Halloween and Guy Fawkes

London calling.

London Walks connecting.

This… is London.

This is London Walks.

Streets ahead.

Story time. History time.

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Top of the morning to you, wherever you are.

It’s November 1st, 2024.

First day of our so-called winter season.

But to cut to the chase, Virginia Woolf once said – this was in her Oxford Street Tide essay – “the charm of modern London is that it is not built to last; it is built to pass.”

Ok, that’s one clue. The other clue is the time of the year. Full marks to you if you can guess what this one’s going to be about, where it’s heading.

I’ve lived in London for over half a century now. I think it’s often the case that when you live in a place you’re not as aware of the changes as someone who was last here, say, fifteen or twenty years ago. They remember it as it was when they were last here. They come back many years later and there are whole new mountain ranges that weren’t here when they were last here. Living here, you’d notice the upthrust of those new mountain ranges if it happened overnight. But it doesn’t. It happens over a couple of years or even longer. It sneaks up on you. Happens continually but comparatively gradually so you’re only sort of half aware that a big change is underway under your nose so to speak.

Here’s a catalogue of some of the changes I’ve seen. I go back far enough to remember Covent Garden Market when it was Covent Garden Market. In other words, before it was gentrified. I caught a break with that. It was my first year in London. I really didn’t know the place at all. I’ve thought a fair bit about this. How confusing London can be when you’re a newcomer. Everything’s higgledy piggledy. You haven’t the foggiest how it all connects up, fits together. Famously, in Manhattan, you can be a Russian immigrant just off the boat and two days later you’re driving a yellow cab. It’s the grid pattern – avenues running north and south, streets east and west – and the numbering of the streets and avenues – 42nd Street, 43rd Street, 44th Street, etc. etc. – that makes that possible. A five-year-old could figure out Manhattan in a couple of hours. It takes a genius several lifetimes to figure London out. By way of example, take the Tube. Take the Tube indeed. The London Underground is a joy. So much easier to use than the New York subway. But the thing is, because of the patchwork pattern of London, when you’re new to London and you take the Tube you’re really none the wiser about London. You know where you got on the Tube and you know where you got off, but you haven’t the foggiest how it all fits together. It’s a dilemma for the visitor. If you want to see how the parts all fit together you take the bus. The downside is the bus is much slower and the buses aren’t easy to figure out. You can master the Underground in ten minutes. Not so London’s bus network. It’s can feel like a basket of yarn that the cat’s got at. A tangle of routes the numbers of which are anything but edifying. So the overwhelming temptation is to take the Underground. It’s much faster and it’s easy to figure out. But the tradeoff is you’re not figuring out London – seeing how the parts fit together – if you take the Tube. My recommendation would be – if you’re a newcomer and you want to get a proper idea of London – and you can spare the extra time it’s going to take – get stuck in – do what you have to do to decipher the tangle of bus routes and the mumbo jumbo of the numbering system – and take the bus.

But I digress. It’s my first year in London. The place was a Northern Lights of wonder to me. I was entranced by it. Spellbound by it. But didn’t know it at all. Fortunately for me there was a fellow student in 11 Albany Street – the student housing I lived in my first year in London – there was a fellow student who was up to speed to with London. Knew that there was a major change afoot down at Covent Garden. That the old Covent Garden was in its dying days. So I caught a break. I was included in a small group of 11 Albanyites who got up at sparrow fart and went down to Covent Garden Market to see it when it was what it was, see the old market in action before it disappeared, became a historical memory.

That’s an instance of a dramatic London change I was aware of.

Others, well, I remember when the first Macdonalds came to London. Imagine, a London without Macdonalds. Ditto the first cyber cafe. That’ll have been 30 years ago. And they didn’t last long, did they. Cell phones did for them.

And of course the coming of the Elizabeth Line. And the Heathrow Express. And Docklands.

A really dramatic one for me was the transformation of the Southbank. Our Along the Thames Pub Walk of course went over there. It still does. But in those early days going over there was like taking people to a foreign country. Nobody went over there in those days. Well, tourists didn’t at any rate.

What brought about the transformation? Four things. In no particular order, the coming of the Tate Modern, and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and the Millennium Bridge, and Borough Market.

I remember the day – quite a few years ago now – I had a revelation about all of that. I was on the motorcycle. I’d gone round Trafalgar Square. It was a weekend day. And going round Trafalgar Square I’d sort of clocked how busy it was, how people were there. And then I headed over to the Southbank.

And there were more people there – on the Southbank – than were in Trafalgar Square. More people in an area that would have been deserted ten years previously. And I remember thinking, the London centre of gravity has shifted. It used to Trafalgar Square. And now it’s the Southbank. A heads up, some pretty knowledgeable, pretty savvy Londoners are saying the centre of gravity is going to shift again in a year or two. The combination of the Elizabeth Line and the London Museum relocating in the transformed Smithfield Market complex is going to make that area the beating heart of London. We’ll see.

