London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you. From London. It’s August 13th, 2024. Today’s pin – and yes, this is me being a copytaster for you. Out of all the London news swirling around, churning around, welling up, picking out the one item that I think might suit you best. Can’t be bad, having your own personal copytaster for daily London news.
Anyway, today’s pin is today’s BBC Proms Concert. High praise for it indeed, it’s being described as “unmissable.”
And on the money for us because it’s – wait for it – “a love letter to London!” Let me hand the baton here to Steve Wright, writing for Classical Music – he says tonight’s concert “pays homage to the bustling, noisy, often heart-stoppingly beautiful city of London.” It begins with Elgar’s boisterous overture Cockaigne (in London Town). Cockaigne, says Steve Wright, is a loving portrait of the noise, energy and confidence of Edwardian London. Or as Elgar himself said about the piece, ‘it’s cheerful and Londony, stout and streaky…honest, healthy, humorous and strong, but not vulgar.’ Umm, sounds good to me. With the proviso added that personally I wouldn’t want it to be too refined. I like it that London can be hearty, a dash of vulgar London rarely comes amiss. The word ‘vulgar’ after all comes from the Latin word ‘vulgus’, meaning common people. And they’re all right, London’s common people. I’m very fond of them. Indeed, I’m one of them. They’re the backbone – and the muscle – and a lot of the brains – and most of the common sense and spirit of London. Not to mention the good humour and warmth of the place. They make London what it is. Try this 1942 poem by Ruthven Todd – it gets it, speaks eloquently to this matter. The poem’s called These Art Facts. Goes like this.
These are facts, observe them how you will:
Forget for a moment the medals and the glory,
The clean shape of the bomb, designed to kill,
And the proud headlines of the papers’ story.
Remember the walls of brick that forty years
Had nursed to make a neat though shabby home;
The impertinence of death, ignoring tears,
That smashed the house and left untouched the Dome.
Bodies in death are not magnificent or stately,
Bones are not elegant that blast has shattered;
This sorry, stained and crumpled rag was lately
A man whose life was made of little things that mattered;
Now he is just a nuisance, liable to stink,
A breeding-ground for flies, a test-tube for disease:
Bury him quickly and never pause to think,
What is the future worth to men like these?
People are more than places, more than pride;
A million photographs record the works of Wren;
A city remains a city on credit from the tide
That flows among its rocks, a sea of men.
Spot on. Amen. And thank you, Ruthven Todd.
Well, I’ve taken the ball and run. Let’s get back to the paean to London that is today’s Proms programme. After the Elgar piece gets the show on the road, the parade continues with Gustav Holst’s Hammersmith. A musical tribute to the riverside west London neighbourhood where Holst spent most of his life.
Elgar, Holst…that’s the tune-up. The main act of the evening is – yes, you guessed right – Vaughan Williams’ London Symphony, with its evocations of the chimes of Westminster Abbey; Hampstead Heath on an August Bank Holiday; and Bloomsbury Square on a November afternoon.
Aural London at its best. A bit of all right, wouldn’t you say.
Oh and if anybody’s wondering, the Proms are a great London summer institution. Eight weeks of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, from mid-July to mid-September. What’s not to like.
Now as for a Random, How about this? Live and learn. Having lugged it around for 78 years I learn that my middle name – the name of six English kings – yes, George, comes from the Greek word for peasant or farmer. And makes it first appearance in the fourth century. So, yes, that’s me, David George. As names go, well, I could have done worse. My first name, David, is of course a Hebrew word. It means ‘the beloved.’ So I find out last night – this far, 78 years, into the ball game, that if my names are signposts – and I like them, I’ll take them – I find out, 78 years into the ball game, that I’m the beloved peasant. What’s not to like.
And so we come to our Ongoing. And going against the grain, it, the Ongoing – the main course of the London Calling podcast – and as such usually the most leisurely and lengthiest entree – is, today, the quickest, the shortest offering. But date-wise, today being August 13th, it thuds right into the centre of the bullseye. It’s a shot that splits that apple on the son’s head.
St George is of course the patron Saint of England. And you can rest assured, he wasn’t English. The English didn’t exist when he was doing his thing and got himself martyr’d by the Romans. He may have been Turkish. Something deeply satisfying about that, wouldn’t you say. Certainly he was from that part of the world. And he sure had some plums. The act of defiance that cost him his life was tearing down the Roman emperor Diocletian’s decree that proscribed Christianity. And that was some price he paid. According to the tale his protracted sufferings for his faith lasted seven years. He underwent an appalling series of torments. He was killed and resurrected three times, before being finally executed by beheading. Sounds a little bit like the torments the English football faithful have undergone since 1966. Anyway, St George was a rolling stone that gathered some moss. And as it happens, for complicated historical and religious reasons that moss was militaristic. And yup, you got it, that struck a chord with the English. That’s us, he’s us, we’re having it, we’re getting behind his banner.
His day is of course April 23rd. And I just might open all that up to view next April 23rd. But this is August 13th and it was on this date in 1351 that George was acclaimed as ‘the blessed George, the most invincible athlete of Christ, whose name and protection the English race invoke as that of their patron, in war especially.’ Extraordinary when you think about it. Jesus Christ was the Prince of Peace. George, whoever he was, was one of Jesus’s outriders. And what made him near and dear to the hearts of the English was his warlike attributes. I mean being killed three times and coming back for more, go on behead me if you think you can. Oh, nice one. Thanks for that.
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.