London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And a very good morning to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Bank Holiday Monday, May 5th, 2025.
As that lovely young Israeli woman wrote to me a while back, “every day is a teaching day.” Which was just one way of putting it. She of course could have made much the same point had she said, “every day is a learning day.” The back story there is on my Kensington Walk I do an optional extra at walk’s end. For anyone who’s game we go into St Mary Abbots and I lay on for them a quick tour of the interior of that beautiful church. One of the highlights of which is the baptismal font. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. On it you can see four angels. Each of the angels is holding an urn. Out of each urn there floweth a river. As it turns out, they’re the four rivers that are mentioned in the Book of Genesis. The four rivers that flow through Eden. That was pretty much the extent of what I knew about those four biblical rivers. I would sometimes say to my walkers, “had you known, you could have emailed a friend this morning, saying, ‘what am I going to do this day in London, well, amongst other things I’m going to stand beside and look out over the four great rivers that are mentioned in the first book of the bible. That’s a talking point, wouldn’t you say.”
But apart from being able to direct my walkers’ gaze to the north by northeast river and saying to them, “and this one is the Tigris Euphrates” that was pretty much as far as I could take them with those four biblical rivers. But in the way of these things – and it’s one of the best things about London Walks, the bright, switched on, terribly nice people who you get to meet, who go on our walks – in the way of these things said lovely young Israeli woman went away and unbeknownst to me did some research on those four rivers and sent me what she’d found out. Which I of course now pass on to my walkers.
So, yes, that was, like every day, a teaching day. Or, flip that coin over, a learning day.
And so is today, this Bank Holiday Monday.
This episode of This is London is, so to speak, a Bank Holiday outing. In more senses than one.
Woke up and thought, ‘no I’m not going to do London transport today. That can wait. It’s a Bank Holiday Monday so I’m going to do a podcast about Bank Holidays. And like a Bank Holiday there’s something in it for everyone. For Brits – for whom Bank Holidays are second nature – some of the history, some of the back story will be new to them. And for visitors, well, much of the tale will be stuff they don’t know about.
So here we go.
Often comes as a shock to my compatriots, Americans, who for a lot of their working life, get just two weeks of holiday a year, often comes as a shock to them – a shock composed not least of wistfulness and maybe even a little bit of envy – to learn that Brits get 5.6 weeks of annual paid leave. That’s four weeks of holiday. 28 days made up 20 working days topped up with the weekends appended to each of the five working days in those four weeks of holiday. And then those 20 working days get bumped up to 28 days of annual holiday when you add the eight annual bank holidays. You can do the maths: 28 days is five working weeks plus three more days. Bottom line: 5.6 weeks of annual paid leave.
And what are the eight bank holidays? This is in England and Wales. Things are a bit different in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The eight bank holidays are New Years Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, today (the early May Bank Holiday), the last Monday in May (that one’s called the Spring Bank Holiday), the last Monday in August (it’s known as the Summer Bank Holiday), and then Christmas Day and Boxing Day (Boxing Day for anybody jejeune about these matters, is December 26th). I think it likely that come the next Boxing Day, London Calling will touch down on that particular holiday – I’ll weave the tale – tell the back story of the Boxing Day bank holiday.
Now what about the history? Let’s get to grips with some of the Ws – who? what? where? when? why?
The uber Bank Holidays were Good Friday and Christmas Day. They were known as common law holidays, having been customary holidays since time immemorial. Fast forward – or fast backward if you prefer – to 1871. Behold, an Act of Parliament. The Bank Holidays 1871 Act. To the two common law holidays of Christmas and Good Friday it adds the first official bank holidays: four of them: Easter Monday, Whit Monday, the first Monday in August, and December 26th (Boxing Day). The first Monday in May joined the party in 1878. And then come 1871, exactly a hundred years after the 1871 Bank Holidays Act, Whit Monday had to make way for the last Monday in May. Aside here: that’s right, I didn’t know either. What is Whit Monday? Also known as Pentecost Monday, or the Monday of the Holy Spirit, Whit Monday was a holiday celebrated the day after Pentecost, a so-called moveable feast in the Christian liturgical calendar. It is moveable because it is determined by the date of Easter. Well, in the event it was given its marching orders and was replaced, Bank Holiday-wise, by the last Monday in May. And that 1971 centenary was a red letter year in the Bank Holiday story, because it also ushered in the eighth and last – so far – Bank Holiday, the Summer Bank Holiday, the last Monday in August Bank Holiday.
And so we come to the best part of this cultural tale. I’m tempted to call it the Bank Holiday curtain call. That’s curtain call as in the theatre: that moment of joy and delight for one and all concerned when performers return to the stage after a performance to receive applause and recognition from the audience.
So, yes, it’s meet the star of the show.
Meet John Lubbock, the first Baron Avebury. He certainly deserves a round of applause. Indeed, a standing ovation. We have John Lubbock to thank for Bank Holidays. An MP, he drafted the Bank Holiday Bill of 1871. Workers in this country were so grateful to him that for a long time Bank Holidays were known as St Lubbock’s Day.
And what a rich tale his life was. Rich literally and figuratively. First of all, a fine addition to the tray of chocolates that make up my Belgravia Pub Walk. John Lubbock was born at 29 Eaton Place. It’s going to be fun on that walk to stop outside 29 Eaton Place and say the individual who gave us bank holidays came into the world in this house. That was in 1834. And you know what, I’m going to make occasion particularly ripe by running that walk on a Bank Holiday.
John Lubbock was literally and figuratively rich. He came from a line of wealthy bankers. His father and grandfather were partners in the banking firm of Lubbock, Foster & Co. For the record, it, the bank, eventually merged with Coutts & Co. Yes, Coutts and Co. Founded in 1692, it’s the eighth oldest bank in the world and numbers among its clients the British Royal Family. You want to open an account at Coutts you need at least half a million – that’s pounds – in disposable funds. Potential clients are asked, “are you looking to borrow at least a million?”
But I digress. Please don’t take John Lubbock to task because of the silver spoon he was born with.
He was a fine man, a fine human being. More than a fine man. He was one fascinating character. That ran in the family. His father was a successful amateur mathematician and an astronomer and a good friend of Charles Darwin. When the Lubbocks moved to High Elms near Downe in Kent Charles Darwin himself moved to Downe and acted as young John Lubbock’s informal tutor in natural history.
When his father died, in 1865, John Lubbock took over the family bank. But his was not a one track mind. He was a very active member of the Royal Institution and the Geological Society and the Royal Society and the X Club. Another aside: yes, that’s right, it’s only just swum into my ken as well. The X Club was a private dining club made up of nine eminent London men of science. It met monthly in the social ‘season’ from October to June.
The nine – what an honour it was to be one of them – varied in class, religion, and scientific discipline, but all—whether mathematicians or naturalists, ardent agnostics or undogmatic Anglicans, salary-dependent professionals or wealthy London gentlemen—were united in advocating a science unconstrained by either commercial objectives or theological dogma. Pretty impressive.
But what tickles my fancy most of all about the man who gave us the first secular holidays in British history – who gave us Bank Holidays – are these three factoids. They’re so special they’re holidays in themselves.
Come on now, you have to admit it: only at London Walks!
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.