London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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A very good evening to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Sunday, June 8th, 2025.
Today’s is going to be a grab-bag. A miscellany.
Miscellany. Interesting word. It’s of Latin origin. Yes, the Romans.
Let’s head back there just for a minute and track this word down. Back back back we go. Back nearly 2,000 years. Back to Rome. To the Colosseum.
We’re going to see the gladiators. But not in action. It’s the day before the gladiatorial contests. It’s the gladiators’ banquet. The gladiators are feasting. For many of them it’s the last supper. Sort of like a condemned criminal’s final meal.
And what are they tucking into? A miscellanea. Yes, that’s our word. A miscellanea was a meat hash, a hodge-podge. It was food for gladiators.
Be a different scene tomorrow. An all-day affair. Lots of variety. In the morning it’ll be wild beast shows. Then for a mid-day break it’ll be the lunch-time execution – though slaughter is a better word – of common cruels. That’ll get the 80,000 spectators blooded for the main show, the afternoon gladiatorial contests.
Now I said we’re at the Colosseum in Rome. But let us not forget that this town of ours, London, was founded by the Romans. And was a Roman city for four centuries. That’s getting on for twenty percent of London’s history. And sure enough, Londinium had its own Colosseum. A Roman amphitheatre. As you’d expect it was quite a bit smaller than the grandpappy of them all, the Colosseum in Rome. But it was still a big, impressive structure. The big yard over in front of Guildhall, that yard was the Roman amphitheatre playing field, so to speak. That was where gladiators fought and died.
Can you see it? Look closely. You can see a band of dark stone paving stones in Guildhall Yard.
Those paving stones mark the original outer wall of the amphitheatre. And twenty feet down are some very well-preserved ruins of the Roman amphitheatre. They’ve been restored and translated to the 21st century. It’s a very fine interactive and education attraction. Above ground it’s Guildhall Art Gallery, below ground it’s the Roman amphitheatre.
Anyway, in the way of these things, that’s the potency of one word. In this case, our word miscellany.
So for our miscellany for today, June 8th, we’ve got a couple of anniversaries. And some birthdays. And some folklore. And some reflections on a London story that broke a few days ago and is turning out to be one of those gifts that keeps on giving.
It’s June 8th, 1374. Geoffrey Chaucer – yes, that Chaucer, the father of English poetry, author the Canterbury Tales – on this day in 1374 Geoffrey Chaucer got himself a plum job. He was appointed Controller of Customs for the Port of London.
Oh and I knew you’d be wondering, the name Chaucer is originally French. And it meant hose maker, stocking maker. Though Geoffrey’s father wasn’t a hose maker. He was a vintner. But as occupations go being a vintner was, well, French through and through.
Everything’s connected of course. Take Chaucer’s being the father of English poetry, well, timing is always of the essence. English – the language – was finally coming on during Chaucer’s lifetime. The three monarchs who reigned during Chaucer’s lifetime were Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV. Edward III was the first English king to encourage the use of English. In 1362, just when Chaucer was coming into his youthful manhood, Parliament was opened with an address in English. That was a huge step forward for this tongue of ours. Not forgetting that the word parliament was a French word. It meant speaking, talk.
And as for Richard II, he also spoke English fluently. Though it wasn’t his first language. His first language was, no surprise this, Norman French. Which brings us to Henry IV. He was the first monarch to speak English as his native tongue. Since the Norman conquest, three centuries earlier. So it was happening. English was coming on. Cometh the English language, cometh the father of English poetry.
So that’s one anniversary. Now let’s fast forward to 1949.
On June 8th, 1949 George Orwell’s great dystopian novel 1984 was published.
And surely a sign of the times – my God, Orwell must be spinning in his grave – spinning in his grave because the novel has now been fitted up with “trigger warnings”. And Orwell himself accused of “thought crimes.”
Maybe people have too much time on their hands. How does that saying put it, “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” Too much time on their hands not least because of two labour-saving devices that were patented on June 8th. The washing machine in 1824. And the Hoover – called the vacuum cleaner on the other side of the Atlantic, where it was patented in 1869.
And, yes, I’m being facetious. I’m all in favour of machines doing the soul-destroying work.
As for birthdays, the great English painter John Millais was born on June 8th, 1829. And it’s happy birthday – 1916 it was- to Francis Crick, who along with James Watson discovered the structure of DNA. That discovery has a great little cameo role on Simon’s Cambridge Explorer Day. And on June 8th,1955, in London, out pops a baby boy named Tim Berners Lee. Who 34 years later will invent the World Wide Web. London, baby. All roads lead to London.
And a couple of memorable deaths on this day. In 1809, Tom Paine, whom we Americans claim as our own because he sided with our lot in the American War of Independence. But born in the Brecks in Norfolk, he couldn’t have been more English.
And finally, the great poet Gerard Manley Hopkins went on ahead – left us – on June 8th, 1889. With only a little bit of a stretch you could say Gerard Manley Hopkins came into this world in London. He was born in Stratford, Essex. Which of course is part of Greater London today. The quintessence of East London.
Hopkins died on a spring day in 1889. And sure enough Gerard Manley Hopkins has a poem entitled Spring and Death.
Here it is:
Spring and Death
I had a dream. A wondrous thing:
It seem’d an evening in the Spring;
—A little sickness in the air
From too much fragrance everywhere:—
As I walk’d a stilly wood,
Sudden, Death before me stood:
In a hollow lush and damp,
He seem’d a dismal mirky stamp
On the flowers that were seen
His charnelhouse-grate ribs between,
And with coffin-black he barr’d the green.
‘Death,’ said I, ‘what do you here
At this Spring season of the year?’
‘I mark the flowers ere the prime
Which I may tell at Autumn-time.’
Ere I had further question made
Death was vanish’d from the glade.
Then I saw that he had bound
Many trees and flowers round
With subtle web of black,
And that such a sable track
Lay along the grasses green
From the spot where he had been.
But the Spring-tide pass’d the same;
Summer was as full of flame;
Autumn-time no earlier came.
And the flowers that he had tied,
As I mark’d, not always died
Sooner than their mates; and yet
Their fall was fuller of regret:
It seem’d so hard and dismal thing,
Death, to mark them in the Spring.
And that’s about it, apart from that flakey news story out of Notting Hill. Here’s the tale. There are streets over there that look like a fruit salad.
Practically every house a different sorbet colour: red, blue, yellow, green, pink, beige. You walk along those streets you’re walking through a rainbow. Well, it was on the cards, wasn’t it. Sure enough, that modern scourge has finally washed up on those shores.
Armies of so-called Influencers have discovered those picture postcard houses and turned them into a favourite London location for their shoots.
They’re like flies attracted to rotting fruit. Every day armies of them pitch up and pose for photographs in front of those picture postcard pretty houses.
It’s driving the locals spare. Nobody wants their neighbourhood to be a film set day in and day out.
Driven to desperation some of the householders have taken to unprettying their houses. They’ve painted them a very unbecoming black.
But once you become fate’s plaything it’s not always easy to get out of its clutches.
In short, black houses may be bye bye influencers but Hello Goths.
Mary – eminently sensible Mary – nailed it in one. She said, “they painted those rainbow houses black to get rid of influencers and now they’ve got Goths. Serves them right. What can they have been thinking? Why didn’t they just paint them white, like a million other London houses.”
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.