London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And, from London a very good day to you, wherever you are. It’s August 21st, 2024.
Today’s pin…
Thinking of moving to London? Ever wonder what it’s like to live in London? Is it affordable? Well, here’s some food for thought for you. Yesterday the Evening Standard ran a piece headlined Want to Rent a London home? You’ll need to earn £76,000. So says a body called Funding London’s Affordable Home. The report says, Properties in vast swathes of London are becoming off-limits to key workers. As is always the case with these things, those are averages, it’s a broad brush depiction of the London housing situation. Looked at up close the London housing picture is made up of approximately nine million pixels. Nine million Londoners. And every one of those pixels is its own story. They’re like snowflakes, every one of them is unique. For what it’s worth, I can roll out my personal experience with London housing. The first couple of years I was in student housing. And then we had two fabulous years living rent-free in a huge penthouse flat in a key square near Marble Arch. Translation of that term key square. London has hundreds of squares. Famously, the square is to London what canals are to Venice. Happily for one and all, a lot of those squares are open to the public: Russell Square, Leicester Square, Gordon Square, etc. But the story of London squares is a page you have to turn. Because some of them are private. They’re key squares. The only people who can access them are the people who live on the square. They have the key to the square. So, yes, that was pretty special for a young married couple living in a huge penthouse flat in a key square in central London. It was Mary’s grandmother’s flat. It had a couple more years on the lease to run. Granny had moved out. Moved up to Suffolk to live with her brother. I remember the hallway nameplate just inside the front door. It was an old, deeply varnished, wooden affair holding five tasteful wooden slats, each with a name on it. Five of them because it was an 1830, five-storey building, one flat per floor. And one of those names said, Alexander of Tunis. Yes, that was Field Marshal Harold Alexander, 1st Viscount Alexander of Tunis, the great World War II military commander. He had died six years before we took up residence there but the nameplate was still there. I went weak in the knees every time I walked by it.
Anyway, Granny’s lease came to an end and we were out. We bought a two-bedroom flat in West Hampstead. Cost us £18,000. A few years later we traded up to a maisonette. Half a house in other words. That was a six-room affair. Cost us £42,000. And then we traded up again to this nine-room house, it, like the two flats, was in West Hampstead. Price tag: £175,000. Today, probably about £1.3 million pounds. People say to us, oh my god, it’s appreciated that much, you’re so lucky. We beg to differ. In that sense we don’t feel lucky at all. Because our kids can’t afford to live in their home town. They’re in great places: one of them was in Brighton and is now moving to Dohab in Egypt. Another one’s in Sevilla in Spain. And James is in Changmai in Thailand. So we’re pleased for them, they’re all three living in interesting, beautiful places but it would be nice if they could live in their home town if they wanted to. Anyway that’s a big, broad-brush picture of the London housing situation. And beside it, an individual, one-pixel picture.
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Moving on, today’s Random – I got Swiftyed yesterday. Heading into town it was wall to wall Swifties. And heading back home in the evening, same thing. All of them glittered and spangled up and on their way to Wembley. Last night was the last concert of her eight concert London Eras tour this summer.
And it wasn’t just jackpot time for the American singing superstar. London coined it as well. The five gigs she did in the capital this month were seen by nearly half a million people. That generated more than £100 million pounds extra spending in the capital. Break that down to individual Swifty pixels – each Swifty parted with more than £500 to watch the Wembley shows.
Ok today’s Ongoing.
I fell amongst thieves today. Set out to do the first leg of my One Day in London itinerary. If a friend were coming to London and had one day here. And one day only. What would I recommend he or she do. So I set out this morning determined to make a start on that.
Beginning with full English at Franx on Shaftesbury Avenue.
Franx is the Italian cafe much frequented by Mary and her fellow dancers on Saturday. They go there for coffee after their dance class at the Pineapple Studio in Covent Garden. They all rave about it. Best coffee in Covent Garden. Full English if you’re feeling peckish. Small. Independent. Not a chain. Frank’s a lovely man. Looks after his staff. They’re very loyal. Daniela, who’s from Romania, has worked there for 16 years. And it’s got that great location. The other end of Shaftesbury Avenue. The end that’s not overrun with tourists. Tree-lined. Sidewalk tables. A little bit Parisian, really. In a word, parfait.
Well, breakfast was great. Daniela was her usual friendly self. I emerged. Got my technicolour hit with a glance to the right, a glance at Renzo Piano’s Central Saint Giles project. Made a mental note to do a podcast on that architectural light show. Turned left to head down Monmouth Street. Made the mistake of looking down Neal Street. It’s the turning on the left as soon as you come out of Franx. And, well, in the way of these things, I got sidetracked. Thought, Neal Street’s like a candy store. I’m just going to stroll down one side and up the other. One block down, one block up. Get the mic out and talk to it. Walk and talk. You walk along this one block in London this is what awaits you. That’s today, August 21st, 2024. What a different story it was back in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. One of the worst slums in London. But that’s another London Calling. Calling us on another podcast. We’ll time- travel down on another day. The past was a different country. That visit, its day will come.
Here’s today’s saunter. And, yes, it’s a bit rough-edged. It’s out and about, off the cuff. Not scripted.
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.