London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
—————————————
Good evening London Walkers, one and all. It’s February 24th, 2025.
Thumbing through it now. My commonplace book, I mean. February 18th. February 22nd. Ah, here we are. February 24th.
And what have we got for February 24th.
Item: A word to the wise. Those of you hang out for a couple of hours with Robert on his Thames Sightseeing, Brunel’s River Cruise Tour…may I strongly recommend that you afford him, Robert, the respect he deserves. He’s far too much the gentleman – far too modest and indeed companionable – to put on airs – but I can say it. And indeed if you bring it up with Robert – after the walk he often joins a few of his walkers for lunch at the Mayflower, the ancient riverside pub with the gob-smacking 1620 American, “New World” connections – anyway, if you’re there breaking bread and raising a glass with Robert, perhaps ask him about this matter. It makes for a very interesting tale. Hear it and you’ll certainly see your guide in a new light. Ok, that’s enough of a tease. Let’s put our cards on the table. Robert is a Freeman of the City of London. That status accords him certain renowned privileges. Well, it did had he lived a couple of centuries ago. Before the
Reform Act of 1832 only one percent of the population could vote. Robert, as a Freeman of the City, was part of that tiny, privileged minority. He would have been able to cast a ballot in Parliamentary elections. What else? As a Freeman, Robert would have enjoyed exemption from certain tolls. He would have enjoyed legal privileges that only a tiny minority were entitled to. Aside here: you almost never go wrong if you look at the origins of English words. You drill down into word origins and word derivations it’s like panning for gold, suddenly, underneath all the dross, there’s a speck of gold.
So our word privilege, well, the second half of the word you can see the Latin root for the word ‘legal’ – lege. And the first part of the word, privi – it’s the root of our word private. Put those two halves together and you get privilege – private law.
Executive privilege is something that really gets my goat as an American. The President of the United States has executive privilege. It’s private law. Law that he and no one else enjoys. And not to put too fine a point on it, it sucks. This is the man – and the day is coming, and not beforetime, when it’ll be a woman, this is the man or woman who puts his or her hand on the Good Book and promises, swears to uphold the law. But it turns out that he’s got his own private law. Executive privilege. Bears repeating: sucks.
Anyway, let’s get back to Robert, back to our Freeman of the City of London, wallowing in his legal and other privileges. In addition to all of that, Robert has the privilege of driving his flock of sheep over London Bridge. That’s not something most of the rest of us are entitled to do. But Robert is.
And it doesn’t stop there. Robert, as a Freeman of the City of London, can be drunk and disorderly without fear of arrest. Well, he could had he been roistering about – well, in his cups – 200 years ago. The great Victorian historian G.M. Trevelyan said of the ancient Celt, he loved to cheer or fuddle his brain with mead. In an earlier life it must have been a comfort to Robert that he could cheer and in due course fuddle his brain with strong ale with every confidence that he could be well away, indeed, disorderly, without fear of arrest. “I may be slurring my words and incapable of walking in a straight line but there’s nothing you can do about it officer because I’m a freeman of the City of London. Now bugger off.”
Nor are we done with Robert, in his cups, flashing the bird to Officer Plod. It turns out that Robert is also permitted – well, he would have been 200 years ago – to wander through the City of London with a drawn sword. Drunk and disorderly and armed. Oh dear me.
And finally, should Robert do something so heinous that the law couldn’t turn a blind eye on it, do something so heinous that Robert was bound over and tried in a court of law, and, yup, ‘fraid so, horror of horrors, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, whereupon the judge donned his cap and sternly admonished the defendant, Robert, society has earned a rest from your activities and accordingly I sentence you to the severest penalty of all, Death by Hanging. Well, even in those straitened circumstances, Robert had the last laugh. He was entitled to be hanged with a silken rope.
Ok, second February 24th item entered into my Commonplace Book. It was on this day 105 years ago – February 24th, 1920 that Nancy Astor, the first woman MP to sit in the House of Commons, made her maiden speech, thereby becoming the first woman to speak in Parliament.
And what did she say? I think it’s worth quoting her opening remarks. And indeed the matter that she saw fit to raise once she’d cleared the bar with her opening remarks.
And indeed the response of the House – her fellow members – hundreds of them. All of them men. There were 707 members of parliament in 1920. 706 of them were men.
Here’s what Nancy Astor said – and as usual, Hansard, the verbatim report of Parliamentary speeches and debates – also recorded the choral response from the other members of the House. Viscountess Astor got to her feet, was recognised and opened her remarks as follows. These are the first words spoken in PARLIAMENT BY A WOMAN.
“I shall not begin by craving the indulgence of the House. I am only too conscious of the indulgence and the courtesy of the House. I know that it was very difficult for some hon. Members to receive the first lady M.P. into the House. [To which, Hansard tells us, a number of HON. MEMBERS shouted : “Not at all!” Nancy Astor continued] It was almost as difficult for some of them as it was for the lady M.P. herself to come in. Hon. Members, however, should not be frightened of what Plymouth sends out into the world. After all, I suppose when Drake and Raleigh wanted to set out on their venturesome careers, some cautious person said, “Do not do it; it has never been tried before. You stay at home, my sons, cruising around in home waters.” I have no doubt that the same thing occurred when the Pilgrim Fathers set out. I have no doubt that there were cautious Christian brethren who did not understand their going into the wide seas to worship God in their own way. But, on the whole, the world is all the better for those venturesome and courageous west country people, and I would like to say that I am quite certain that the women of the whole world will not forget that it was the fighting men of Devon who dared to send the first woman to represent women in the Mother of Parliaments. Now, as the West country people are a courageous lot, it is only right that one of their representatives should show some courage, and I am perfectly aware that it does take a bit of courage to address the House on that vexed question, Drink….
Do we want the welfare of the community, or do we want the prosperity of the Trade? Do we want national efficiency, or do we want national inefficiency? That is what it comes to.
I do not think the country is really ripe for prohibition, but I am certain it is ripe for drastic drink reforms. [Here Hansard informs us, the House erupted, dozens of HON. Members shouting: “No!” Extraordinary how they’d changed their tune from being gallant and gentlemanly to outrage and hostility that a woman had dared to come amongst them and suggest that their drinking should be curbed. Anyway, Nancy Astor wasn’t in least cowed. She faced them down. One imagines them shutting up like naughty schoolboys who’d just been reprimanded with the severest look in the headmistress’s arsenal. Viscountess Astor stares them down and then says – she’s serving notice on them here:] I know what I am talking about, and you must remember that women have got a vote now and we mean to use it, and use it wisely, not for the benefit of any section of society, but for the benefit of the whole. I want to see what the Government is going to do…
Stirring stuff. Great maiden speech. You go, Nancy Astor.
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.