London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good day to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Friday, August 29th, 2025.
Ok, let’s all get on the tender for the run out to the yacht.
The tender – as always – is the London Calling Book Club Corner. For the quick ride out to the yacht we find out what London Walks guides are reading. The tender skipper today is guide Andy Hallett. Andy’s still a youngster but he’s so good he’d be the ship’s First Officer. With Andy the Good Ship London Walks is in the safest possible hands. And does any number of walks but I’ll single out here the two Shardlake Walks, both of them his creations. And Disastrous London. Another Andy creation. Andy’s an actor, which means the all-important matter of delivery – voice, timing, audience awareness, etc. – is sorted from the get-go. And the other half of the equation – expertise – is also there in spades, what with his University of London Master’s degree specialising in the history of Tudor London. Ok, so what’s Andy been reading. Like me, he’s got several on the go. We’ll get to all of them but let’s start with Burning Time, The Story of the Smithfield Martyrs. Andy says it’s perfect for his Disastrous Walk. He says it’s ‘compelling, macbre and a vivid insight into an era in which what was orthodoxy one year might be dangerous heresy the next.’ Thanks, Andy, for alerting me to that one. I’ll definitely be diving into that pool.
Ok, and on that note, we’ve reached the yacht. Let’s set sail and weigh anchor. Today’s cruise, well, the great thing about this podcast is I can sail off to wherever I want to. And being in my shoes, an American who’s lived here in London for 52 years – and being a London Walks guide, which means I meet a lot of my countrymen and squire them round London – well, I’m well aware of how familiar-unfamiliar London can be to American visitors. And I’m at pains to, amongst other things, shed light on some of the things over here that are very different from how things are done over there. But here’s the thing. Over the years I’ve realised that a lot of things about this country that are inscrutable to my fellow Americans are equally inscrutable – equally mysterious – to my fellow Brits. There are features of this cultural landscape that are equally puzzling to the natives. They don’t get it either. And, yes, we do get Brits – and especially Londoners – going on London Walks. In fact, these days they’re the single largest national group in the army of London Walkers. I think of our walkers as the Foreign Legion. And the thing is, London being the most mysterious and secretive of all western cities, in ways it’s as much of a riddle to bred and borne Londoners as it is to visitors. We hear it all the time, ‘I’ve lived and worked in London all my life, I’ve just retired, and now I’m going to find out something about it.’ So a really big contingent of the Foreign Legion of London Walkers is native Brits, many of them Londoners. If you think about it, that’s very London. And very London Walks.
And that’s all by way of saying, I think today our cruise is going to set sail into some deeply mysterious waters.
The London Post Code. It’s baffling to foreigners. But you’re in good company overseas visitors, it’s equally confusing to natives, to Londoners. They don’t understand it either. So let’s go there and see if we can make some sense of it.
And no better way to deep dive into the manifold, magnificent, mind-bending, maddening mysteries of London postcodes than making a beeline for Paris.
Yes, Pareee.
Imagine you’re in Paris. Someone says: “I live in the 7th.”
Instantly. Bang. You know. You get it. It’s elegant. It’s central. It’s Eiffel Tower territory.
Parisian postcodes are a dream of logic — arrondissement 1 in the middle, then the snail-shell spiral outwards. Beautiful, neat, rational, like a geometry lesson drawn up by a Parisian civil servant who was probably sipping a café crème while drafting it.
Now – London. Oh boy. London postcodes are more like a drunken uncle at a wedding. Starts the evening off charming, a bit witty, everybody laughs along – but by midnight he’s dancing on the table with his tie around his head. That’s London postcodes.
So. What’s the story? Let’s roll it back.
Roll it back to the beginning. Back in 1857.
Picture it: the world’s greatest city; the world’s busiest city. Victorian London’s got four million people. And the post? Well, it’s creaking. The game’s changed. London’s no longer a city of a few toffs with quill pens and red wax seals – there are letters by the millions, criss-crossing this teeming metropolis. And the poor postmen? They’re going round in circles. So the Postmaster General says, “Right, we need a system.”
Enter Sir Rowland Hill – the chap who’d already given us the penny post. Smart cookie. His idea: carve London into postal districts. Compass points. NE, SE, SW, NW, N, S, E, W, and EC and WC for the centre. Boom. That’s 10 postal districts. Victorian satnav, if you like.
By 1866, they’d scrapped NE and S (too fiddly, they said – one of many inconsistencies to come). So that left eight compass-point divisions. Which is why today we still don’t have an “S” postcode in London. Sheffield nicked it.
Waiting in the wings – the Numbers.
Fast forward to 1917. First World War. London’s got another problem: German airships bombing the place. And thousands of temporary postal workers filling in because the regular chaps are off fighting at the Front. The temps don’t know London like the old boys did. Deliveries are going astray. The answer? Break those big compass districts down into numbered districts.
So N becomes N1, N2, N3, etc. Same for the rest. Voilà, modern London postcodes.
