London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Saturday, August 2nd, 2025.
We’re not going to hang around. We’re going to high tail it to August 2nd, 1914.
But while everybody’s buckling their seat belts and I’m fumbling around trying to find the fob, a couple of other points.
First of all a mention of David Poyser’s walk tomorrow – Tomfoolery – Tom Lehrer’s London. Goes at 2.30 pm tomorrow, Sunday, August 3rd, from Marble Arch Underground Station, exit 2. We’re calling it “the wild card in the London Walks decked. Guided by a former London mayor. And, yes, it’s a send off – and an act of homage – to the great American satirist of the 50s and 60s. Bad singing will be encouraged as we sing our way around every stop with absolutely no sense of taste or decorum. And that we’re able to lay it on makes me really proud of London Walks. Tom Lehrer died a couple of days ago. David who guides the walk was on holiday. He got in touch with me, said, what do you think, should we resurrrect the Tom Lehrer Walk? I’m back on Saturday. I could do it on Sunday. I said, ‘absolutely, we have to do it. And what’s more I’ll lead the newsletter with it.’ And why does that make me proud of London Walks. Well, first of all that we’ve got in our repertory – which runs to well over 500 London Walks – a Tom Lehrer’s London Walk. And second of all, that we can be so responsive. Tom Lehrer dies and within a couple of hours of the announcement David, who’s on holiday, reaches out and says, ‘what do you say, shall I dust it off, shall we run it?’ If this sounds like boasting it’s boasting that’s well founded – there’s no other group of guides, no other walking tour company in the world that’s operating at this level.
Anything else? Yes, just another normal day at London Walks GHQ. Had a superb dinner last night at Ffiona’s, my favourite restaurant in London. Wined and dined with an American couple who’ve become really good friends. This is also compliments of London Walks. I met Tom on a walk. We hit it off famously. Realised we had a lot in common. We both suffer from an incurable case of bibliomania. But my question is, what is Ffiona putting in that lemon meringue pie of hers. Which is, not to put too fine a point on it, the most toothsome, the most delicious dessert I’ve ever shoved myself outside of. I ask because Mary, who shared the dessert with me, woke up saying, “I dreamt there were two dogs in our kitchen eating pillow cases.” Two minutes later she’s at the helm. And shouts up, “37 in”. That’s 37 London Walks emails in since midnight.
Ok, the main act. The conception moment for what follows is my finding out yesterday that my hero, Edward R. Murrow, stood on the steps of St Martin in the Fields on August 24th, 1940. Sirens were sounding all across London. A formation of German bombers was heading this way. London was going to have to take it. Because the Spitfires and Hurricanes didn’t have the technical wherewithal yet to track and close with enemy bombers on a nighttime mission. And the anti-aircraft were worse than useless. An Air Ministry document disclosed that only one enemy aircraft was shot down for every 6,000 shells fired.
So Edward R Murrow on the steps of St Martin in the Fields. That gets me to Trafalgar Square. Next step, today’s August 2nd. I wonder if anything happened in Trafalgar Square on any of the 200 or so August 2nds that Trafalgar Square has been in existence.
You want to picture this, think of a pebble dropped into a pond. The pond is Trafalgar Square. You drop a pebble in a pond you get ripples going out. Well, the ripples AI unearthed for me go out to Buckingham Palace and Charing Cross and 10 Downing Street and the Cabinet Office and Parliament. And, yes, I cheerfully own up to my assistant, Alan Iota – Alan as in Alan Turing and Iota as in a tiny bit of data – my assistant, Alan Iota, A.I. for short, I cheerfully own up to Alan Iota doing a lot of the dogsbody work for this. Just as, say, the prolific war historian Max Hastings has any number of researchers burrowing away in aid of his efforts.
And I think the other thing is, I’ve always had the utmost confidence in myself as an Everyman. I’ve always thought, I’m nothing special, I’m the quintessential Everyman. Which means of course, if I find something interesting other people – a lot of them at any rate – will also find it interesting. And I’m not by instinct or temperament a pure researcher – though I have done a fair old bit of pure research – but that wasn’t what I was put on earth to do. I’m a generalist, a storyteller. I want to find good stories. Or good threads and weave them together into good stories. And tell ‘em.
So that’s putting the cards on the table. Time to drop the pebble into the Trafalgar Square pond. Not the literal fountain ponds, the figurative pond. Drop the pebble in on August 2nd, 1914 and see where it takes us, see what we can conjure up. Get the story out there. Because it’s a good ‘un. It’s worth telling.
