks, pristine white, quiet reflection, and a plaque that says it all. It’s not where history shouted — it’s where it quietly caught its breath.”
Yes, Dr Livingstone, I presume. And, yes, there are more things in London than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.
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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 London Museum archaeologist, historians, university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, 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.