All ever so logical. Well, sort of logic. But there’s English logic and there’s Parisian logic. Or indeed the logic of the rest of the world.
So here’s the thing. In theory – in theory – the numbering started closest to central London and radiated outwards. So N1 is closest to town, then N2, then N3, and so on, spreading like ripples in a pond.
But London being London – messy, ancient, organic, contrary – the system frays. Oh yes. Which is why you get delicious absurdities like N20 (Totteridge) being further out than N2 (East Finchley)… but actually easier to reach the centre from. Or why WC1 and WC2 are perfectly logical… but then SW19 turns out to be Wimbledon, practically in Surrey.
Another gem: EC1, EC2, EC3, EC4. That’s the City of London – the Square Mile. Sounds simple. But the numbering? Utterly higgledy-piggledy. No spiral, no neat grid. Just a postmaster with a dartboard, or so it seems.
And that brings us to compare and contrast time.
Let’s start by comparing this chaos with the U.S. ZIP Code system. Introduced in 1963.
Rational, orderly, tidy.
The first digit is the region: zero up in New England, nine down the West Coast. Then you drill down: state, city, local post office. You can practically hear the military precision of it.
And Paris? As I said. Pure Gallic elegance. Two digits: the arrondissement. 75001, 75002, 75003… spiralling out from the Louvre. A schoolchild could grasp it in ten seconds.
London? Well, London’s got soul. It’s messy because it grew messy. Organic. Like a city that’s been here for two thousand years. It’s irrational because London is irrational. A Parisian might sniff, “Mais c’est pas logique!” A Londoner just shrugs: “That’s London for you.”
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Now to end this feast – yeah, I’m mixing my metaphors here but so what – to end this feast, the mignardises tray. A tray of quirks, contradictions and anecdotes.
Want quirks? We’ve got quirks.
The Monopoly Board for starters. That’s right – those London street names weren’t chosen at random. They were tied to postcodes. Here’s the back story.
The year: 1935. The place: London. The mission: make a British version of this new American game called Monopoly.
Enter Victor Watson – Yorkshireman, chairman of Waddingtons, the Leeds printing firm. He’s got the licence. Now he needs a board. But not just any board – a London board. With London streets. Streets that everybody’s heard of.
Problem: Victor Watson doesn’t know London from a hole in the ground. Solution: he hires the one Londoner who does – a London cabbie. Because if anyone knows the city’s arteries, veins, and capillaries, it’s a London cab driver.
So off they go. Cabbie at the wheel, Victor Watson and his assistant in the back with notebooks in hand. “That’s Oxford Street,” says the cabbie, “that’s Bond Street. Over there – Mayfair. Write ’em down, lads.” And they do. The cabbie points, they jot. Point, jot. Point, jot.
And that’s how we get the board. The Monopoly board is basically one London cabbie’s mental A-Z. His greatest hits. With a couple of curveballs thrown in.
Like Old Kent Road. Why’s that on there? It wasn’t posh. It wasn’t fashionable. It wasn’t Mayfair. But it was one of the big old coaching roads into London. A road with history. And the cabbie said, “It belongs.” So on it went. Cheapest square, of course.
So when you play Monopoly, you’re not just passing Go – you’re taking a spin in a London taxi in 1935, with Victor Watson in the back seat, scribbling furiously.
Bottom line, in a funny way, the postcode system is embedded in the game that generations have grown up with.
And this is London, this is England. So we mustn’t forget postcode snobbery. Oh yes. Ask a Londoner where they live and they’ll often give you the postcode district. W11? Ah, Notting Hill, darling. SW3? Chelsea – posh. E17? Well, that’s Walthamstow. All good now, but thirty years ago? You’d have raised an eyebrow.
And as for that vanishing S. As I said – London once had an S district. But it got abolished. Now if you say you live in S1, you’re in Sheffield, not Southwark. And NE? Newcastle took that one.
And what about the postal illusion? Some districts sound central but aren’t. SW19 – Wimbledon. You’re basically in the suburbs. Whereas NW1 – Camden Town – is bang on the Regent’s Park doorstep.
So why the illogic?
Because London never had the advantage of starting fresh, that’s why. Paris rebuilt in the 1850s and 1860s under Baron Haussmann. Wide boulevards, neat spirals, ordered districts. Or, across the Atlantic, Washington D.C. It was built from scratch. Even the American ZIP code – born in the age of computers.
London? London’s medieval street plan is still there, twisting and turning like a plate of spaghetti. You can’t slap a neat spiral on that. The postcode system had to adapt to what was already there: ancient parishes, crooked lanes, villages that got swallowed up. So the system bends, flexes, contradicts itself.
That everything sorted? Pretty much? So, look, the next time you see a London postcode – EC1, SW7, NW10 – don’t look for Parisian elegance or Yankee clarity. See it for what it is: a palimpsest. A patchwork quilt of London history. A reminder that this city is not logical – it’s lived-in, messy, layered, human.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s its charm.
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.