London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good day to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Sunday, July 20, 2025.
A lucky dip today. Picking one out of a hat.
What have we got. Ah, Admiral Jackie Fisher.
So just like that we’re on our Old Westminster walk. Standing in front of 16 Queen Anne’s Gate. We’ve just done the street. And make no mistake, Queen Anne’s Gate, you really have to drink it in properly. It is after all the finest street of its kind, its period. This row of houses and the ones over the way – are 320 years old. We’ve had a look at the most beautiful door hoods in London. It’s worth the price of admission just to see those stunning, elaborately carved door hoods up close. And of course we’ve seen what you don’t see unless you’ve got the guide along to carefully direct your gaze. The five houses that are like those Russian Matryoshka dolls that nest inside each other. Each of those Queen Houses a tiny bit smaller than its immediate next door neighbour to its left. It’s one of those things you don’t see until it’s pointed out to you and then when you do see it, it’s a dopamine hit of satisfaction. “Wow, look at that, yeah, I can see it now – what was that all about? Why did they do that row of houses that way?”
But door hoods and houses that are like matryoshka dolls, that’s our skirmish line. We’ve got to get into the thick of it with the history. And biography. And needless to say, Queen Anne’s Gate is rich pickings in that regard. For starters, all those blue plaques. If they were red plaques you’d say Queen Anne’s Gate has the measles.
But the one that concerns us here on this London Calling Podcast, the one I’ve pulled out of a hat, is the plaque to Admiral Jackie Fisher. Was it completely a lucky dip? Maybe not. Turns out there is something in the way of a naval connection. It’s London. There’s always a connection. Back we go. To this day, July 20th, 1588. That year’s a bit of a giveaway isn’t it. Yes, you’re closing in, it was on this day in 1588 that the Armada – the mighty Spanish fleet set sail for England. Set sail for its date with destiny.
But that’s another story. Our man today, we’re standing in front of his house, is Admiral Jackie Fisher.
This old old house – smart, stately, quiet, ever so elegant today – once echoed with the bellowing voice of the man who re-engineered the Royal Navy. A man so fiery, so maddening, so utterly brilliant, the Admiralty itself didn’t know whether to knight him or throttle him.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Admiral of the Fleet John Arbuthnot Fisher. But like everybody else we’re going to call him Jackie. That was the way he wanted it. He demanded affection – as loudly as he demanded dreadnoughts. So who was Jackie Fisher? And where’d he come from? He was born in 1841. In Ceylon. We call it Sri Lanka today. Aside here – Ceylon, where Mary’s dad spent a good part of World War II. Developed his taste for impossibly spicy curries. Well, Jackie Fisher was something of a very spicy curry. He was part-colonial, part devil and all energy. Eccentric mother. Financially strapped father. Puberty pitches up when Jackie Fisher is 13 and Bang! he enters the Royal Navy. Different world, the 1850s. I don’t think anybody knows where it came from, what the drivers were – but even as a snot-nosed Midshipman Jackie Fisher had a towering ambition and a total hatred of inefficiency. This was a teenager cut from a different cloth. Could you pick him out in a line-up of the ship’s company? He was stocky. Short. Barrel-chested. Eyes that practically sparked. When Jackie Fisher strode, he didn’t walk, he charged.
You get the measure of the man in his letters. He wrote letters the way people today DM. His letters – there were thousands of them – were fusilades. Pure adrenaline: underlined words, capital letters, nicknames, exclamations.
Jackie Fisher was a human cannonball. A human cannonball fired straight at the crusty, hidebound, slow-moving Victorian Navy.
And by God, he blew it up.
That’s why we stop here. Why we get Jackie Fisher in our sights. Jackie Fisher dragged the Royal Navy — kicking, screaming, and sometimes sinking — into the modern age. He scrapped sail. He cut deadwood. He championed torpedoes, submarines, and, most famously — the Dreadnought. Ah, yes. The HMS Dreadnought, 1906. Fisher’s crown jewel. It was a revolutionary battleship — faster, stronger, and deadlier than anything afloat. It made every other navy on Earth obsolete overnight. Naval arms race, you say? Jackie Fisher started it. He loved it. And for a brief moment, Britannia truly ruled the waves because Jackie Fisher had rearmed her – rearmed Britannia with a vengeance.
There’s more. Jackie Fisher didn’t just do tech. He was a talent-spotter. He championed a young upstart named Winston Churchill. Fast forward to 1911, Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty. Those two – Churchill and Jackie Fisher – that was like tossing a match into a barrel of rum.
They were allies, then enemies, then allies again. Both brilliant. Both volcanic. Both convinced they were right. At one point, Fisher resigned in protest. Another time, Churchill recalled him from retirement during WWI — a decision that went about as well as you’d expect when you put two egos in one War Room.
As for Jackie Fisher’s personal life. He married his cousin Frances in 1866. They had six children. Well, so much for the man’s personal life. Jackie Fisher’s true mistress was the Navy. He once called his warships “my pets” — he was given to stroking the brass fittings on their bridges like a proud father.
And maybe try this story for size. At a formal dinner, a pompous guest began to mock Fisher’s outspoken views and his rather, shall we say, flamboyant personality. Fisher stood up, leaned across the table, eyes gleaming, and barked:
“I have swallowed more dirty water, chewed more rope’s ends, and trod more gun decks than you’ve had hot dinners. Now sit down and let the grown-ups talk!”
Dead silence.
And yes — the guest sat down.
I’m not sure there’s a word that entirely gets him. I’m tempted to say presence. Jackie Fisher had terrifying presence. When he retired, naval reform slowed to a crawl. When he returned — things moved. Explosively. He had flaws, of course — he could be vindictive, impatient, paranoid. But dull? Never.
In his final years, he retreated here, to this house – 16 Queen Anne’s Gate. We stand outside, sizing it up. All quiet elegance. But inside? A volcano, still bubbling. To the very end Admiral of the Fleet Jackie Fisher kept writing, kept scheming, even tried to push naval reforms in his 80s. He died in 1920. And when the guns of WWII finally roared, it was in ships that bore his fingerprints — decades on.
So here we are — in front of the blue plaque. It doesn’t say much. Just “Admiral of the Fleet.” Understated. But this house once held a man who reshaped the Navy, rattled the Empire, and wrote letters like naval bombardments.
Jackie Fisher — not just an admiral.
A Force 9 Gale in a uniform.
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 –nyou 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 Royal 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.