London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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It’s Monday, May 26th, 2025. Can you see it? It’s happening now. The torch is being handed on. Yes, here we are, bearing witness to – marking – yet another This Day in London Literary History defining moment.
We’ve got a ways back to go. Watch the months – 3,863 of them – peel off the calendar. And lo, we’re there, rubbing our eyes, it’s May 26th, 1703. We’re in a house in Clapham. There’s a new hole in the world. Death has just stopped for someone we’ve got a lot of time for. Stopped for a busy Londoner. Easy to imagine him – of all people – stealing a march on Emily Dickinson. Saying, “Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.” And not just saying it, writing it down in his diary, making it his last diary entry. Yes, Samuel Pepys, that consummate Londoner, has just passed over. That’s right, that Samuel Pepys, naval reformer, citizen scientist, serious player on the national stage, MP and prisoner of the Tower of London. Above all, Samuel Pepys, the greatest diarist ever.
And let’s hit that consummate Londoner chord again. Samuel Pepys couldn’t have been more London.
Let’s do his London map coordinates. Samuel Pepys was born in the family home in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street on February 23rd, 1633. His father was a London tailor; his mother the daughter of a Whitechapel butcher. Just over a week later he was baptised in St Bride’s church. He was schooled just outside of London. And then at St Paul’s. After coming down from Cambridge University, he got a position in the London household of Edward Montagu, a councillor of state in Cromwell’s protectorate. Tack sharp Londoner that he was, he became Montague’s secretary. He was domiciled in a room in Montague’s Whitehall lodgings. He married at St Margaret’s Westminster. In due course the young couple moved into a house of their own in Axe Yard, close to where Downing Street stands today. Montague got him a job as Clerk of the Acts – Secretary – to the Navy Board. The job paid well. On the strength of his improved finances Pepys was able to move to a much larger house in Seething Lane. His job took him all over naval London. He met dockyard storekeepers, carpenters, boatswains, fore and aft and everything in between of that huge and important London world. He was admitted a younger brother of Trinity House. Come the plague, Pepys and his staff were evacuated to Greenwich. He testified in Parliament. Gave a virtuoso performance. Was personally congratulated the next day by the King and Duke of York as they walked in St James’ Park. When Pepys’ wife died he formed an enduring relationship with the daughter of a Mark Lane merchant. He became a deputy lay-vicar of Westminster Abbey. London taverns and theatres, he knew them all. And frequented them. When a fire destroyed the Navy Office Pepys took temporary lodgings in Winchester Lane. In 1674 he moved to Derby House, which became the Admiralty’s first dedicated premises. He was elected to Parliament. He was made a governor of Christ’s Hospital. He was elected Master of Trinity House. The Clothworkers’ Company chose him as its Master. Accused of leaking naval secrets to the French, he was locked up in the Tower of London. The prosecution couldn’t construct a case and Pepys was discharged six weeks later. Unemployed and having made his London house into an official residence he couldn’t return to it, so he lodged with his lifelong friend Will Hewer at York Buildings, off the Strand. He was elected President of the Royal Society. He attended the coronation of James II as a baron of the Cinque Ports. He was one of the bearers of the King’s Canopy. Suspected of treason against the new government he was imprisoned for a short while in the Westminster Gatehouse. He witnessed the King’s will at Whitehall. In the last years of his life he stayed frequently at his friend Will Hewer’s grand house in Clapham. As we know, he died there, on this day in 1703. Just over a week later he was buried at St Olave, Hart Street.
Was there ever a fuller, ever a more London life? I doubt it.
Now that’s mapped him. Why is he so important. Well, the work at the Admiralty to start with. He modernised the navy. Samuel Pepys forged the scabbard that held the sword that Nelson used.
He’s in the pantheon, though, because of the diary. He kept it for nine and a half years, from January 1st, 1660 to May 31st, 1669. And what a decade that was. The Restoration, the Plague, the Great Fire, the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Samuel Pepys had a ringside seat. And he was well connected, he knew everybody. It all went into the diary. As did daily life, social life, comings and goings. And of course his sexual carryings on. He had an eye for the female form, he was a bottom pincher par excellence. It all went into the diary.
Let’s have a few examples. Yes, here’s our flambé.
