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 New Year’s Eve.
Wednesday, December 31st, 2025.
And right on cue, here’s your daily London fix.
And this one, well… well, this one’s all about New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Eve in history. New Year’s Eve today. New Year’s Eve traditions. New Year’s Eve superstitions. What some of those famous words actually mean.
Some famous names. Including a birthday. Assorted odds and ends. A real grab bag. Let’s do the birthday boy first. The great actor, Sir Anthony Hopkins, is 88 years old today. He was born on New Year’s Eve 1937.
Something else that was new on New Year’s Eve.
The December 31st in this instance was New Year’s Eve 1879. Drum roll – wait for it – say hello to the incandescent lamp. That’s right. On New Year’s Eve in 1879 the great inventor Thomas Edison gave the first public demonstration of his incandescent lamp. Which was of course the forerunner of the electric light bulb. Think about that for a minute. All those Christmas season lights we’ve been enjoying this month, they were made possible by what Thomas Edison gave us on that New Year’s Eve 146 years ago. And it was New Year’s Eve 99 years ago – 1926 – that the British Broadcasting Company was dissolved. The very next day – New Year’s Day 1927 – how utterly appropiate, out with old on December 31st, in with the new on January 1st– that fledgling broadcasting operation was reconstituted, under a Royal Charter no less, as the British Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC.
And how about this diary entry for New Year’s Eve, 1661. One Samuel Pepys – yes, it was he, the greatest diarist of them all.
Sure enough, Pepys commits to paper a New Year Resolution. The diary entry reads: “I have newly taken a solemne oath about abstaining from plays and wine, which I am resolved to keep according to the letter of the oath, which I keep by me.”
Wonder what the shelf life was of that resolution? I’ll find out.
All right, now about some of those famous words? What do they actually mean.
Auld lang syne, for starters. Literal translation: old long since. Or old long ago. Its idiomatic meaning is of course, ‘for the sake of old times’, or ‘times long past’.
Ok, let’s get the first couple of verses and chorus into crystalline focus. Goes like this.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?
That’s the first verse. It’s asking, poignantly, should we forget old friends, old acquaintance. And should we forget old times, never bring them to mind?
Then comes the chorus.
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
For auld lang syne, my jo,
Jo is also a Scots word. A tender little Scots word. It’s a term of affection. It means my dear, my sweetheart, my beloved, my old love.
So, the top layer of meaning is, For old times sake, my dear, for old times sake, we’ll take a cup, we’ll have a drink, we’ll raise a glass together… But it’s not just a drink, it’s a drink imbued with meaning, it’s a drink of kindness. So drill down a bit it’s saying, we’ll drink together in friendship. Or we’ll have one more cup for old times’ sake. Or slightly more freely, we’ll raise a glass to kindness once again. And it’s not charity-kindness. It’s human kindness. Warmth. Fellowship. The good feeling between people who’ve shared time and life together. An easy, readily understood, loose translation would be “come on then, one more for old times.
And then we get the second verse/
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stoup!
and surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
A pint stoup is a drinking vessel. No prizes for guessing how much it holds.
And it’s quite simple really.
The first two lines of the second verse are saying, you’ll be responsible for your drink and I’ll be responsible for mine…
Tonally it’s basically an expression of of good-humoured independence. No one sponging. No one going dry. Everyone keeping their own vessel topped up.
But now listen up to where the second half of the second verse goes.
And we’ll tak a cup o kindness yet
for auld lang syne.
That little word yet is doing some heavy lifting. It’s a word of defiance against time, against the ravages of time. It’s saying even after all these years, even though things have changed so much, we’re not going to forget those long ago times, we’re not going to forget old acquaintances, old adventures, not going to forget those times gone by. The bond between us is still there.
And lastly, pause on that word kindness. Kindness in the greatest new year/old year poem ever doesn’t mean being nice in a soft, sentimental way. The word kindness is kin – so to speak – to the word kin. And the word kindred. And indeed the word mankind. It means being related, belonging to the same family. In a loose sense, being brethren. That’s why a cup of kindness is such a powerful phrase in the auld lang syne song. It’s a recognition of kinship.
And, look, before we bid Robert Burns, here’s a wild card for you.