It’s high summer. Sunday, August 2nd, 1914. That means church bells. They’re ringing out all over London. But you know something, there’s a deeper noise. What today we’d call white noise. You don’t need hindsight to sense that we’re standing at a crossroads. It’s there in the morning papers. It’s also writ on the anxious faces in the streets. Europe’s armies are mobilising. Austria has declared war on Serbia. Germany and Russia have joined the dance. France is scrambling. Britain hasn’t yet committed but there’s something in the air. That something is tension and anxiety. By late morning the news has already drawn people to the gates of Buckingham Palace. This isn’t an organised demonstration. As one conservative paper would put it, “the Sunday frequenters of the Park and the West End began to converge on the Palace at about ten o’clock. Word travels quickly –“Rule Britannia” starts up in the crowd. Before long a great shout goes up. “We want our King.” George V and Queen Mary oblige. They step onto the balcony. To cheers and a roar of approval.
At the Criterion restaurant in Piccadilly Circus a huge union flag is unfurled. Ditto in Leicester Square.
Simple, honest to goodness patriotism you think?
Think again. There’s no wild “war fever” yet. The faces are watchful, questioning. Londoners are proud of their monarch, but they aren’t quite ready to chant for war.
Ok, fast forward a few hours. The real theatre of the day is getting underway in Trafalgar Square. From noon onwards processions start winding their way toward Nelson’s Column—men and women from St George’s Circus in Southwark, from the East India Docks, from Kentish Town and even from Westminster Cathedral. They’re led by trade unions and the Independent Labour Party. And wouldn’t you know it, the heavens open up. It’s raining steadily. You want to get all anthropomorphic you could say the sky is weeping. By four o’clock the rain is coming down hard, but the square is filling up. The downpour isn’t a deterrent. Ten to fifteen thousand people gather in the square. What’s going on isn’t a carnival; it’s a desperate plea for peace.
Keir Hardie – the founder of the Labour Party, a coal miner turned MP – climbs onto the plinth of Nelson’s Column. When his name is called he has to wait minutes before the cheering dies down. He warns that a European war will only serve arms dealers and imperialists. He calls for a general strike in any country that takes part.
He’s not alone up there. Beside him – they’re largely forgotten now but they were big names then – the bearded Labour MP G.N. Barnes, and Arthur Henderson, a future Labour leader; and Will Thorne of the Gas Workers’ Union; and the radical aristocrat Robert Cunninghame Graham; and the veteran socialist Henry Hyndman; and suffragette Charlotte Despard; and trade‑union organiser Mary MacArthur. They don’t pull their punches. Their speeches aren’t merely pacifist. They attack the secret diplomacy that has dragged Europe to the brink.
They call for workers of all countries to stand together and stop the war.
The mood is electric. But it’s also contradictory. As one group breaks into “The Red Flag” and “The Internationale,” a rival chorus counters with “God Save the King” and “Rule Britannia.”
Someone raises a red flag. In response a Union Jack goes up.
A young man climbs a lamppost and ties a national flag to it.
A speaker is pushed from the plinth and whacked with an umbrella. Rain drips off moustaches and hat brims. Banners and placards are soaked. Maybe the downpour helps cool tempers.
In the words of a Daily Express reporter, a dangerous collision between “socialistic cranks” and “ordinary citizens” was averted by a “copious draught of rain.”
Conservative papers dismiss the crowd as foreigners and cranks.
The Times emphasises that many in the crowd are French and German.
The Labour Leader, on the other hand, calls it the biggest Trafalgar Square rally in years. The Manchester Guardian reports that the crowd stretches down Whitehall and notes there is still “no war fever.”
Bottom line: the two nations that make up a divided nation are talking about the same event and seeing different things.
At five o’clock, with the rain still falling, a resolution is put to the drenched assembly. It calls for international peace and urges workers to use their political and industrial power “so that the nations shall not be involved in the war.”
There’s no formal vote; the chair declares it carried by acclamation.
As if on cue the crowd fractures. Part of it spills west toward Admiralty Arch to listen to patriotic speeches. Several thousand march along the Mall toward Buckingham Palace.
They’re singing the national anthem and the Marseillaise.
When they get to the palace, King George and Queen Mary make another balcony appearance.
They’re met by cheers, but the loyalties are more complex than the newspapers suggest.
While all this is happening, just a couple of hundred yards away in Downing Street the British Cabinet is in emergency session. Six members, meeting beforehand at Chancellor David Lloyd George’s house, have agreed to oppose any intervention unless Germany invades Belgium.
The meeting lasts nearly three hours and is heated. Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey warns that Germany and Austria-Hungary are ignoring all attempts at mediation and “marching steadily to war.”
