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 Thursday December 11th, 2025.
And here it is – your daily London fix.
This one’s a bit personal.
But it’s also very London.
To background it: the second Wednesday in December is sacrosanct in my diary.
It’s the DPC AGM – the Dickens Pickwick Club Annual General Meeting.
More on that in a moment –
because to understand that, you need to know this.
We’re going into the City of London.
Into its innermost recesses.
Right into the heart
of that tangle of ancient alleyways that knot and weave behind Lombard Street.
Alleyways that feel as though they’ve been sitting there since William the Conqueror
took off his boots.
And in fact…
well, we’re not far off.
There’s been an inn
on this very spot since 1142.
Eleven forty-two –
the century of chain mail and monks and Norman stonemasons.
And tucked away in that warren is the George & Vulture.
A City institution.
One of the great old chop houses – the kind of place where you can practically hear the hiss of a steak hitting a hot pan as you walk in.
Oak panels, low ceilings –
all of it steeped in centuries of steam, talk, port, and gossip.
But the real magic is the
Pickwick connection.
Dickens didn’t just mention the George & Vulture in
The Pickwick Papers –
he lodged Mr Pickwick here.
Gave him port,
a fender,
and an easy-chair.
Dickens himself drank here regularly.
And when the building was later threatened with demolition, it was Dickens’s great-grandson who helped save it.
That’s loyalty –
loyalty across generations.
So yes:
The George & Vulture –
a 12th-century foundation,
an 18th-century building,
a 19th-century literary shrine,
a 20th-century salvation,
and a 21st-century treasure.
The perfect setting
for the Dickens Pickwick Club’s grand annual gathering.
But let’s come to it.
The second Wednesday in December.
What actually happens in there.
It’s the Dickens Pickwick Club’s Annual General Meeting –
the DPC AGM – and it is,
to borrow a phrase from Mr Weller, a night of uncommon joviality.
Club members gather
in the George & Vulture for bonhomie of the highest order.
There’s good traditional English fare:
last night the main was
steak and kidney pie of the most comforting, old-school sort.
The cheese that followed was Stilton –
and not just any Stilton,
but a wheel that looked as though it had been ageing,
scheming,
plotting its apotheosis since the time of Pepys.
And yes, the grape flows freely.
Conviviality is in abundance.
There’s a great deal of good humour and camaraderie –
and more than a little speechifying.
The Dickens Pickwick Club is,
let it be said,
the last bastion of male chauvinism in the City of London.
Not aggressively so – Pickwickianly so.
There were no women in Dickens’s Pickwick Club, so the modern club remains true to canon.
Purists to the last bread-crumb and drop of port.
How many characters are there in The Pickwick Papers?
Dozens and dozens –
and that’s how many members there are.
Each one is a character.
One chap is Tracy Tupman.
One is Alfred Jingle.
One is Sam Weller.
And so on –
a dramatis personae made flesh
in the City of London.
And the club’s Mr Pickwick?
That honour belongs to
Ian Dickens –
the great great great grandson of Charles Dickens.
Which brings me to something rather dear to my heart.
Because all of this –
all this Dickensian conviviality –
is deeply personal for me.
Charles Dickens
was life-changing for me.
I’m in this country because of Charles Dickens –
I pitched up in London to do my PhD on Dickens at University College London.
That UCL acceptance letter
set everything else in motion.
Mary,
our kids,
my life in London –
getting to live in London –
and yes, London Walks…
pretty much everything of importance in my adult life branches out from that single moment.
Dickens was how I got my foot in the door at London Walks.
The couple who owned the company 50 years ago
didn’t want an American guide.
But I knew something about Dickens –
and one thing led to another.
I got in as a guide and,
in the fullness of time,
Mary and I took the company over.
So to be sitting there
in the George & Vulture last night, wining and dining with 50 or 60 splendid fellows –
in that ancient,
alley-cradled chop house –
breaking bread with Charles Dickens’s great great great grandson…
well, for a kid from small-town Wisconsin,
that’s dream-come-true territory.
And all of that was swirling around me yesterday evening
when my moment arrived –
the moment of what the club calls the Himself.
Every year one member has to rise and speak about his Dickensian character.
This year it was my turn.
Which meant it was Count Smorltork’s turn.
My Dickensian character is Count Smorltork –
the famous foreigner.
A tiny role in The Pickwick Papers, but a gem of comic misunderstanding.
The Count – the famous foreigner – is a virtuoso mangler of the English language.
The Count appears only once –
in Chapter 15 –
at Mrs Leo Hunter’s famous fancy-dress breakfast.
All we really know is that he’s making notes for a book he intends to write about England and the English –
and that his is not an easy way with this rich language of ours.
