London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Friday, September 12th, 2025.
As per usual, our first port of call will be the London Calling Book Club Corner.
And in the Chair today, the great Rick Jones. Yes, that Rick Jones. Distinguished arts critic, Secretary of the Critics Circle, star guide, pianist (and lute player), writer, fun guy to hang with.
Here’s Rick telling it like it is.
“I’m reading Music and Silence by Rose Tremain. It’s a fiction on the life of the Jacobean lute player John Dowland and I play my lute on the Shakespeare tour every Saturday morning. It gives me atmosphere and tension in the dark corridors of Castle Kronenburg at Elsinore where Hamlet is set and where Dowland worked for five years as court musician to the King of Denmark. My reading also doubles as research as next year is Dowland’s 400th anniversary and I’m re-enacting his journey to Elsinore in costume for BBC Music Magazine.”
Thanks Rick. That’s given me some marching orders. Hatchard’s here I come. Please, I’d like a copy of Music & Silence by Rose Tremain.
Ok, that’s the overture. Here’s the main event.
How to put this. Look, there are London Walks days out and then there are London Walks Days Out. The boldface capital letters are deserved. This is a boldface, capital letters job. September 17. Circle it. Highlight it. Tattoo it on your calendar. Alison’s Day Trip to St Albans is one of those rare, jewel-bright, “move heaven and earth” numbers.
Let’s start with the brass tacks: St Albans is criminally underrated. A Cinderella city if ever there was one. It’s been sitting quietly on London’s doorstep for nearly 2,000 years, waiting for someone – you – to come and discover it. And Alison is the fairy godmother who unlocks the magic.
Convenience Itself
Before we even get to the meat of the day, let’s talk logistics. This is one of those rare excursions where you get all the richness of a proper day out – and still get back to London in time for a curtain-up. No hotel rooms, no late trains, no fretting about what you’ll have for dinner.
You meet Alison just outside West Hampstead Tube – and let’s be clear, West Hampstead is one of the easiest places to get to in London. Jubilee Line, Overground, Thameslink, a 139 or 328 bus – it’s basically the Switzerland of London transport: neutral ground, accessible to all.
Then: the train. Fifteen minutes. You heard right. Fif. Teen. Minutes. That’s less time than it takes to watch an episode of Bake Off. One coffee and a glance out the window and hey presto – you’re standing in a Roman city.
And because you’re back in London by late afternoon, you can still catch a West End show that night. That’s the genius of this day: Maximum history, minimum hassle.
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A City with Layers
St Albans is the England we all carry in our imaginations – Roman ruins, medieval streets, market squares, half-timbered pubs, and a cathedral that can hold its own with the best of them. It’s a place where you can walk through two thousand years of history in an afternoon.
Romans called it Verulamium, and Alison will have you standing in front of a mosaic floor that’s been there since they left. You’ll see the theatre – the only visible Roman theatre in Britain – and picture toga-clad locals cheering the chariot races.
Fast forward a millennium and you’re in the thick of the Wars of the Roses – St Albans was where it all kicked off. Alison will point out the very streets where history was made, and because she lives locally, she knows all the tucked-away corners that most people – even most guides – miss.
And then there’s the cathedral – with its Roman bricks, Norman arches, and the shrine of St Alban, Britain’s first Christian martyr. This is history with goosebumps.
Alison: Your Secret Weapon
And then there’s the secret sauce. Guide Alison. She’s your secret weapon. Alison isn’t a run-of-the-mill Blue Badge Guide – she’s a superstar. (You know this if you’ve walked with her before.) And this isn’t just any place – it’s her patch. St Albans is home turf for her. That means connections. Local knowledge. She knows which café to duck into for the perfect coffee, where the good loos are, which pub is pouring the best pint that week. You’re not just visiting – you’re being shown round by someone who belongs there.
FOMO Is Real
Here’s the thing: this walk is rare. It’s a special. It doesn’t come along every month. This is a twice-a-year if you’re lucky sort of outing. Miss it and you’ll be kicking yourself for months – especially when you hear the people who did go talking about it afterwards. Because that’s the other side of FOMO: bragging rights. You’ll be able to say, “Oh yes, we went to St Albans with Alison last September.” Cue the sighs of envy.
The Perfect Day Out
It’s efficient. It’s easy. It’s crammed with history and character. It’s the kind of day where you feel like you’ve been somewhere, done something, learned a lot, laughed a lot – but you’re still back in London in time to make your evening plans.
It’s a tonic. It’s a time machine. It’s one of those days that reminds you why you live here, or why you’re visiting.
And this particular September 17th? Well, it’s shaping up to be one of those golden days – the kind you remember all winter.
So, yes, this is your marching order:
Because September 17th, St Albans, Alison – that’s where the smart money’s going.
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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.