Some ministers insist that Britain must stay neutral. Others urge immediate mobilisation. Eventually they compromise: Grey is authorised to give France a qualified assurance that Britain will not permit the German navy to use the English Channel as a base for operations against France.
It’s a small but fateful step. It doesn’t commit Britain to war, but it signals to Paris that the Royal Navy may protect France’s coasts.
Out in the wider world, the screw, the crisis, is fast tightening. German troops have crossed into the neutral Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, seizing its railways.
French and German armies are mobilising; tens of thousands of reservists are being recalled. That’s felt in London. More or less immediately. The Savoy Hotel loses 140 staff as waiters, barbers and cooks hurry home to join the French army.
Eighty of them are cooks.
Other West End hotels lose dozens.
At Charing Cross station the platform is packed with German reservists – barbers, musicians, waiters – trying to get back to Germany. But notices on the wall announce that trains via Flushing, in the Netherlands, are suspended.
Some men are criticised for not having “the pluck” to return and fight.
The French leave on Monday. They depart, as one paper notes, in the same “noisy spirits.”
There’s Anti‑German feeling. But no violence.
London is a world city. It’s cosmopolitan enough to watch its enemy’s reservists depart with curiosity.
There are other signs of crisis. Early that afternoon a Royal Proclamation is issued from Buckingham Palace. A Royal Proclamation announcing that payment of certain bills of exchange will be postponed because of the financial dislocation caused by the situation in Europe.
The text of the proclamation is formal – “in view of the critical situation in Europe … we do hereby direct and ordain.” It’s sealed from on high – sealed by the King at his court at Buckingham Palace.
What’s it in aid of. It’s a temporary moratorium to prevent a run on banks.
The next day, Monday, August 3rd, the Postponement of Payments Bill will be rushed through the House of Lords. Thereby giving legal authority to give legal authority to the proclamation.
Meanwhile the government extends the Monday bank holiday by three extra days. The Deputy Chairman of Lloyds Bank writes that he never thought he would have so many bank holidays at once and that he spends them in meetings and conferences.
Newspapers call the four‑day bank holiday “unprecedented.”Local papers all over the country are putting out special editions. Special editions telling people that war will soon be declared.
The extension gives the Treasury time to prepare emergency measures and perhaps gives ministers one last chance to avoid the abyss.
They don’t take it. On Monday afternoon Sir Edward Grey will stand in the House of Commons and explain why Britain cannot remain neutral when the German navy threatens France and when Belgian neutrality is at stake. The House is persuaded.
Asquith’s government orders general mobilisation.
On Tuesday the German government delivers an ultimatum to Belgium, demanding passage for its troops.
That night, at eleven o’clock on August 4th, 1914, Britain declares war on Germany. Once again, Buckingham Palace is a focal point. Crowds converge on the palace. Crowds singing patriotic songs and cheering the royal family. That scene lends itself to a reading of the class system in this country. Photographs show straw boaters and middle‑class faces.
The working‑class supporters of Keir Hardie are largely absent.
What is clear is that the mood has changed. The pacifist resolutions of Sunday are overwhelmed by a tidal wave of patriotism.
It’s easy, with hindsight, to see the peace rally as naive or doomed. But that verdict isn’t fair. Hardie and his colleagues knew what was coming. They understood that a war between empires would be a catastrophe for workers everywhere. Within a year Hardie’s health would break. He would die in 1915, heartbroken that he could not “stop the bloody thing.” His warning, and the voices of the women and men singing “The Red Flag” in the rain, deserve to be remembered. For a few hours on that grey Sunday in 1914, Trafalgar Square was the beating heart of a movement that said, simply and bravely: don’t do this.
You walk through Trafalgar Square today—dodging the tourists and street performers – you can sense the echoes. Look hard enough – exercise a little bit of historical imagination – you can see it. The black wet flagstones, the balustrades shining under the rain, the plinths and statues.
They were witness to one of the most dramatic afternoons in London’s history. Two days later, the world would change forever. Britain would change forever. It goes over the brink – and it did – a generation of young men will be lost, wiped out. The statistics tell the story. They couldn’t be more stark. The Great War – World War I – lasted nearly four years. Over the course of those four years an average of 486 young men lost their lives every day. That’s just over 20 an hour. For four years. If the Trafalgar Square peace demonstration had taken place during the war, and if it lasted two hours, at the end of those two hours 40 young men would be dead on muddy fields in Flanders and the Somme and Passchendale and Arras and so on. That was what was coming.
On this Sunday, though, there was still maybe a chance. Londoners must have thought, this can be averted, we don’t have to go over the cliff edge. They gathered, they sang, they argued, and they hoped. That’s worth remembering.
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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.