And that’s all by way of a preamble. We’re on the threshold now of where this one was always heading. Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day. When I came to London fifty years ago there was no Halloween here. That was an American thing. And it wasn’t on the radar of Brits. The big deal at this time of the year was Guy Fawkes. But turns out it was fading fast. I caught them just in time. You never see it anymore. I’m talking about ten, eleven-year old kids outside Tube Stops, chanting the mantra, “penny for the guy.” They were cadging for change so they could buy fireworks and other necessaries for the Guy Fawkes Night festivities. Basically fireworks and a bonfire, and the burning of a straw man. An effigy of Guy Fawkes.

“Penny for the guy.” You never hear it anymore. Haven’t seen it for nearly half a century now.

As a cultural event, a historic memory Guy Fawkes isn’t gone completely. Our Guy Fawkes walk is still very successful. People want to know who he was and what happened in 1605. But overall – at least in London – it has nothing like the hold it had half a century ago. It’s faded. Indeed, it’s in danger of being completely supplanted by that American import, Halloween.

I say American import but the origins of Halloween are Celtic.

In the Old Celtic calendar the year began on November 1st, so the last evening of October was “old year’s night”, the night of all the witches. Which the Church transformed into the Eve of All Saints. Saints or witches – you take your pick – it’s a night set apart for a universal walking abroad of spirits. Or as an American journalist put it 140 years ago, “a Carnival time of disembodied spirits.”

So I really should be wishing you a Happy New Year.

Anyway, be that as it may, Halloween didn’t make the running, was nowhere to be found in the London I first set foot in, this time of the year, 51 years ago.

And before my very eyes I’ve seen it overrun the place. On the Kensington Walk I guided yesterday all the locals – especially the kids – were in costume. The High Street, Kensington Church Walk, Holland Street, etc. were packed out with costumed street performers and locals Halloweening away for all they worth. Lots of razzmatazz. Sort of the British London equivalent of an American homecoming parade. Come November 5th – Guy Fawkes night – there’ll be nothing even remotely comparable in those same streets. Adverts tell the same story. Adverts are often a wet finger stuck up into the air. They tell you which way the wind is blowing. Taking the bus yesterday I looked out and saw business signs that read, for example, “Put some spook in your whatever the shop was retailing.

And for probably twenty years now we’ve had trick or treating in this country. That’s a new, a late developing phenomenon for the British Isles.

The Oxford English Dictionary shines a helpful light on the matter. The OED says, The practice of using trick or treat to ask for sweets and other treats at Halloween seems to have arisen in the Prairie Provinces of Canada in the 1920s, before spreading into the northern and western United States in the 1930s and across the rest of the United States through the 1940s and early 1950s. Since the 1980s, this and related phrases have increased in popularity outside of North America, along with American-style Halloween celebrations generally.

Another straw in the wind, an extensive BBC television news report – a feature of course as opposed to hard news – a television news report on huge Halloween street party that was underway in Cricklewood in northwest London. And sure enough, it was an American who’d made it happen. She’s been here twenty-five years. She said when she was a kid growing up she always loved Halloween. So when she got here in 1999 she put some Halloween stuff out in front of her house. And the thing’s just taken off, mushroomed, gone from strength to strength. It’s a Cricklewood fixture now, a huge annual Halloween street party.

The obvious question is, how? why? has this happened. I think there are two fairly obvious answers.

1. The British love of costumes and masks and adopting another identity, however briefly, and camping about accordingly. That goes back a long way. Those are deep and interesting cultural roots.
2. Guy Fawkes can’t keep up with the attractions that Halloween’s able to roll out. Take kids, for example. What’s Guy Fawkes got to offer for kids? You stand there and watch some fireworks and an effigy going up in flames. That’s pretty much it. But Halloween, you get to dress up. And you get to frighten people. And people give you sweets. More sweets in one night than you get in a whole year. It’s no contest. Guy Fawkes can’t begin to compete. 
3. The big other is of course the overwhelming power – the sheer might and dominance – of American culture. There’s no holding it back. For the most part, wherever it touches down it spreads, overruns and colonises what it comes into contact with. Takes ownership, so to speak.

Well, that’s all food for thought. For my part, the matter always puts me in mind of losing fight the smaller, really cute British red squirrel has fought against the American import, the bigger, more aggressive grey squirrels. The American greys were released over here both accidentally and deliberately and they’ve basically taken over. Usurped the best habitats from the native red squirrels. The little fellows can’t compete with the larger, heavier, hungrier American competition. They’ve been hounded out of their native lands – their best habitats – to less favourable woodland forests.

You want to understand what’s going on with Halloween and Guy Fawkes in Blighty, Halloween is the grey squirrel, Guy Fawkes is the red squirrel.

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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.