London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good morning to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Saturday, November 15th, 2025.
And here it is, fresh out of the oven,
piping hot, your daily London fix.
You know how it goes. You finish a piece, send it out into the world,
and think to yourself,
ok, that’s Fortnum’s
wrapped up nicely for Christmas.
A bow on top, job done.
And then London,
with its impeccable sense of comic timing, gently taps you on the shoulder.
Because almost the moment the first chapter fluttered onto the airwaves,
word reached me
of something rather extraordinary
stirring at the very heart of 181 Piccadilly.
A surprise I hadn’t clocked,
a suprise hiding in plain sight,
and frankly far too splendid
to leave on the cutting-room floor.
So here we are again,
back at Fortnum’s
for a wholly unexpected second helping.
An addendum, if you like,
except this one
refuses to sit quietly in the margins. Something new has risen
in the very centre
of the Queens Own Grocers,
and it deserves its own moment in the limelight.
A good cup of Fortnum’s tea
takes about three minutes to brew.
Three minutes and a gentle swirl
and you’re off to the races.
But some things need a little longer.
Two years, in this case.
Because while we were all
drifting through Piccadilly
admiring the tinsel and the teas,
Fortnum’s was quietly
seeing to the most ambitious
architectural transformation
since its doors first opened
back in the early 18th century.
If you’ve been in the shop recently,
you may have noticed a colourful collage of illustrations by Zebedee Helm
standing cheerfully in the centre of the store. A charming bit of visual mischief,
bright as a Christmas bauble.
What it really was, though, was camouflage. A cheerful screen hiding a secret.
Behind it, the craftsmen had been busy, coaxing something magical into being.
And now Fortnum’s has lifted the curtain.
Out it comes,
gleaming and spiralling into the light:
the new Double Helix Staircase.
This is not a mere staircase.
It is a swirling showpiece,
part artwork, part feat of engineering,
rising from the Lower Ground
all the way to the Second Floor.
What’s more, it’s arrived
just in time for the most magical stretch
in the Fortnum’s calendar,
when Piccadilly seems to glow from within.
Tom Athron, Fortnum’s CEO,
sums it up
with admirable understatement.
He calls it a work of art,
a restoration of architectural integrity,
and a symbol of their faith
in Fortnum’s future.
He’s absolutely right.
To bring this rising marvel into being, Fortnum’s joined forces
with the Ben Pentreath Studio,
led by the architectural designer
Ben Pentreath,
whose portfolio dances effortlessly
between historic restoration and
imaginative modernity.
Together they have created something
that genuinely alters
the way visitors move through the store.
More theatrical, more fluid, more Fortnum’s.
The design itself tips its hat to
Leonardo da Vinci’s
rare double helix staircases.
There are only a few in the world.
One at Chambord in France,
another tucked away in a little place
called the Vatican.
And now, in its own Piccadilly fashion,
there’s one at Fortnum’s.
The cleverness is in the concept:
two staircases twisting together
like strands of DNA.
They look like a single structure,
but one carries ascending feet,
the other descending feet.
A wonderfully civilised arrangement, especially when the Christmas rush
is in full swing.
This was not a quick job.
Two years of meticulous work.
It was dreamed up and built in sections
by a team of Sussex craftspeople.
Think about that for a moment.
A three-storey sculpture,
built like a piece of fine furniture,
then stitched lovingly
into the fabric of the building.
Look closely and the care is unmistakable. More than three thousand hand-forged details, each made by a blacksmith,
each fitted with precision.
Timber steps warming the touch,
plasterwork softening the sweep.
Every curve, every twist,
modelled in 3D to within an inch of its life, then brought into the world by human hands. The result feels natural,
as though the building had been waiting for it.
Ben Pentreath himself
calls it a technical marvel and
a deeply human design.
That combination is exactly what you sense when you step onto it.
Craft meeting imagination,
engineering meeting artistry.
And now it stands open at Piccadilly.
A new chapter in a very long story.
Visitors will come from
Shanghai and Chicago and Chelmsford and they’ll all find themselves
part of this moment,
part of this new thread
woven into the Fortnum tapestry.
A chance to walk not only through the store, but through its future.
If you’re in there one day going up the staircase and I’m over the way going day, be sure to give me a wave. A shout wouldn’t do – not in Fortnum – but a genteel wave is absolutely in order. I’m the guy in the red shoes, the green belt, the black denim jacket, the scarf with a splash of colour and the whole garish production topped to the north with a Dauntless – a navy blue fedora. Passing ships on the double helix in the Christmas lights we’ll be. What’s not to like.
And now I suspect you’ll be dropping everything and rushing off to Fortnum’s. And who’d blame you? But look, if you want to dovetail your visit to the 8th wonder of the world there at 181 Piccadilly with a London Walk, well, that one’s eezy peezy, just pitch up on our Friday afternoon Old Palace Quarter Walk. It’ll be one of the most memorable afternoons over the course of your long – one hopes – deeply satisfying, rapturous life.
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.