London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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A very good day to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Bastille Day. Monday, July 14th, 2025.
The great Canadian novelist and poet Margaret Atwood once said, “in the end we’ll become stories.” It’s a quote I see every day. Because one of the two bookshops on West End Lane – the High Street in West Hampstead where I live – one of the two bookshops on West End Lane has adopted it as its logo.
So today a London story that is also an Australian story. A story that I find especially poignant. That I think about every time I go there. And that moves me no end. Enriches me. A story that for that reason I’m glad to know.
For it, we go to Bow Street. So, yes, this is the second instalment of our walk down Bow Street.
It’s a short street, Bow Street. A short street in Covent Garden. A short street in Covent Garden you walk the length of in five minutes.
And my general point is, it makes all the difference in the world knowing the stories behind what you’re looking at.
Let’s begin with the name, Bow Street. London place names, they’re always a good place to get started. To see London, you have to hear it.
So Bow Street is named for its shape. It’s not a straight shot, Bow Street. It bows, it arcs. So it’s named for its shape. Today it runs from where it meets Long Acre at its north end to Russell Street at its southern end. That’s no distance at all. Maybe 80 yards. But it’s 80 yards packed with history and biography and events. Packed with stories. And let us remember that in its earliest incarnation, that’ll be in 1630s, it didn’t reach all the way up to Long Acre. And it was very much in the fields.
But we’re starting at Long Acre and walking down Bow Street, walking on the left or eastern side of Bow Street. The side over the way from the Royal Opera. We very quickly get to Broad Court, a little pedestrianised alleyway, up which is the little hotel I’ve always fancied staying in, The Fielding Hotel. Fancied staying in it not because it’s in the least posh. No, fancied staying in it because of its location. You don’t get more smack dab in the centre of London than Broad Court.
And when you turn into Broad Court from Bow Street you’ve got two great, very different but very London visuals right in front of you.
There’s a row of five iconic red telephone boxes. Classics in their own right. The K6 model designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.
As deeply satisfying as they are, they’re the backdrop. They’re upstaged by what’s in front of them. My favourite statue in London I think. A very beautiful, ever so moving statue of a young ballerina. Called the Young Dancer, it’s by the Italian sculptor Enzo Plazzotta.
There she sits on a tall wicker stool. Absorbed in what she’s doing, absorbed in her own thoughts. She’s perhaps taking five, resting. She’s wearing ballet shoes. She’s wearing her ballet tunic. Look at her right foot – she’s sitting on that tall wicker stool but her right foot is on point. Her left ankle is across her right knee. If you look closely even her resting left foot is close to being in that on point, dancerly perfection position. With her hands she’s tying the ribbon on her left ballet shoe. She’s tying that ribbon but she’s also pensive, lost in thought. Perhaps thinking about a section or sequence in the dance routine she’s just performed. Or is about to perform. Her hair is drawn back in a bun. Her face is slightly long, maybe slightly drawn. She’s very beautiful but not conventionally so. This is not an idealised young dancer. It’s an individual. An individual full of character and grace and beauty. Whoever she is, she’s herself and herself only.
And there we’ve found the latch we have to lift. The latch that opens the door we have to pass through. Through that door is the story. And the story makes all the difference.
What we’ve got up to this point is fine. As far as it goes. It’s a really lovely bronze of a young dancer just over the way from the Royal Opera House. A really lovely bronze that’s backed by those five iconic red telephone boxes. London doesn’t get any more photogenic. But to know the story – well, that’s transformative.
The sculptor first. Enzo Plazzotta. He was of course Italian. Born in 1921. Near Venice. Died very young. 1981. Effectively spent his working life in London. His obsession – every artist has one – was with movement. Movement flows, is ephemeral. He sought to do and did do what shouldn’t have been possible – he wanted to capture movement, turn it into forms. Dancers, horses, the human form, that was what he was drawn to, and excelled at. There’s one other thing about Enzo Plazzotta. And I’m so glad I know this. It’s a game changer.
During World War II the fledgling artist who would go on to sculpt the Young Dancer was a Partisan Leader near Lago Maggiore. What a life, what a man, what an artist. You know that about Enzo Plazzotta the Young Dancer never looks quite the same. I’m there in Covent Garden looking at the young dancer I’m at the same time thinking about that brave young resistance leader – he would have been about 23 or 24 at the time – risking his all, risking his life to cleanse his native land of fascism and the jackboots. I look at those ballet shoes in my mind’s eye I’m also seeing what surely must have been some of his memory traces. Memory traces of coal scuttle helmets and jackboots.
Ok, that’s our sculptor. Now how about our dancer? Our young dancer. Her name is Katie Pianoff. She’s Australian. She began training at the Australian Academy of Ballet in Sidney when she was ten year old. When she was 17 she was awarded a scholarship to the Royal Ballet Upper School in Covent Garden. Before long, Enzo Plazzotta discovered her. She sat for him. Sat for this sculpture. She was born to dance. She became a Royal Ballerina.
Injuries and ill health cut her career short. She went back to Australia. She now teaches ballet at the Tanya Pearson Academy in Sydney. She’ll be in her 50s now. Do her students know about the statue? Does Katie Pianoff herself think about it from time to time? She’s there in Australia, a master teacher. Working with young dancers. But she’s also eternally young and in London, just over the way from the Royal Opera House where she was a royal ballerina. Just over the way, tying the ribbon on her left shoe.
Here’s a heads up for you. Katie Pianoff has an Instagram account. A while back she paid a visit to London. Look and you’ll find a photograph of her with the Young Dancer. Herself.
And I defy anybody to try to tell me a walk down Bow Street isn’t better – a lot better – for knowing the story behind The Young Dancer. “In the end, we’ll become stories.” Stories – like memories – make us rich.
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.