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 November 2nd, 2025. And here it is, an ice lolly for your daily London fix. And that’s by way of saying, one of our tastiest walks is hoving into view. Next Saturday – November 8th – Ann will be doing her monthly Foodies London Walk.
Now let me to back up for a minute. Pace Jane Austen but it is a truth universally acknowledged that you can tell a great deal about a country by the way it eats. Its manners, its mischief, its dreams – all there, on the plate. The French linger; the Americans supersize; the Italians turn every meal into an aria. And the British? We apologise to the waiter and then ask for brown sauce. A nation’s dining table is its mirror – the everyday theatre where history, habit, and hunger sit down together. Peek into the lunchbox, the picnic, the tearoom, and you’ll see what a people truly value. In the end, cuisine isn’t just about recipes – it’s autobiography, written in crumbs and gravy. And ice cream and ice lollies.
Now back to Ann. She’s got five different Foodies London Walks in the pantry. Next Saturday’s will be Foodies London – the West End.
Her trailer for her West End Foodies walk eschews anything as predictable as tempting the palate – instead, it lays the table for mischief. It rejoices in the brassiest, funnest fanfare for any of her Foodies London walks. Here’s what she says: “the King’s nickname was Tumtum, he had a 47″ waist, and every night a cold roast chicken was placed beside his bedside…”
Anyway, to run up the flag for her upcoming Foodies West End walk Ann’s whipped up a little dish for us on Lyons Maid Ice Cream. 100 years on.
And let us not forget, Lyon’s Maid wasn’t just an ice cream, it was the nation’s dessert trolley on wheels. From seaside promenades to corner shops, every lolly was a little masterpiece – rocket-shaped, chocolate-dipped, strawberry-swirled. For food lovers, it was irresistible: the joy of discovery, frozen on a stick. Lyon’s Maid was Britain’s answer to sunshine – in a cone, on a stick, or straight from the van.”
Here’s Ann.
[Ann’s piece follows]
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 £25 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 Jack the 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.