London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Monday, September 22nd, 2025.
Bit of a potpourri, bit of a grab-bag for you today. We’ll start of course with the London Calling Book Club Corner. But I’ve also got an interview for you. And a grab from the start of a Foodies in Kuala Lumpur. And for good measure, a London Walks announcement.
Book Club Corner first. Robert’s in the Chair today. Robert, London Walks’ renaaissance man. Robert’s an actor, a museum curator, an author – he’s a world class expert on Brunel – a lecturer, a lecturer in demand around the world and on the high seas. And finally, the paragon of guides. Well, not quite finally, Robert’s also a Freeman of the City of London. Which, privileges him, to drive his flock of sheep across London Bridge. But his guiding is what’s of central importance to us at London Walks. Robert heads up that fine little team of guides who conduct our Thames Sightseeing – Brunel’s River Cruise Tour and its counterpart, Ahoy! Mayflower and the Ships of Rotherhithe.
And that’s by way of saying Robert’s always good value. Top value. So what’s Robeert reading. Well, let’s hear from the man himself.
Robert says, “I am reading “The Great Eastern” a ripping yarn, a steampunk adventure by Howard Rodman. Shortly to be a film. Captain Ahab (Herman Melville) in charge of Brunel’s ship Great Eastern is laying a cable across the Atlantic. Captain Nemo (Jules Verne “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”) in his famous submarine is trying to stop them. Brunel is caught in the middle. USA and UK are taking over the world, Nemo is trying to save it. If these two greedy powers get instant communication as well as infinite resources, all is lost! But Howard Rodman is making a film of his book, so it may be alright. Howard is artistic director of the Sundance Institute. Recent films include Showtime’s “Fallen Angels” directed by Steven Soderbergh and Tom Cruise, “Joe Gould’s Secret” (it opened the Sundance festival 2000), “Savage Grace” starring Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne, “August” with Josh Hartnett, Rip Torn, and David Bowie.
And meanwhile, of course, London Walks’ “Thames Sightseeing, Brunel’s River Cruise” visits the slipway of Brunel’s Great Ship. A ship to join up – and carve up – the whole world.
Instead of armies in every strategic region, one cable, one big army and one big ship to take them there. A carrier for thousands of soldiers. Not a cavalry, not a regiment but a whole army. An engine of Empire. A destroyer of worlds. Victorian Death Star…
Many thanks, indeed, Robert. Ripping yarns are what the reading experience needs a transfusion of from time to time. Just what St Frances de Sales will tell you is good what ails you. frahn-SEES duh SAHL — the “Sales” rhymes with “pal,” And that’s one you didn’t know – but now you do, thanks to London Walks – St Francis de Sales is the patron saint of writers.
Ok, moving on. Here, waiting in the wings, is that London Walks announcement. Sam’s new walk Secret Gardens of London – the Four Seasons debuts in just over a week. On September 30th. And, well, it’s sold out. Or wquld be if we hadn’t put on a second outing for it. It’ll also take place the next day, Wednesday, October 1st. At 2 pm. Full particulars on www.walks.com.
And finally we come to our Food Tour. Went on it in KL – Kuala Lumpur – a couple of weeks ago. I had the mic with me so I recorded just a couple of minutes at the start. The guide introducing himself, telling us what to expect, that sort of thing. I loved his deep bass voice and his enthusiasm, the way he turned the word “yes” into a hit number all by itself. I half thought, hey, with this guy we’re somewhere down on the Mississippi Delta.
And then to wind things up. After the interview I had a quick chat with one of our fellow walkers. A lovely young Italian woman who’s on something in the way of a grand tour of Asia.
Oh, and that’s the trigger word. Asia. There is one other thing. People from all over the world are listening to this podcast. Every continent, well over 20 countries. So this is another message in the bottle and the bottle flung into the sea. We’d love to hear from a few of you. Who you are, where you are, what is it about London Calling that’s caught your fancy. And I thought, let’s go one further. Let’s ask our listeners to tell us what they’re reading at the moment. Would some of them be willing to chime in and make a book recommendation or two. We did something like this last year. David from Huntsville Alabama wrote in. As did Lori, also from the United States. And one or two other listeners. So let’s get up on that stump again. This is London Calling. Calling you. Whereever you are. We’d love to hear. Do drop us a line. Or even a recording if you feel like it.
Ok, here’s Ian, our Foodies Walk guide in Kuala Lumput. Followed by Alessia, our fellow Foodies Walker in Kuala Lumpur.
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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 familiarand the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note… come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.