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 Thursday, January 29th, 2026.
And here it is.
Here’s your daily London fix.
Something about January 29th. Well, January 29th, 1942.
No date more important in the history of British broadcasting.
Desert Island Discs makes its debut.
Right in the middle of the Second World War. Air raids. Rationing. Blackout. And there’s the BBC, quietly inventing one of the most enduring formats in broadcasting history.
It was created by Roy Plomley, first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme, and originally aimed at servicemen and women scattered across the globe. The premise was simple and brilliant: if you were cast away on a desert island, which records would you take with you?
Eighty-plus years on, it’s still going. Same bones. Same opening bars. Same gentle magic.
A very London thing, that: understated, durable, and quietly immortal.
So today, on Desert Island Discs’ birthday, we’re tipping our hat. Paying homage. And as the old saying has it, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Which is why we’re launching London Walks’ very own Desert Island Discs.
From time to time we’ll tap a London Walks guide on the shoulder and say, “Right then. You’re on London Walks’ Desert Island Discs.” Drop by. Tell London Walkers. Tell the world.
Which pieces of music would you want for company if you pitched up on a desert island?
The discs you couldn’t live without. The ones that travel with you.
And to get us started, well, as that sage old bit of television news guidance puts it: lead with your best.
Which, in the world of London Walks and music, means only one thing. Many of you will already have guessed.
Yes, Adam. London Walks’ very own Musical London maestro. Nobody knows musical London better. That’s reflected in the dozens of musical London walks Adam’s created, and in the crescendo of five-star reviews from walkers who come away humming, grinning, and hearing the city differently.
So let’s strike the opening chord.
This is London Walks’ very own Desert Island Discs.
Here’s Adam.
[Adam’s Desert Island Discs piece follows]
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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 £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 a former Member of Parliament, three terms at Westminster, bringing first-hand experience of power, policy and political theatre to the very streets where it all played out.
It includes two barristers, three doctors, two geologists, a distinguished museum curator and a former Time Out Editor.
It includes authors, historians, national journalists, a former London Museum archaeologist, and university professors (one of them an eminent Cambridge University paleontologist).
It includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre actors, and two professional photographers. And last but not least, the creme de la creme of top-flight professionally qualified Blue Badge Guides, including 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 here’s the clincher. We’re playing at home.
London Walks is London-based. Period.
We’re not an impersonal, faceless platform run from halfway round the world. There’s no chatbot. No call-centre script. When you contact us, you reach a real person. A Londoner. Someone who actually knows the streets you’re about to walk.
That’s not a detail. That’s the difference.
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.