London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time.
History time.
And today we are doing something mildly improper.
We are talking about March 1st… on March 2nd.
Late to the parade?
Perhaps.
But history, like London buses,
can be wonderfully forgiving.
Miss one and another rattles along in a minute.
And March 1st is too good to waste.
Because March 1st,
ladies and gentlemen,
was once New Year’s Day.
The real McCoy.
The original starting pistol.
The Romans,
who knew a thing or two about getting the show on the road,
began their year not in the dead, muddy gloom of January
but here,
at the hinge of winter and spring.
March.
Named for Mars.
Not the chocolate bar.
The god.
The Roman god of war.
Helmet, spear,
and very firm views about personal space.
And this was not poetry.
This was planning.
Winter, you see,
is a terrible time to conquer people. The ground is mud soup.
Rivers are in a foul temper.
Supply wagons sink.
Chariots behave like nervous shopping trolleys.
But come late February,
early March…
Ah.
The earth begins to stiffen.
Roads reappear.
Wheels turn.
Boots march.
Empires expand.
March was the Romans’ version of sprinters’ blocks.
The starter’s pistol for organised mayhem.
War season.
The red madness.
And here’s a pleasing little symmetry.
Just as the Romans used March to start the great machinery of the year grinding back into motion,
so here at London Walks
we find ourselves stirring too – dusting off the YouTube standard, giving it a brisk polish,
and setting it marching again.
Some traditions, it seems,
have very long legs indeed.
And of course I’d add –
how could I do otherwise –
those with half an eye on history may have noticed that even in our own times, the old Roman campaigning season still seems to exert a certain… gravitational pull.
Because the practical logic has never entirely gone away.
Armies still prefer firm ground. Vehicles still prefer roads that behave themselves.
History,
like London weather,
has a habit of repeating its favourite tricks.
Now here’s a delicious little calendar fossil.
The early Roman year
had ten months and
began in March.
Which is why September,
October,
November and December
all carry numbers that look slightly the worse for wear.
Seven, eight, nine, ten…
but today sitting in months
nine, ten, eleven and twelve.
Ghosts of the old calendar.
Still rattling their chains.
And London, of course,
knew this Roman rhythm intimately.
Londinium was a Roman town through and through.
Stand by the surviving fragments of the Roman Wall near Tower Hill,
or trace Watling Street through the City,
and you are walking in the long shadow of Mars
and his marching legions.
March was when things moved.
March was when things happened.
It still carries that faint electric hum of beginnings.
Now March 1st also comes with a rather more peaceful patron saint attached.
In Wales March 1st is
St David’s Day.
Red dragons.
Leeks in lapels.
Daffodils doing their cheerful duty. Choirs clearing their throats.
St David,
sixth-century holy man,
was said to live on nothing
but leeks and water,
which must have made supper invitations a slightly delicate affair.
London,
gloriously porous city that it is, always gives St David’s Day
a proper nod.
Welsh flags flutter.
Welsh voices rise.
And somewhere,
you can be quite sure,
a leek is being worn with quiet pride.
But March itself has always been a threshold month.
Not quite winter.
Not quite spring.
Not quite peace.
Not quite war.
It is the month of the Ides,
after all.
March 15th.
Julius Caesar popping into the Theatre of Pompey
and discovering,
rather too late,
that several of his colleagues
had brought very sharp paper-openers.
And in London,
March is when the light begins,
ever so cautiously,
to change its mind.
Stand in Bloomsbury
on a clear March morning
and you can feel it.
The sun suddenly has ideas above its station.
The parks begin to look less like damp carpeting and more like somewhere a sane person might sit. Café tables edge back onto pavements.
Coats are unbuttoned with guarded optimism.
The city firms up.
Just as the Roman roads once did.
And beneath it all there is something the Romans would recognise instantly.
Restlessness.
After the long winter confinement, people want movement.
Energy.
Forward motion.
London in March
hums at a slightly higher pitch. Even the Thames looks as though it is considering a change of mood.
Mars, one suspects,
would approve.
So yes,
we are a day late to March 1st.
But perhaps that’s fitting.
Because March is a hinge in the year.
A time when the ground hardens, the light lengthens,
and history, every so often,
clears its throat.
And if you want to feel those deep historical rhythms properly,
not just hear about them
but stand where they actually happened…
Well, that’s exactly what we do at London Walks.
We put you on the ground
Where Roman London took shape. Where the past is not
safely boxed up in a museum case but still faintly vibrating under your feet.
Top flight professional guides. Distinguished historians and authors and museum curators and surgeons and barristers and geologists and archaeologists and Royal Shakespeare Company actors.
And since it all comes down
to the guiding…
Well, you get the idea.
In seven lucky words…
Distinguished, top flight professionals telling proper stories. Real London
beneath the surface London.
Because history is always better when you walk it.
London calling.
And on that note, I’ve got to bid you adieu. I’ve got a deadline bearing down on me. The early March London Walks newsletter – also called London Calling – takes wing – lark rising – in nine hours
See you out there.
See you next time.