London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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A very good morning to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Wednesday, July 9th, 2025.
And getting into stride with my latest idea – namely, when the mood strikes me get London Calling off to a start with a fun, informative and I hope rewarding examination of a word or a phrase – how about it, shall we do another word today?
Or rather, today, a phrase. Yesterday, I used the expression, “get the wrong end of the stick.” It is of course an idiomatic expression. It means to get something wrong, to misunderstand a situation.
And what’s fun here is to dust the expression off, see if we can figure out where it came from. Because “get the wrong end of the stick”… that means misunderstand a situation? What does a stick – an end of a stick – have to do with a misunderstanding? There must be a story there.
And, yes, there very much is a story there. Maybe begin with the word idiomatic. It comes from a Greek word meaning peculiarity or peculiar phraseology. And no surprise this, the word idiomatic is cognate with the words idiot and idiosyncrasy. Idiot referring to someone whose outlook, whose read of things is private or peculiar. And idiosyncratic is much the same thing: means strange or unusual or unique. In a word, peculiar.
All right, so one step at a time. The wrong end of a stick is an idiomatic expression. One theory is the stick in question is a walking stick. The two ends of a walking stick are not created equal. Grasp the wrong end and the walking stick is more of an impediment, a hindrance than a help. And it’s hard to put something right if you misunderstand it. A flat tyre that caused by a puncture, say… If you think the culprit is a leaky cap on the valve stem, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. Blowing the tyre back up and putting a new cap on the valve stem isn’t going to solve the problem.
The wrong end of a walking stick, though, is the pedestrian explanation. One that’s a lot more fun – but also utterly disgusting – is the poo stick. The poo stick goes back to Roman times. It was a stick with a sponge attached to one end. Toilet paper was still eighteen centuries or so in the future.
So how did Romans clean their bottoms after a bowel movement? They used a poo stick. Two new words for you: the fancy names for a poo stick were a tersorium or a xylospongium. Loos were communal. You might say to the person seated next to you, hand me that tersorium, would you please. It’s I suppose some comfort to know that the business end of the poo stick – the sponge end – was rinsed in a water channel.
But the point is, you really, seriously did not want to grasp the wrong end of the stick.
And as long as we’re at it, how about a fast forward 1500 years – to Tudor times. I’m thinking of course of that much sought-after, highly esteemed office: the groom of the stool. Yes, that’s right, the job of the groom of the stool was to assist Henry VIII, say, in his fundamental endeavours. Particularly in the aftermath of His Majesty’s fundamental endeavours.
While we’re at it, we can riff here with the word ‘stool’. It’s an Old English word that fell from favour. It originally meant throne. Yes, I know, but I wasn’t going to say it. The fascinating thing is its fall. It gets supplanted and degraded thanks to the word chair. And what do you know, the word chair was a French word. The people who ruled England after the Norman Conquest were the invaders, the conquerors, the Norman French. Chair was the French word. It had more prestige. The Old English word stool goes into free fall.
By the fifteenth century it’s well and truly bottomed out. It means – I’m quoting from the OED here – it means A seat enclosing a chamber utensil; a commode; more explicitly stool of ease. Also, a privy.
And then, a century later, and how fastidious the OED is here, you can just see it putting a clothespin on its nose, a century later a stool is “the place of evacuation”. Or the action of evacuating the bowels.
Except it hasn’t bottomed out. Fifty years later, when Shakespeare is writing Hamlet, stool means “a discharge of faecal matter.”
Well, I said it yesterday, history can be pretty brutal. You get the wrong end of the stick it can be punishing in the extreme.
Ok, let’s move on. I’ve got a London anniversary for you today. Wimbledon is going strong. We’re in the second week, on the home stretch now.
And for our anniversary: raise a glass to this: it was exactly 148 years ago today – July 9th, 1877 – that the most famous tennis tournament in the world made its debut.
I was interested in the contemporary reception. Suddenly there it was, brand spanking new. What did they make of it? Did they get the right end of the stick. So, nothing for it but to turn to the newspapers of the day. Newspapers are, after all, the first draft of history.
Here’s what the Times said.
There are fashions in sport as well as in other affairs in which society participates, and lawn tennis is the most recent pastime which has been largely adopted as an outdoor amusement. It has passed through a variety of stages, until at last we have a most interesting game, as illustrated by the meeting at the All England Club Ground, Wimbledon.
The first championship ever contested for began there yesterday, under the management of Mr J.H. Walsh, the competitors including some of the best tennis players in England.
The office of referee was filled by Mr H. Jones. There were 22 entries in all, the first ties being got through with the following result: Mr Spencer Gore beat Mr H.G. Gillson by three games to love…”
Ok, so what jumps out at us here.
First of all, 22 players in total. All men. And none of them from far shores, from other lands. Interestingly, each of the 22 entrants forked out a guinea to put their name down and play in the tournament. It was a good investment for the eventual winner: the first prize was 12 guineas and a silver cup.
And as for the outcome of that first Wimbledon… Well, the eventual champion also played the first ever match: Spencer Gore.
Spencer Gore was local. He was born and raised within a mile of the All England Club.
He was 27-years-old that summer. He was upper class – the grandson of an earl. He had two brothers. One of them was the first Bishop of Birmingham. The other the Solicitor to the Board of Inland Revenue. Spencer Gore went to the famous public school Harrow. The same public school the great romantic poet Byron went to. And indeed Winston Churchill.
Spencer Gore was a very good athlete. He excelled at both tennis and cricket. He played for Surrey County Cricket Club.
That first-ever Wimbledon was pretty much clear sailing for the first-ever champion. He won the final in straight sets,
6-1, 6-2, 6-4, despatching opponent William Marshal in just 48 minutes.
Two final points. Both of them of some note.
Final point number One: the Championship match was postponed for four days because of rain. Cue Shakespeare: the rain it raineth every day.
And final point number Two: Spencer Gore was the first player who ever used the technique of volleying.
So the first-ever Wimbledon champion was also the father of the volley.
And that’s it, Game, Set, Match for This is London today.
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.