London Calling. London Walks connecting. This is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time.
Today’s word time. In the beginning was the word. And today – Friday, August 21st, 2026 – we’re going to get this show on the road with the word company. And its companions. Yes, companion. And accompany. A good family of words, company and companion and accompany. Especially here. London Walks. You’re in good company when you’re on a London Walk. Both the guide. And your fellow walkers, the good folk who are accompanying you. So what is it about the words company and companion and accompany. Let’s sift and winnow. First part of the word first. Com. It’s a prefix. It means with. Main part of the word – the tasty part of the word – is pan. Pan is the same word as pane, the French word for bread. Or Italian pane. Bread. It’s pleasingly simple, the two elements of that equation: with and bread. A companion is somebody with whom you break bread. Somebody who accompanies you, you break bread with them. Your company – they’re the people you wine and dine with.
There. Appetites whetted. Good. Let’s go a-Londoning.
London Calling – this podcast – I sometimes think of it as the class photo in the school yearbook. Except it’s not the class of 2026 – it’s the class of 43 A.D. to 2026. Ball park estimate, that’s about 70 million Londoners. Some class.
Now in those class photos it’s common practice to highlight one face. Put the spotlight on it. And today’s London face we’re training the spotlight on is Constant Lambert. He’s our companion on our London Calling sojourn today, August 21, 2026.
We’ve lit him up – picked him out – the face in the crowd – 1) because Constant Lambert breathed his last on this day in 1951. And 2) because Constant Lambert is worth getting to know. He’s good company. Though accompanying him can be a rough ride at times. Ok, saddled up? Let’s go for a jaunt with Constant Lambert.
Seventy-five years ago today, one of the most brilliant men in London died two days short of his 46th birthday.
Composer.
Conductor.
Critic.
Wit.
Raconteur.
Drinker.
Troublemaker.
A man of quite extraordinary gifts.
Constant Lambert.
And there’s something almost unbearably poignant about the photographs.
As a young man he was described as:
“Bulky, untidy, in exuberance and girth a young Chesterton.”
By the time he died he had become:
“A heavy, stooped, prematurely aged figure.”
And remember, he was forty-five.
So what happened?
Well, quite a lot happened.
Constant Lambert was born in London on August 23rd, 1905.
His father, George Lambert, was a distinguished painter. His elder brother Maurice became a sculptor.
Constant was a delicate child. He had a slight limp. But there was nothing slight about the talent.
He went to Christ’s Hospital and then, at thirteen, to the Royal College of Music.
And almost immediately you get the measure of him.
Brilliant.
Precocious.
Opinionated.
Funny.
Ferociously well read.
Music, painting, literature, ballet, poetry, jazz.
He seemed to know about everything.
And have views about everything.
He composed.
He conducted.
He wrote.
He talked.
And boy, could he talk.
He was one of those people who appear to have been born without a low gear.
In his twenties he was already making his mark as a composer.
His best-known work, The Rio Grande, appeared in 1927.
Jazz rhythms.
Piano.
Chorus.
Orchestra.
A great glittering cocktail of sound.
And very Constant Lambert.
Because Lambert was one of those rare figures in British classical music who understood that jazz wasn’t some vulgar American gatecrasher who should be shown the servants’ entrance.
It was music.
New music.
Exciting music.
And he listened.
He absorbed.
He experimented.
But there’s another Constant Lambert.
The ballet man.
And this is where one of the great names of twentieth-century British ballet enters the story.
Margot Fonteyn.
But before Fonteyn, there was Flo.
Florence Chuter.
Lambert married her on August 5th, 1931.
On the marriage certificate, Flo signed herself “F. Kaye” and gave her age as eighteen.
But she was probably younger.
Think about that.
Lambert was twenty-five.
His bride may have been under eighteen.
They had a son.
And the son gives this story another extraordinary little kick.
Kit Lambert.
Kit Lambert would grow up to become the manager of The Who.
Yes.
The Who.
So there’s a lovely cultural relay race here.
Constant Lambert.
British ballet.
Classical music.
Jazz.
And then, one generation later, Pete Townshend smashing guitars.
London does connections like nowhere else.
But the marriage didn’t last.
And then came Margot Fonteyn.
Lambert was enormously important in Fonteyn’s life.
And Fonteyn was enormously important in his.
They became lovers.
He was older.
Brilliant.
Sophisticated.
Dangerous.
A dazzling talker.
And he helped shape her intellectually and artistically.
This wasn’t just an affair.
It was one of those intense artistic relationships in which two people alter one another.
And ballet became the great institutional achievement of Lambert’s life.
He became musical director and conductor of the Vic-Wells Ballet, the company that would become the Royal Ballet.
Think what that meant.
British ballet was being built.
Not maintained.
Built.
And Lambert was there in the engine room.
Working with Ninette de Valois.
Frederick Ashton.
Fonteyn.
Conducting.
Composing.
Arguing.
Driving standards up.
Making the thing happen.
And then the war came.
And at one point Lambert came terrifyingly close to falling into Nazi hands.
He was in France in 1940 when the German advance swept across the country.
He escaped.
Only just.
Another turn of the screw in a life that seems to have been lived at permanently dangerous speed.
And all the while there was the drinking.
A lot of drinking.
Lambert could consume heroic quantities of alcohol.
And there’s something deceptive about the word “heroic” there.
Because there was nothing heroic about where it led.
His health deteriorated terribly.
He developed diabetes.
He ignored medical advice.
He worked too hard.
Drank too much.
And his body began to give way.
Which brings us back to those two descriptions.
The young Lambert:
“Bulky, untidy, in exuberance and girth a young Chesterton.”
The older Lambert:
“A heavy, stooped, prematurely aged figure.”
Except there wasn’t really an older Lambert.
That’s the point.
He never got to be old.
Constant Lambert died in London on August 21st, 1951.
Two days before his 46th birthday.
Forty-five years old.
And there’s one final little thing about him that I love.
His name.
Constant.
It comes ultimately from the Latin constans.
Standing firm.
Steadfast.
Unchanging.
Constant.
And what an extraordinary name for this man.
Because almost nothing about his life was constant.
It was movement.
Music.
Ballet.
Jazz.
Love affairs.
Arguments.
Alcohol.
War.
Brilliance.
Self-destruction.
Everything at full tilt.
Everything changing.
Everything burning.
Except perhaps one thing.
The talent.
That was constant.
The intelligence was constant.
The curiosity was constant.
And the mark he left on British music and British ballet was constant enough to survive him.
Seventy-five years ago today.
August 21st, 1951.
London lost Constant Lambert.
Forty-five years old.
Composer.
Conductor.
Critic.
Wit.
Ballet man.
Jazz man.
A great, untidy, brilliant London life.
And gone far, far too soon.
See you tomorrow.