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 Sunday, October 12th, 2025. David here with your daily London fix.
Special day here at London Walks GHQ. Today’s our – Mary’s and my – 50th wedding anniversary.
About 19,000 days. That’s how many days I’ve lived in London. Out of those 19,000 days there’s only five that I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing, what was happening. Three of those days are of course the days our three kids pitched. The fourth day was October 12th, 1973. I’d been in London all of about two weeks. I know, thanks to a diary entry, I went to see a film on October 12th, 1973. The film was Oh What a Lovely War. It was the first film I saw in London. Had no way of knowing of course that two years to the day I’d be marrying the daughter of the man who wrote the film. Needless to say, two weeks into my London sojourn I had yet to meet Mary. And our getting married on the second anniversary of my seeing Oh What a Lovely War was just a coincidence. It wasn’t until many years later, thumbing through that old diary, that I realised, hey, good heavens, exactly two years before our wedding day I went to the movies for the first time in London and the film was Oh What a Lovely War.
Anyway, so that’s four of the five dates that are in sharp relief. Dates that have the big red circle around them on the calendar. Dates I can pinpoint exactly – I know where I was and what I was doing.
And today – repeating myself here – is the 50th anniversary of the fifth date. October 12th, 1975. Our wedding day. So what I wanted to know was what else was going on in London and elsewhere on our wedding day? And indeed what was London like fifty years ago? Surprise, surprise – I found out. And that’s what the main body of this podcast is about. Welcome one and all – welcome to London on October 12th, 1975.
Picture it. London, Sunday 12 October 1975. The city is damp, faintly diesel-scented, half asleep. Seven-and-a-bit million Londoners going about their weekend business – fewer than a decade earlier, but still a small nation in themselves. The capital’s shrunk from its post-war peak; whole families have decamped to the new towns. Those who’ve stayed behind live among cranes, concrete, and scaffolding. London’s rebuilding itself again – Barbican towers up, the National Theatre half-finished, the NatWest Tower climbing steadily into the clouds.
The Prime Minister is Harold Wilson, in his second go-round at Number 10 – pipe in hand, smile tight, juggling inflation, strikes, and the hangover of Empire. Across the Atlantic, Gerald Ford is keeping the Oval Office seat warm after Nixon’s fall; in the Kremlin, Leonid Brezhnev, eyebrows like storm clouds, presides over the Soviet bloc. The world feels grey, nuclear, slightly out of breath.
And on this particular London Sunday, a parcel containing 27 pounds of gelignite sits under a table at Lockett’s Restaurant in Marsham Street, Westminster – a Tory MPs’ haunt. It’s spotted in time, defused with minutes to spare. Another bomb waits on the railings outside the neighbouring Marsham Court. London, in other words, is still holding its nerve in the long shadow of the Troubles.
Yet life goes on. It always does here.
Out in Hyde Park, a cavalcade of shiny motors is parading to herald the Diamond Jubilee British International Motor Show. Ford Cortinas, Minis, Triumph Dolomites, even a Reliant Robin or two wobbling along like wind-up toys. The city hums with the smell of petrol and damp leaves. Routemasters clatter past – ding-ding! – while parking meters tick down the seconds to EXPIRED.
The Numbers Behind the Noise
London’s population that year: roughly 7.4 million. Average full-time male wage about £75 a week; female workers earned nearer £45. A fish-and-chips supper cost 25p, a pint of beer 22p, a daily paper 5p, a Tube ride 5p, a first-class stamp 7p. The average London house would set you back £13,000. A small hotel room in Bayswater? £8 a night including breakfast – tea, toast, one egg, two rashers, a tomato that had died nobly under the grill.
Inflation’s roaring away at nearly 24 percent. Everyone talks about prices the way we talk about weather. “You seen what milk’s gone up to?” is a national refrain.
But for all that, the city’s far from drab.