Flambé indeed. Pepys’s eye-witness description of the Fire of London is vivid, moving, gripping and ever so detailed. And of course shot through with immediacy. Pigeons, their wings scorched, falling from the sky. Poor people staying in their house until the very fire touched them and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the waterside to another. It’s so compelling an account my colleague Catherine has based her splendid walk, On the Scene at the Great Fire of London… Catherine’s based the walk on Pepys’ diary entries. People who go on that walk are guided by the two of them – Catherine and Samuel Pepys.
Here’s a taste: “I up to the top of Barking steeple, and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw; every where great fires, oyle-cellars, and brimstone, and other things burning. I became afraid to stay there long, and therefore down again as fast as I could, the fire being spread as far as I could see it; and to Sir W. Pen’s, and there eat a piece of cold meat, having eaten nothing since Sunday.”
On a happier note, the entry, “Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.”
And then there’s entry for September 28th, 1665, “and so I to bed, and in the night was mightily troubled with a looseness (I suppose from some fresh damp linen that I put on this night), and feeling for a chamber-pott, there was none, I having called the mayde up out of her bed, she had forgot I suppose to put one there; so I was forced in this strange house to rise and shit in the chimney twice; and so to bed and was very well again.”
And as for his sexual misbehaviour, you don’t need to read all nine volumes, just go to the library, pick up any well-thumbed volume, hold it in your hand, and I guarantee you it will open automatically to this or that tell all entry. Like the time he ordered his teenage serving maid Deb Willett to come up to his room and comb his hair. Sure enough, Pepys’ hands began to wander. And then disaster. Wife Elizabeth caught him in the act. Slipping into his special argot for these times – a sort of pidgin Latin French Spanish and English – Pepys says “she found me con my mano sub su coats.” Translation: wife Elizabeth found me with my hand under Deb’s petticoats. Needless to say, wife Elizabeth wasn’t best pleased. They quarrelled. Pepys finally went to bed and fell asleep. He slept fitfully. Suddenly woke up to find wife Elizabeth standing at his bedside with a pair of red hot tongs poised directly over a certain tender part of the Pepysian anatomy. Pepys says, “with which she did design to pinch me.”
But let’s end with this jaw-dropper. It’s the diary entry for October 13th, 1660. For the record, we’ve actually got a dedicated Samuel Pepys Walk. It’s called Christmas Morning, 1660 – Samuel Pepys’s London. And yes, it takes place on Christmas Morning. Forms up by the big Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. And so as you’d expect this diary entry kickstarts that walk.
It goes,
To my Lord’s in the morning, where I met with Captain Cuttance, but my Lord not being up I went out to Charing Cross to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy.
It is said, that he said that he was sure to come shortly at the right hand of Christ to judge them that now had judged him; and that his wife do expect his coming again.
Thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at White Hall, and to see the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King at Charing Cross. From thence to my Lord’s, and took Captain Cuttance and Mr. Sheply to the Sun Tavern, and did give them some oysters. After that I went by water home, where I was angry with my wife for her things lying about, and in my passion kicked the little fine basket, which I bought her in Holland, and broke it, which troubled me after I had done it.
Within all the afternoon setting up shelves in my study. At night to bed.
Let that sink in. On that day Pepys saw a man hanged, drawn and quarter; he then goes with a couple of friends to a tavern for a serving of oysters; and then it’s a boat ride on the Thames to get home. He gets home he has a row with his wife because she’s been a bit slovenly. She must have left a little basket on the floor. His temper flaring, Pepys kicks the basket and breaks it. He could kick himself for having done so – the basket was a gift he’d bought Elizabeth in Holland. He gets over it by doing some DIY – busies himself putting up shelves in his study. And then he goes to bed. Just another day in London.
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.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.
To my Lord’s in the morning, where I met with Captain Cuttance, but my Lord not being up I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy. It is said, that he said that he was sure to come shortly at the right hand of Christ to judge them that now had judged him; and that his wife do expect his coming again.
Thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at White Hall, and to see the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King at Charing Cross. From thence to my Lord’s, and took Captain Cuttance and Mr. Sheply to the Sun Tavern, and did give them some oysters. After that I went by water home, where I was angry with my wife for her things lying about, and in my passion kicked the little fine basket, which I bought her in Holland, and broke it, which troubled me after I had done it.
Within all the afternoon setting up shelves in my study. At night to bed.