London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
—————————————
A very good evening to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Tuesday, July 8th, 2025. Been my kind of day. Out on the deck pretty much all day, soaking up the rays. And soaking Peter Oborne’s fine book, The Birth of Political Lying.
But duty calls. London Calling Calls.
Maybe start with something a little bit different today. My toys my rules and all that. So, yes, let’s start with a word. And who knows this might turn into a thing. A regular, occasional feature. Whenever I’m in the mood I’ll kick the traces off and we’ll start this podcast with a word. The Word of the Day.
So what’s this first one going to be? Let’s start with that fine word, supercilious. It means arrogant. The Oxford English Dictionary definition is “haughtily contemptuous; having or assuming an air of superiority, indifference, or disdain.”
It’s richly rewarding to get under the bonnet of the word.
So the prefix of the word supercilious is super. Meaning above or over. And the main part of the word, cilious is from the Latin word cillium for eyebrow. So supercilious is literally a raised eyebrow, which is an expression of haughtiness or contempt or disdain. In a word, arrogance.
And if you think about it, that’s real power. Muscle-bound bouncers in front of a bar, that’s not power. Power is being able to put the frighteners on somebody, put them in their place with just a look, a raised eyebrow.
Ok, moving on. Yesterday I was out and about. Down Covent Garden Way. Ended up walking down Bow Street.
And of course I couldn’t help but think, this is such an interesting street. There’s so much history here. Walking along Bow Street, it’s like moving along the Flower Walk in Kensington Gardens. All those different blossoms and trees and scents. When the Flower Walk is in full bloom it’s sensory overload. Going for a stroll in the Flower Walk practically makes you giddy with delight.
Well, in its own way, the same can be said for Bow Street. It’s not flowers and trees. It’s buildings and statues and street furniture and no end of history. Those are the flowers of Bow Street. And it’s in bloom year-round.
So, yes, I thought, why not, howzabout Bow Street for an urban history – a London urban history – flower walk.
First thing I did was to look at a bunch of old maps. Some very old maps. The oldest of them – the Agas Map – was executed in the 1560s. And Bow Street simply wasn’t there. There was no Bow Street in Tudor London. Drury Lane, yes. Ditto Covent Garden. Though Covent Garden was literally a garden. And an orchard.
Fast forward to Georgian times, the 1738 John Rocque Map, there she be. But truncated. At the bottom end Bow Street meets Russell Street, just as it does today. But the top end doesn’t reach all the way up to Long Acre. There were four passageways running off Bow Street to the east. Broad Court, it’s still there. Duke’s Court is no more. Ditto Martlet’s Court. The three of them threaded all the way through to Drury Lane.
Then down at the bottom there was Jackson’s Lane. Shaped like a boomerrang it bent round to Russell Street. I wonder who Jackson was. Anyway, to the west there was the Theatre Royal, where the Royal Opera House stands today. And the intersection with Great Hart Street. Still there today, it runs along the north side of the Royal Opera House.
Forward sixty years or so to the Richard Horwood map – often called the Regency London Map – Bow Street has broken through to Long Acre in the north.
And there’s been a lot of development. The theatre is still there though now it’s called The Covent Garden Theatre. Just to the south of the theatre, where the beautiful Floral Market Building stands today, was a substantial structure which the Horwood Map labels Public Office. You can’t but wonder, was that anything to do with the Bow Street Runners operation, the forerunners of the present day police force.
Broad Court and Martlet Court are still there. But Duke’s Court is gone. And Jackson’s Alley seems to have come up in the world, it’s now Russell Place. And with the exception of The Covent Garden Theatre and the Public Office Bow Street is lined with houses, both sides of the street.
So those are the old maps.
But you can get the wrong end of the stick with them. Especially the oldest of them. The Elizabethan Agas Map.
Go by it you’d think that the area is relatively modern, only goes back three centuries are so.
Well, you’d be wrong. That area – more or less where the Royal Opera House stands today – on Bow Street, in other words, is one of the oldest parts of London.
Ok, time to read to you. This is from the big introductory chapter in the London Walks book, London Walks, London Stories. The chapter called Thamesis. It’s an overview, covers the whole sweep of London history, twenty centuries and more. Covers it in relation to the reason London is where it is.
The river Thames.
Anything else. Yes, I wrote this chapter.
Here it is. Here’s the bit of it that’s relevant to what we’re on about here.
[extract from Thamesis chapter follows]
Ok, we strayed a bit away from Bow Street. Away from Lundenwich to Londonburgh and indeed Roman London. Londinium. But I think that’s all right. On that all encompassing principle that everything in London is connected.
Plus, it’s just interesting stuff. Why wouldn’t you go there.
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.