London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good day to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Saturday, July 19, 2025.
This one’s all about July 19th.
July 19th, 1919 to be exact.
But we’re going to begin with something that happened near enough to five years previously. On August 19th, August 1914 Kaiser Wilhelm sent the following message to the Commander of the First German Army, General Alexander von Kluck:
The Kaiser’s message read: It is my Royal and Imperial Command that you should concentrate your energies for the immediate present upon one single purpose, which is to address all your skill and all the valour of my soldiers to exterminate the treacherous English and walk over General French’s contemptible little army.
Contemptible is a mistranslation. It should have been insignificant. But never mind.
That contemptible little army – the British Expeditionary Force – played a critically important role in halting the German push to Paris. Had the German army not been stopped the Great War would have had a different outcome.
And of course what happened was the survivors of the British Expeditionary Force claimed the Kaiser’s descriptor as their own. They proudly called themselves the Old Contemptibles.
Now keep them in mind. We’re coming back to them.
Ok, it’s July 19th, 1919. Victory Day. Or as the press dubbed it Peace Day.
The ink on the Treaty of Versailles was barely dry.
The Treaty ending the Great War, the War to End all Wars they called it.
Bit of wishful thinking, wasn’t it.
But in July 1919 they hadn’t a clue how naive and pollyannish that notion was.
And the wiping out of a generation of young men – the Lost Generation – getting for a million young men – that was a spear plunged into the innards of this country, this society. Unparalleled in its history, undreamt of. There’s no healing a wound like that. But maybe saying they’d died in the War to End All Wars was a bit of balm to that terrible injury.
So, yes, that was where they were at, where they were coming from. What they had to reckon with – coming to terms with the death of getting on for a million boys and young men.
Something, anything to make us feel better.
Predictably, the powers that be came up with the idea of a so-called Victory Parade. Thousands of servicemen. British soldiers of course. But also from all over the British Empire. And indeed American servicemen. A seven-mile-long parade that began in Hyde Park, crossed the river, marched through part of south London, crossed the river again at Westminster Bridge, went to Parliament Square and then up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square and then along the Mall, past the Victoria Monument and finally back to Hyde Park where it began.
In the event, the parade, the procession wasn’t the thing. The thing was what happened at one point on the route.
There in Whitehall.
Bearing in mind the catafalque the French had put up in Paris, our lot turned here to Sir Edwin Lutyens, a soft-spoken architectural genius. They said to him, can you come up with temporary structure that we can put there in government street, near the War Office, near 10 Downing Street, near the Admiralty? A temporary structure that will be an inflection point for that bit of the procession.
Temporary. Just for the day.
Lutyens saw the whole thing clearer than anyone. And what he produced—well, it was like nothing else. A simple block. Nothing showy. Nothing heroic. No statues of chaps waving swords. Just that stark, that bare phrase: “The Glorious Dead.”
Three words. That’s all. And yet, somehow, it says everything.
So up it went, that temporary structure, made out of wood and plaster. Erected there on Whitehall.
It was called the Cenotaph. The word means empty tomb.
And then the parade came by. Servicemen from every corner of the empire. Generals and Admirals and Air Marshals. All of them marching past that ghostly block. A ghostly block with four uniformed guards, one at each corner, their heads bowed.
And then it happened. The marching soldiers and sailors and airmen dipped their banners as they passed by. And the thousands of people looking on, the men doffed their hats. People bowed their heads.
A transfiguration. Something strange and solemn unfolded. Right there.
Just moments before the crowd had been all noise and cheering. But now they fell silent. Nobody told them to do it. There were no instructions. No rehearsal. But everyone knew: this is the place to remember. This is the space for the ones who didn’t come home.
It was so powerful, so instinctively right, that within days there were calls to make it permanent.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Lutyens reworked his design in Portland stone. He tweaked the proportions, of course—he was a master of that sort of thing. No detail too small. The curves you can’t quite see, the way it leans ever so slightly forward, just a hair’s breadth, as if in a gesture of mourning. He even removed any obvious religious symbols—because this monument was for everyone. No matter your faith, or none at all.
The permanent Cenotaph was unveiled on Armistice Day, 11 November 1920, by King George V himself. And from then on, every year, the nation stops at 11 o’clock. Two minutes. Silence. Stillness. In the shadow of the Cenotaph.
And what about Lutyens?
Now here’s the thing about Sir Edwin Lutyens. You probably know him as the man who built New Delhi, designed country houses, and had an eye like a jeweller and the mind of a mathematician. But when it came to war memorials—he was a man transformed.
Lutyens never served in the war. Too old. But his friends and family did. He saw the grief firsthand. And he understood that you couldn’t just put up statues and hope people would move on. No, what he created wasn’t just architecture—it was a space to feel, to grieve, to remember.
And here’s a great story for you. Lutyens, when asked why he didn’t put a cross on the Cenotaph, said, quietly:
“The cross is in the heart of every man who looks at it.”
Oof. That’ll stop you in your tracks.
He believed in universality. In human dignity. In letting the space speak for itself. Bears repeating, the word “Cenotaph” means “empty tomb.”It’s for the ones with no known grave. No last resting place. Just names on lists. Just letters that stopped coming. Just silence.
Lutyens gave form to that silence. A place for the missing. A shape for sorrow.
So, next time you’re walking down Whitehall—maybe you’ve just come from Westminster, maybe you’re off to Trafalgar Square—stop for a second. Look at it properly. The Cenotaph. No names, no battles carved into it. Just the words: The Glorious Dead.
And remember, this thing—this icon—started as a bit of plaster.
But in the hands of Edwin Lutyens?
It became sacred.
I started this with the Old Contemptibles. And here they come again. The survivors of the BEF – British Expeditionary Force – the Old Contemptibles, they were at the forefront of the contingent of the British servicemen who marched that day. Which was at it should be.
Well, this is a great story, a great London story. I’ve only scratched the surface. I think there’s every chance we’ll be stopping back here one of these days.
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.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.