The Cultural Weather
On the West End boards you’ve got Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land at Wyndham’s – Gielgud and Richardson fencing words like rapiers – and A Little Night Music at the Adelphi with Jean Simmons. The Royal Ballet’s at Covent Garden; Sadler’s Wells hosts Rambert. The Dad’s Army stage show has just opened – proof that comfort-television works just as well live.
On cinema hoardings: Jaws still biting chunks out of the box office, Rollerball revving its dystopian engines, Shampoo and Nashville drawing the grown-ups. In the States, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is about to sweep the Oscars. Londoners are queueing under drizzling marquees, cigarettes cupped against the rain, for the thrill of the big screen.
In the bookshops: Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow, The Moneychangers by Arthur Hailey, The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins, Curtain by Agatha Christie – her last Poirot, and the end of an era. You can still smell the fresh print at Foyles on the Charing Cross Road.
On the wireless: Bowie’s “Fame”, Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” just about to land, ABBA’s “SOS” all over the airwaves. On the telly that night: The Two Ronnies, Fawlty Towers, The Good Life. The country’s broke but laughing.
London on the Ground
Walk down Oxford Street that Sunday and you see a city in flux. Cortinas, Minis, black cabs, and, weaving gamely among them, those little three-wheeled Reliants – fibreglass shells on motorcycle licences, the poor man’s car. You’d spot them parked askew under the watchful eye of the new traffic wardens, who wielded their ticket books with the solemnity of priests. A 10p coin bought you half an hour on a parking meter; the clang of its handle was part of the city’s percussion.
Bayswater, Paddington, Islington – melting pots long before anyone used the phrase. Irish navvies, Cypriot grocers, Jamaican record-shop owners, Indian corner-shop families, Nigerian nurses, Italian café proprietors. About 15 percent of Londoners were foreign-born, and you heard it in the air: reggae and bhangra and Italian pop drifting out of shopfronts.
Population falling, buildings rising – the Barbican’s concrete terraces gleaming new; the National Theatre almost finished on the South Bank; Tower 42 (then the NatWest Tower) climbing above the Square Mile. London in hard-hat and hi-vis, rebuilding itself in Brutalist grey.
And somewhere in the back streets of Chelsea or Camden, a few scruffy kids with guitars are rehearsing something called punk.
Beyond the Thames
Beyond London, the world’s turning too.
In Rome, Pope Paul VI is canonising Oliver Plunkett, martyred at Tyburn in 1681 – first Irish saint in seven centuries. Irish Londoners fill pubs and parish halls to celebrate.
Across the Atlantic, Jacqueline Hansen is setting a women’s marathon world record – 2 hours 38 minutes – in Oregon. A quiet revolution in trainers and grit.
At Fenway Park, the Cincinnati Reds have just beaten the Boston Red Sox to level the World Series.
And somewhere in Illinois, a small congregation holds the first service of what will become the Willow Creek megachurch.
It’s one of those hinge-of-the-decade days: the old order still standing, but you can feel the new world already tuning its guitar.
The Feel of the Day
Back in Westminster, the bomb squad is packing up. Lockett’s is cordoned off, pavement slick with rain. Newspapers hit the stands: “Bomb Plot Foiled.”
In a hundred cafés across London, people stir sugar into Nescafé and shake their heads. “World’s gone mad,” says someone – but there’s a wry smile with it. Londoners have seen worse.
And that’s the thing about 12 October 1975. The economy’s wheezing, inflation’s feral, there’s a bomb scare in Westminster – but the city’s alive.
Seven-and-a-half million souls dodging puddles, queuing for buses, feeding coins into parking meters, laughing at Fawlty Towers, and dreaming of better days.
Walk it now, in your mind’s ear, and you can still hear it: the rumble of the Routemaster, the hiss of rain on tarmac, the far-off chime of Big Ben through the mist.
That was London then – bruised but beautiful, broke but unbowed, a city finding its way through the drizzle toward the light.
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.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from – – 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, , the former Editor (and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And , 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.