He mishears, mispronounces, misunderstands – and basically mangles the English language spectacularly.
And hilariously.
That’s all Dickens gives us.
So I thought, “Right. Let’s see if we can think our way into the Count’s head.
Add a few more brushstrokes to his portrait.
Tell a bit more of his backstory.
And do it in Smorltorkese.”
In short, my pole star was the Count’s hilariously imperfect grasp of English. And finally, I was needless to say, aware of my audience. All male. So I leaned into it. Let it be a bit upper-middle-class locker-room. Golf-club stuff. Full of double entendres that I probably would have refrained from deploying in mixed company. So if you’re prudish, you probably shouldn’t listen right through to the end.
Anyway, here it is. Here’s my address to the 2025 DPCAGM
And just one footnote for those who aren’t bang up to date with English slang. The word pong is English slang for a bad smell. Ok, here’s Count Smorltork having at it.
Gentlemens! Extinguished Pickwicks! The retired flames of English intellect. It is great honour to be among so many – how you say? – ancient examples of English vigour! Honourable – or how you say – edible English persons all!
Permit that I introduce myself in the normal English fashion. I am Count Smorltork.
Ah, but no, gentlemens, you shout to me that my English is a marvel, my accent is perfectly Englishing, We are companions of the bosoms, first names based, same, same entirely. You say, “Count, you are just like us Englishmens.” Very good. Then, gentlemens, I am Count Pong Smorltork. Pleased of the meeting. I am honoured. You treat me – stranger in a strange land – like one of your own Pickwicks. I go missing, and you do not say, “Good riddance.” You say, “Where is that Pong?” You salute my name. You bestow beams upon me when I explain that Pong derives from an old word meaning atmosphere. In my country, a strong Pong is a sign of great character – the stronger the Pong, the stronger the man. But this is a small diversion of the intellects… Permit that I – Count Pong Smorltork, traveller of distinctions, philosopher of everythings, historian of nothings, and victim – noble victim – of your national roast beef – shall make to you the small explosion of speech.
I come from a land far away and not easily pronouncified by English tongues – a country of lakes and liber-titties, ah, how you say, freedoms? of mountains and misunderstandings. There, sustained by lakes and liber-titties, I am personage of importances. The dogs recognises me; the waiters fears me; the laundresses, when they mangles my shirts, does so with emotions – sometimes two emotions at once.
My mother – a lady of penetration – declared when I was only of three years old, “Count Pong will be everywhere noticeable, a man of penetration.” I have been penetrating many subjects ever since. I have studied all subjects of civilisations – philosophies, phrenologies, political economies, and, when nobody is looking, pastries.
What I loves most in lifes? Not the moneys – though a full purse, I find, is the best cushion for meditations. Not the ranks – though, between ourselves, a little coronet on the visiting card is very good bait for the fishes of romances. No, gentlemens – I loves Observations! To observe! To note! To poke my organ in the affairs of mankind – and, when necessary, to withdraw it before the door closings.
In England I observate muches! You are the nation of complications. You make the eating of dinner into an engineering! You have knives for beefs, knives for cheeses, knives for the aquatic edibles, knives for cuttings of breads – and, most excellent of alls, knives for cutting nothings at all!
Such refinements! It brings the tears to my eye – and sometimes to my finger.
This visit improves me greatly. I arrive as Pong – I depart as better Pong. Stronger Pong.
And the weathers! A triumph of morals! In my country, when we look from the window, we see the sun. Here, we see a determination to drizzle … or a repentance for having drizzled already.
Where I goes next? Ever forwards, gentlemens, ever forwards! To Ox-ford – where the young English mind – like English knives – is sharpened and occasionally yoked. To Ox-ford to study the ancient art of rowings and the modern art of eatings of dinners. To Edin-borrow, to compare philosophies with whiskies. To Liver-puddle, to observate commerces and step carefully and perhaps to purchase the second umbrella – because in this country, one umbrella is suicides!
And then – home! To my beloved father-land, the land of Pong, where I shall write the masterpieces: England – Her Manners, Her Muttons, and Her Meteorologies! Three volumes … two readables!
And when I am old, with the gout of glories, I shall sit by my fires, gaze upon my portrait – note-book in hand, umbrella under arm – and say to myself, “Smorltork, you have done it. You have examined the nations … you have proctologists them, all of them. Yes, you have done that. You have examined the nations and you have survived the examinations.”
I thank you, gentlemens!
And now gentlemens – may I erect my vessel to you! Yes, I life my drinking window to you. My throbbing glarse rises proudly to you English gentlemens. May the Pickwick Club always continue to…how you say?…pick your wicks erectly gentlemens – with great British stiffness of purpose. May the flame of your wicks never go out, the light never droop.
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.