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 Friday, November 14th, 2025.
And here it comes, your daily London fix.
Which is by way of saying, let’s get the promised new series show on the road. You got it, the series on Classic London Shops at Christmastime.
And the lead-off batter, well, how’s that old television news adage put it, lead with your best. Let’s say hello to Fortnum & Mason’s.
Now, just in case, should be wondering, the London Walk that goes to Fortnums every Friday afternoon is The Old Palace Quarter.
And here’s the thing,
You know you’re in London at Christmas the moment Fortnum & Mason winks at you from across Piccadilly.
There it is. Glowing like a great gingerbread palace in eau de nil. The street’s doing its usual early-evening London dithering, a bit of dusk, a bit of drizzle, and Fortnum’s just cuts through it. A beacon. A promise. A whisper that Christmas has properly begun. You half expect a chorus line of marzipan sprites to tap-dance along the awnings.
Fortnum & Mason is the grand old duchess of Piccadilly. Not the loud one, not the flashy one, not the eccentric velvet-coat cousin. No, no. She’s the one who knows exactly who she is and has known it since 1707. Three centuries of charm, tea, biscuits and beautifully judged fussiness. If Harrods is a sovereign and Liberty is a free-spirited aesthete, Fortnum’s is the elegant relation who always arrives on time and always brings the best jam.
Its origin story is properly London. William Fortnum, a footman to Queen Anne, noticed the palace was chucking out candle stubs like confetti. Perfectly good wax left over. Wasteful. He gathered them up, remade the candles, sold them on and made a tidy profit. Hugh Mason, the Piccadilly landlord with space to spare, teamed up with him and off they went. A shop born out of thrift, opportunity and candle ends. London in a nutshell.
Fast-forward to today and the place has become a sort of secular cathedral of edible temptation. Tea that smells like a well-behaved Eden. Biscuits that crunch like a Regency waltz. Hampers that could feed Narnia. People call it The Queen’s Grocer which is affectionate shorthand for we trust this place with good things.
And then there’s the Scotch egg question. Did Fortnum & Mason really invent it? According to Fortnum’s, yes. Travellers in the eighteenth century needed a clever, portable snack that wouldn’t collapse in the saddle. So the shop wrapped a boiled egg in sausage meat and fried it into a sturdy little orb. A polite, practical, edible cannonball. The best Scotch egg is a textural symphony. A crisp crust. Seasoned sausage meat that gently sings rather than shouts. And an egg cooked to that golden jammy point where you feel civilisation is safe.
Now. This year’s Christmas displays.
Fortnum’s has never simply decorated its windows. It stages them. They’re miniature plays. Winter pantomimes. Mechanical ballets in sugar, tin, ribbon and light. And this year the theme is pure Fortnum’s theatre. The windows are alive with whirling teacups, celestial constellations of baubles, toy-sized pageants, and a shimmering reinterpretation of the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring geese, rings and Lords A-Leaping with a distinctly Fortnum’s flair. There is one window where a giant hamper appears to open itself, revealing a fantasy of teas, chocolates and
jars whirling in slow motion like planets. Another where musical biscuit tins
revolve in a kind of tiny orchestra pit, tinkling their tunes into Piccadilly.
And at night. Oh, the building becomes a storybook. The façade lights up
as a grand advent calendar.
Each window picked out in red and gold. Pedestrians slow down without meaning to. Taxi drivers actually glance upwards.
It has that effect.
Step inside and you’re hit
with the great Fortnum’s swirl.
Warmth, light, brass fittings that gleam like polished vowels,
and the unmistakable scent of Christmas. Cinnamon, clementines, chocolate,
pine needles, mulled wine and
something deeply buttery
drifting from the food hall.
There’s an enormous tree this year, towering up into the atrium,
hung with ribbons
and tiny Fortnum’s hampers.
A tree that looks as though a
well-mannered woodland spirit decorated it after doing a course at the Royal Academy.
Staff glide about
with that Fortnum’s blend
of courtesy and twinkle.
Ask where the stilton is and
you’re not simply directed. No.
You’re treated to a five-sentence sonnet about its origins, its character,
and the best kind of cracker.
So. How to spend two perfect hours at Fortnum & Mason?
Hour One: Ceremonial Browsing.
Start at street level.
Take in the windows slowly.
Let your inner child have a moment.
Step inside and
wander the ground floor without rushing. Sniff the teas.
Sample the chocolates if they’re offering. Admire the towers of biscuits
in their eau de nil tins.
Let yourself be seduced
by the absurd delight of
a musical biscuit tin.
Drift into the Christmas room.
Admire the baubles. Touch the ribbons.
Whisper a quiet apology
to your future self for the amount of money you are about to spend.
Move to the Food Hall.
Look at the pâtés you’ve never heard of. Admire the pies. Contemplate the stilton. Look at the hampers. Pick one up.
Put it down. Pick it up again.
Hour Two: Ascend. Eat. Watch. Revel.
Take the red lift to
the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon
on the fourth floor.
It is serenity with crockery.
Order afternoon tea
or a pot of something fragrant
and a slice of cake.
Sit near a window if you can
and watch Piccadilly flow below
like a ribbon of taxis.
This is the moment
Fortnum’s works its spell. Time slows. Cakes arrive.
Sandwiches appear with cucumber arranged so neatly it should win a prize. Tea is poured by someone who has been pouring tea professionally
since the dawn of civilisation.
After tea, descend slowly.
Stop on the first floor for the perfumery and the elegant odds and ends.
Pause on the second for stationary and candles.
Make your way back to the ground floor, float out onto Piccadilly and think, yes, that was two hours exceedingly well spent.
Fortnum & Mason is our opener
in this little series of great London Christmas shops because it sets the tone. Charming, historical, confident,
and full of festive delight.
If London had a heartbeat in December,
it would be ticking away
somewhere inside those eau de nil walls.
Right then.
The duchess has had her moment. Shall we wander to Liberty next?
Or take a twirl through
the Piccadilly Arcade
to keep the magic warm?
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.