London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And top of the morning to you from London! It’s August 31st, 2024.
Today’s pin… hmmm, well, let’s put it this way. That’s the epitome of – the very definition of trendy. It should be emblazoned with a big flashing neon sign that reads This Way for Trendy. Except that wouldn’t be trendy. But that sign’s there all right. It’s just not out front, it’s in our heads. And in my case – as with just about every other Londoner – it’s Mission Accomplished. I’m going to go there. See what all the fuss is about. Ok, let’s do the unveiling. I’m talking about what Esquire magazine is calling the buzziest pub in the world. The Devonshire. In Soho. Very near Piccadilly Circus. It’s been open less than a year and apparently it’s permanently packed out. Well, I’m not going to regale you with Esquire’s cup runneth over with superlatives. I’ve tipped you off to the piece. You can go and read it for yourself. What I would add is the place is grabbing all the headlines. We learn from yesterday’s Evening Standard that the Devonshire has just become Great Britain’s first pub to serve Guinness 0.0 on tap. And that’s a big deal, if all the hype is anything to go by. The world’s buzziest pub and Britain’s most popular pint, it’s an unbeatable one-two punch. Make that a one-two-three punch.
The Devonshire’s world-beating. It’s in the Guinness World Record for selling more pints of Guinness than any other outlet on the planet.
20,000 pints a week. 50 barrels a day.
Ok, I’ve done my job. Maybe see you there one of these days. If we can get in.
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As for a Random… how’s this sound to you? Death is reversible. A New York-based professor of medicine – New York-based but London spawned him – he trained at Guy’s and St Thomas’s – a New York-based professor of medicine, one Sam Parnia, says the notorious flatline on an ECG (Electrocardiogram) is meaningless. In his new book, Professor Parnia – trips off the tongue, his name, it’s got a nice ring to it – Professor Parnia says “you can reverse death, and it’s not just a wish, it’s the reality.” It’s a pretty compelling tale he’s got to tell. He says, “Death has got a bad press, it’s suffering from terrible PR. “If we remove that social label that makes us think everything stops, and look at it objectively, it’s basically an injury process that can be treated.”
Maybe – assuming we can get into the Dev – we can order a couple of pints of Guinness 0.0 and speculate which injury processes lend themselves to being treated. Decapitation, for example. Can that be fixed? And I’m not just talking about Charles I and the Duke of Monmouth – not just talking about sewing the heads back on – aside here, something else to worry about, getting the right head on the right body, what happens if you mix them up, you know, sort of like babies being accidentally switched at birth. Apparently it’s not all that rare – here’s another factoid for you – we’re told it happens nearly 30,000 times a year. But yes, I’m not just talking about sewing the thing back on, I’m given to wonder does Professor Parnia think that injury process – beheading – could be treated?
Ok, today’s Ongoing.
A note in yesterday from one of the brightest stars in the London Walks constellation, Richard III. I’m just going to read it out. Just going to read it out because it’s such a treat. Richard says, “One of my favourite phrases while guiding. ‘Do you want to come in?’ As a guide you need to be flexible to take up this kind of invitation as you have to change the rest of your walk. You may be inside a stranger’s house for up to half an hour. This has happened to me on a number of walks. Mayfair, Holland Park and Hampstead. Last week a woman stood next to us and listened for several minutes and invited us in. Her house is a detached villa built in 1840. You will see from the accompanying photos that it is spectacular. She had the original plan of the layout of the house from the time that it was a vicarage. We also went downstairs to what had been the servant’s quarters and the coal hole. I am amazed at the generosity and the trust that people have. We were in there for over quarter of an hour.”
And I can confirm – every London Walks guide will confirm – these minor miracles do happen. Not very often. But they do happen. It’s happened to me at five different houses in Hampstead. And it’s happened on other walks as well. And yes, that five times in over 40 years – so it’s rare – but it does happen. And it’s beyond thrilling when it does happen.
Last time it happened on my watch was on the very first stop on my Hampstead Walk. A stop that I write about in my chapter on Hampstead in the London Walks book. It’s part of the advancer email I send to my Hampstead Walkers the day before the walk. Describing the first part of the walk I say, ”Or head off in the other direction – up Heath Street. Running off it there are narrow, serpentine footways that are so steep they’re hand railed. Making your way up them you half feel as though you should have a cutlass clenched between your teeth – it’s like being in a boarding party using grappling irons and tackle to scramble up the side of a ship. You think I’m kidding? Climb the first one, oh ye of little faith. Following it up you come over the top and you think you’re on a ship’s poop deck. Complete with a semi-circular railing. And you’re looking out over the ocean, the ocean being London. Way in the distance you can see the southeastern rim of the bowl of hills that girdles the Thames basin, the bowl of hills that embraces Greater London. Beyond that rampart is the Weald of Kent. And ten miles beyond that is the sea.” Well, we got up there onto the poop deck, looking out across the ocean of London, and a neighbour, he’d just been to the newsagent to fetch the Sunday papers, said, “aren’t you going to tell them about the view I’ve got from my deck?” I said, “No, how about you tell them?” And then I upped the ante. I said, “even better, how about if you take us up there and show us?” He visibly blanched. He said, “all of you?” It was a big group, about 30 people. I said, “yes, of course.” He swallowed and then he said, “all right, I’m going to do it.” Let us into the house. We had to walk right through about five rooms and then up various and sundry stairs and out the door and there we were, up on his deck. Drinking in one of the most spectacular views in London. I’ve done that walk probably three thousand times and that one was easily one of the three or four most memorable times round the block.
Anything else? Yes, a further word from Richard. And I’ll close it out with this. He says,
“The opposite also happens. One woman came out of her house and threatened to call the police on us. We were standing on the pavement on the other side of the road. I explained to her that I had done this for over twenty years. It was a public street and her house was of architectural significance and had had, among others, President Kennedy stay there. I think that warrants a stop. She said she’d get an ASBO on us. (Anti-Social Behaviour Order). It takes all sorts.”
Signed Richard the Third.
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 Museum of London archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes
criminal defence lawyers,
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.