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 Monday, July 21st, 2025.
And truth be told, right now we’re as happy as a clam at high water.
Why is that, you say? Here’s why. Just in, ten minutes ago, a fabulous review of Rick Jones’s Tate Britain tour. Reviewer Maren Stanley described the tour as “a highlight of our London trip.”
Glad tidings indeed. Got our week off to the best possible start. And I’m going to do it. I’m going to spread the felicity, roll out the full review here. Won’t take but a few seconds – it’s only 53 words long. Here’s what Maren says: “What a difference a knowledgeable guide makes when visiting a museum- especially an art museum! Rick’s explanation of selected pieces made our trip to the Tate a highlight of our London trip. I was twice moved to tears! His recitation of The Lady of Shalott… that was a moment to remember. Five stars.”
Maren couldn’t have timed her review better. Couldn’t have timed it better because today, July 21st, is the Tate Gallery’s birthday.
And that’s what we’re marking in this edition of London Calling.
Here we go. It’s July 21st, 1897. The doors have just creaked open on a brand new London gallery.
Yes, late Victorian London – all soot and steeples and the chug of the Thames – has just got itself a new treasure chest. Say hello to The National Gallery of British Art as it was called back then.
That was its official name. Bit like calling King Charles, King Charles Philip Arthur George. No thanks.
Saying, “let’s go to the National Gallery of British Art”, that’s like getting into full evening wear. Who needs that.
So sure enough, in no time at all that lumbering caterpillar of a name gave way to the butterfly Tate Gallery. Or just the Tate. Or, after the Tate Modern came along, Tate Britain.
And that name – the Tate Gallery – gets us well and truly off to the races. Which is by way of saying, this wasn’t just any gallery.
Oh no. This was a gallery built with sugar money. That’s right – Henry Tate, sugar magnate, philanthropist, and full-time Not-Quite-a-Lord, paid for the lot. The man behind those little sugar cubes in your teacup – that was him. Henry Tate made a fortune out of sweetening Britain. And then, cometh the hour, and bless him, Henry Tate decided to sweeten Britain’s soul. There’s a lot to like about the Henry Tate backstory. Henry Tate was a Scouser, a Liverpudlian. He didn’t have much schooling, certainly didn’t have the right vowels for polite society. What he did have was cash. And, wait for it, Henry Tate had taste.
He’d built up quite a collection of British art. But it was the sort of art that made the snobs sniff and the critics frown. Pre-Raphaelites. Romantic landscapes. John Everett Millais in all his misty melancholy.
And now it gets pretty basic. Henry Tate wanted somewhere to put his huge collection. Somewhere people could see it, for free. A gift to the nation.
He tried the National Gallery up in Trafalgar Square. They weren’t interested. Turned their noses up. “Too provincial,” they sniffed. So Henry Tate did what any self-respecting Victorian tycoon would do. He paid for his own gallery.
And here’s where the tale gets really satisfying. The site Henry Tate chose for his gallery – Millbank – was where the Millbank Prison used to stand. Yes, Millbank Prison. A proper Dickensian slammer. Grim. Dark. The kind of place where you didn’t ask what was for dinner. You were dinner. And then no more prison. Gone. Just a bad memory. In its place, this this proud new temple to British art.
A phoenix rising out of brick dust and chains and bars.
There’s something deeply satisfying – even poetic – about that. From prison to gallery. From punishment to pleasure. It’s so London, that. It’s the sort of twist London does best.
Now as for this day in 1897 – opening day – there wasn’t a huge fanfare. Sure, the press turned up. And sure enough, the critics turned up their noses. No royalty, though. But the public did come. And they kept coming. By the end of the first week, over 30,000 people had crossed the threshold.
And Henry Tate? No show-stealing for him. He didn’t even attend the opening. Said he didn’t want to take the attention away from the art. Or maybe – and I rather like this – maybe he just hated speeches.
Now fast forward a bit. Because the Tate didn’t stay still. It grew. It grew like mad. In 1932, it officially dropped the long name and became just “The Tate.” And it well and truly got stuck in – started hoovering up modern art. Picasso, Matisse, Rothko, Hockney. By the 1980s, the walls were groaning. It needed more space, more oomph. And it got it. In the millennium year no less. 2000 – boom – the old Bankside power station got a second life as Tate Modern.
That’s choice isn’t it. Another very tasty irony. The old Millbank site had been a prison. Tate Modern was a power station. That’s the Tate in a nutshell: it keeps turning industrial ghosts into cathedrals of creativity.
In 1897 the Tate was an ace. Today it’s four aces. Tate Britain there at Millbank, Tate Britain where our distinguished art critic guide Rick Jones gave Maren Stanley his fun and moving and blazingly intelligent gallery tour. The Tate Britain, for ever doing its thing down there the Millbank, still showing the best of British art from 1500 to today. And, yes, Tate Modern over the water – bold, brash, and brilliant. For the record, Rick also does a sizzling, an eye-popping Tate Modern Tour. Then there’s Tate Liverpool – opened in 1988, just down the docks from where Henry Tate was born. And Tate St Ives, right on the Cornish coast, full of light and sea and Barbara Hepworth’s gorgeous curves.
So the Tate’s not just a gallery. It’s a network. It’s a national treasure. It’s a cultural powerhouse. Count ‘em. Over 70,000 works in the collection – everything from Tudor portraits to AI-generated installations. It’s got family days, late-night openings, riverboats, cafes with very decent cake, and a gift shop so good it ought to be illegal. And it’s still free. Because that was Henry Tate’s dream – art for everyone. No ticket required.
So next time you walk through those grand columns at Millbank, remember where you are. Not just in a gallery – but in a story. A story about sugar and prisoners and bricks and bars and chains and Picasso and 500 years of great British art AND you. Because the Tate isn’t just about paintings on a wall. It’s about all of us. Who we are. Where we came from. Where we are. How we live. What we love, what we fight about, and what we leave behind.
In that sense – in most senses, really – it’s quintessential London.
Happy birthday, Tate Gallery.
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.