London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets Ahead.
Story time.
History time.
And brand new Prime Minister time.
The fifth in four years.
And for the next few days one little black front door is going to be on television screens all over the world.
Number 10 Downing Street.
Everybody recognises it.
Almost nobody knows it.
So today, let’s open the front door.
Because here’s the first surprise.
Number 10 isn’t really Number 10.
It’s Numbers 10, 11 and 12 knocked together. Three Georgian town houses, stitched together over nearly three centuries into one sprawling, eccentric, gloriously complicated whole.
And here’s surprise number two.
That famous black door?
It’s only the tip of the iceberg.
From Whitehall, Number 10 looks like a modest Georgian terrace.
Almost disappointingly modest.
Which is precisely the point.
One former insider called it “the supreme example of British understatement.”
Jack Brown, in his wonderful book No. 10: The Geography of Power at Downing Street, puts it beautifully: “The façade masks the incredible power that lies within.”
Exactly.
Because behind that unassuming front door lies one of the most powerful workplaces on Earth.
And one of the oddest.
Forget Downton Abbey.
Forget Buckingham Palace.
Think… TARDIS.
Tiny on the outside.
Astonishingly complicated on the inside.
Christopher Jones once likened it to the Doctor’s famous police box.
You step through the front door and discover corridor after corridor, staircase after staircase, courtyard after courtyard, room after room.
One former insider called it a rabbit warren.
Another preferred a Cluedo board.
Harold Wilson said it felt like “a small village.”
You almost never walk in a straight line.
The place simply evolved.
Nothing about it was planned.
Which brings us to George Downing.
An absolute rogue.
Samuel Pepys called him “a perfidious rogue.”
His own mother reportedly thought he was a scoundrel.
He’d been a chaplain.
A spy.
A soldier.
Cromwell’s intelligence chief.
Then, sensing which way the political wind was blowing, he quietly changed sides, betrayed yesterday’s friends and became a loyal servant of Charles II.
A first-rate survivor.
He gave the street his name.
But he never lived there.
Nor, for that matter, did he build it particularly well.
Three hundred years later Winston Churchill was still grumbling that the houses were “shaky and lightly built by the profit-teasing contractor whose name they bear.”
The ground beneath them didn’t help.
This part of Westminster was marshland.
The River Tyburn flowed nearby before emptying into the Thames.
The houses began sinking almost as soon as they were built.
They’ve never entirely stopped.
Number 10 has been repaired, rebuilt, remodelled, patched, strengthened and altered so many times that one writer compared it to Trigger’s broom.
You remember Trigger in Only Fools and Horses.
Same broom.
Seventeen new heads.
Fourteen new handles.
The building’s much the same.
Then comes another surprise.
George Downing never imagined he was building the home of British Prime Ministers.
He was putting up speculative housing.
Cheap terraces.
The sort of thing a seventeenth century property developer hoped would make him a tidy profit.
History happened to the houses.
They weren’t designed for greatness.
They grew into it.
Robert Walpole became the first Prime Minister to live there in 1735.
Well… sort of.
The title “Prime Minister” didn’t officially exist.
Indeed, it began life as an insult.
A term of abuse.
People muttered it darkly about ministers who seemed rather too powerful.
Walpole himself preferred First Lord of the Treasury.
That title still appears on the letterbox today.
And here’s another delicious twist.
The Prime Minister doesn’t necessarily live in Number 10 anymore.
Since Tony Blair’s day, Prime Ministers have generally lived in the much larger flat above Number 11.
The Chancellor gets the smaller accommodation above Number 10.
Only in Britain could the Prime Minister’s official address be Number 10 while his family is often sleeping over Number 11.
Inside, the surprises keep coming.
William Pitt thought it “the best summer town house possible.”
Clement Attlee called it “very comfortable.”
Anthony Eden’s wife thought it “the loveliest house in London.”
Harold Macmillan said it had “great character and charm.”
Others were less enthusiastic.
Campbell-Bannerman’s wife thought it looked like “a rotten old barrack.”
Margot Asquith complained about its absurd staircases.
One Prime Minister’s daughter remembered children getting lost inside.
There are rooms where no architect intended there should be rooms.
Corridors leading to corridors.
Staircases that seem to exist merely because another staircase got in the way.
And then there’s the Cabinet Room.
Rather plain, really.
Green baize table.
Simple chairs.
No gilt.
No chandeliers.
No grandeur.
Yet from that ordinary-looking room came decisions that shaped the Second World War, dismantled the British Empire, created the NHS, sent troops to war, signed peace treaties and steered the course of modern Britain.
Extraordinary consequences.
Ordinary room.
There’s another wonderful observation from someone who worked there.
When a Prime Minister first moves in, the windows seem enormous.
But as the years pass, they somehow grow smaller and smaller.
Eventually, it’s difficult to see the world outside.
A marvellous metaphor for power.
The building itself reminds every Prime Minister that they are merely passing through.
Portraits of every previous Prime Minister line the Grand Staircase.
Every new arrival walks past them.
Every departure walks past them.
Harold Macmillan once climbed those stairs, stopped in front of the portraits of Neville Chamberlain, Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald, peered at them for a long moment and murmured:
“A melancholy set of faces.”
He knew.
Every Prime Minister does.
They’re only temporary tenants.
Margaret Thatcher liked to say Prime Ministers were simply custodians of one of Britain’s greatest treasures.
Someone came before.
Someone else will come after.
And perhaps that’s the real genius of Number 10.
It isn’t magnificent.
It isn’t especially comfortable.
It isn’t convenient.
It leaks.
It sinks.
It’s forever under repair.
It’s confusing.
It’s eccentric.
It’s gloriously impractical.
And yet it somehow works.
Rather like Britain’s unwritten constitution itself.
Behind that plain black front door, people hurry along crooked corridors carrying red boxes.
Speechwriters polish tomorrow’s words.
Officials field calls from presidents and kings.
Cabinet ministers gather before meetings.
History, quite literally, walks the corridors.
From the street, it looks almost ordinary.
Inside, it’s Britain’s political TARDIS.
Or perhaps something even better.
Not a rabbit warren.
An ant’s nest.
Thousands of purposeful movements.
Countless unseen tasks.
Relentless activity.
One of the busiest addresses on the planet, hiding behind one of the plainest front doors in London.
That’s Number 10.
But the story doesn’t stop at that famous black front door.
There’s a new Prime Minister inside. Which means Whitehall itself is changing. Again.
If you’d like to go further, Luisa has exactly the walk for you.
It’s called Whitehall Exposed.
Downing Street is one of the stars of that walk. You’ll get the full Number 10 story, but you’ll also discover how it fits into the wider story of Whitehall, the muddy track that became the most important street in Britain.
And, of course, Luisa has refreshed the walk to take account of Britain’s new Prime Minister.
Henry VIII. Nelson. Churchill. The mysterious “C”. The intelligence services. The corridors of power. Right up to today’s Number 10 Downing Street.
Luisa’s a former surgeon, a distinguished medical journalist, a top-flight professionally qualified City of Westminster guide and one of the champion thoroughbreds in the London Walks stable. A force of nature. The rave reviews come flooding in after every walk she does.
Whitehall Exposed goes out on August 21st, August 26th, September 2nd and September 4th. All at 2 pm. Meet at Charing Cross Underground Station, Exit 1, by the entrance to the Clermont Hotel.
And that’s London.
And London Walks.
Full of good things.
Endlessly stimulating.
See you tomorrow.