And no question about it, this is me being a bit mischievous. Doing my utmost to make sure there’s always something in this podcast that’s out of left field, something you’re sure not going to get anywhere else in a piece on New Year’s Eve.
Wild card? No, it’s more like the joker in the pack. It’s the words Robert Burns wrote with a diamond on the window of the Golden Lion Hotel in Stirling. It’s Robert Burns teeing off on the Royal Family, the House of Hanover.
For the record, Burns was in their pay at the time. He was a lowly but ambitious official in the Customs Service.
Here’s what he said. And remember the Stuarts he refers to were Scots. James I of England was James VI of Scotland. The Stuarts were of course shown the door, replaced by the Germans, the House of Hanover.
Here’s what he said.
“The injured Stuart’s line are gone
A race outlandish fill their throne –
An idiot race, to honour lost;
Who know them best, despise them most…”
Well, I guess you could say the Stuarts were already auld lang syne and dashing off that bit of savage doggerel Robert Burns was just doing what came naturally.
Ok, what else? How about Hogmanay. That’s a famous New Year’s Eve word. Also Scots. And northern England. And, yes, it’s hoary with age. It’s been with us for about six centuries. That’s hogmanay in its modern form. Its ancestry is even older. And disputed. Some scholars say it comes from old French. And it’s true, in its core you can hear the French word ‘an’ meaning year. Other scholars say the word carries echoes Old Norse winter solstice festivals. And some detect traces of Old Gaelic in the word.
That’s of passing interest. What’s not in question is Hogmanay as an ancient signifier.
Hogmanay’s about community – it’s about cleansing, renewal and luck.
There’s the first-footing element. The first person to cross your threshold after midnight matters. Ideally a dark-haired man, bearing gifts. Coal, whisky, shortbread. Symbols of warmth, sustenance, good cheer.
To that you can add the fire festivals.
New Year’s Eve – New Year Fireworks – will be part and parcel of that. From Shetland to Stonehaven, fire drives out the old year’s spirits and lights the way forward.
And no question but there’s a fit with the singing of Auld Lang Syne. It’s sung not as background noise but as a communal act. Hands joined. Circle formed. A reckoning with time.
And what about superstitions. And indeed divinations. Traditions, if you will. To predict what the coming year held in store. There was a tradition of opening the Bible or another book and reading a passage at random. And there was the reading of the ashes tradition. Trying to see significant shapes in the ashes of the fire. And the superstition of opening doors and windows to let bad luck out at the back and good luck in at the front.
But let’s end with a peal of bells. Literally and figuratively ring the old year out and the new year in. That paragon of Londoners, Charles Lamb, gave us this piece on New Year’s Eve in 1821: “Of all sound of all bells – (bells, the music nighest bordering upon heaven) – most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonths; all I have done or suffereed, performed or neglected–in that regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a person dies.” Great words. They’re from Charles Lamb’s piece, “New Year’s Eve.”
And for a final peal of bells, a poetic peal of bells, there’s Alfred Lord Tennyson’s wonderful poem within a poem. His Ring out, wild bells poem, published in 1850, the year Tennyson became poetic laureate. It forms part of In Memoriam, Tennyson’s great elegy to Arthur Henry Hallam, his close friend and sister’s fiance, who died in 1833 when he was just 22 years old. And that gets to Waltham Abbey in the Epping Forest district of Essex. The town is named and renowned for its former Abbey, the last to be dissolved in England. Tennyson was staying in the area and is said to have heard its bells ring on New Year’s Eve. And a final touch before the poem – a final touch that’s more grist for the New Year’s Eve mill – it’s an accepted English custom to ring English Full Circle bells to ring out the old year and ring in the new year over midnight on New Year’s Eve. Sometimes the bells are rung half-muffled for the death of the old year, then the muffles are removed to ring without muffling to mark the birth of the new year. Muffled. And then the muffles come off. It’s shiver up the spine stuff. And if your madly waving your hand, “what’s Full circle bell ringing?’ Look, that’s a story in itself. I’ll leave you to go hareing after that on your own.
Here’s the Tennyson poem. Best possible note London Calling can sound to ring out the old year, ring in the new year.
Here’s the poem.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
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 £25 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 Jack the 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.