London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you, London Walkers.
Wherever you are.
It’s Friday, January 23rd, 2026.
And here it is.
Here’s your daily London fix.
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Right. Let’s start with a miracle of the English language.
A man.
A title.
A peer of the realm.
A politician.
An admiral.
A musical patron.
A fixer.
A bruiser.
A slippery customer.
A workaholic.
A rake.
A widower-in-all-but-name.
A man knee-deep in dockyards, dispatches, timber stocks, war scares, cabinet intrigue and Handel oratorios.
And today?
Two slices of bread with something tasty trapped between them.
That, my friends, is quite a comedown. Or quite an immortality.
Meet John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich.
And yes. We are absolutely going to talk about the sandwich.
But first, the man.
He’s born in London in 1718. Not into riches. Not into comfort. His grandfather is mad. His father dies young. His mother remarries and more or less clears off.
Little John is packed off to Eton at the age of seven. Seven.
That alone explains a great deal.
Eton toughens him up.
Sharpens him.
He comes out of it classically trained, ferociously ambitious, clever, restless, hungry.
Hungry is a word that’s going to come back.
Cambridge follows.
Then not a Grand Tour so much as a Grand Adventure.
He and a few friends charter a ship and head east. Greece. Constantinople. Egypt.
Real danger. Real scholarship.
He comes home with antiquities, manuscripts, and the reputation of being alarmingly capable.
In short, he looks like trouble.
The useful kind.
Politics beckons.
The Admiralty beckons.
And Sandwich throws himself at it like a man who doesn’t sleep much. Naval reform. Dockyards. Strategy. Training. Discipline. Timber. Always timber. He’s everywhere. Tireless. Abrasive. Brilliant. Impossible.
He becomes First Lord of the Admiralty not once, not twice, but three times. He runs the navy in peace and war. He argues with everyone.
He makes enemies.
He makes the navy better.
He helps keep Britain afloat. Literally.
And he does all this while living modestly, by aristocratic standards. Which makes people nervous.
A clever earl who needs his salary is unsettling.
A dangerous combination.
Now. Pause there.
Because somewhere in all this furious activity, this relentless pace, this refusal to stop, something very small and very human happens.
He needs to eat.
The story everyone knows. Or thinks they know.
He’s gambling. Or working.
Or both.
He doesn’t want to leave the table. He asks for meat between two slices of bread so he can eat with one hand and carry on with the other.
Is it true?
Who knows.
Is it perfect?
Absolutely.
Because it fits him.
A man who hates interruption.
A man who refuses ceremony.
A man who wants efficiency.
Food you don’t have to stop for. Lunch as logistics.
Others had done similar things, of course.
Bread and fillings are older than civilisation.
But names matter.
And Sandwich’s did what all the best names do.
It stuck.
And that’s the leap.
From proper noun to common noun. From Earl to everyone.
English is very good at this.
We do it again with Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. Boots become wellingtons.
Titles dissolve into objects.
Rank seeps into daily life.
Nobility becomes footwear.
Or lunch.
Sandwich would have appreciated the irony.
Possibly with a grin.
Back to the man.
He’s not a saint.
He acquires a reputation as a libertine.
Some of it deserved.
Some of it exaggerated.
Eighteenth-century politics is brutal.
If you’re effective, you’re hated.
If you’re clever, you’re distrusted.
If you’re ruthless, you’re caricatured.
He helps destroy John Wilkes.
He earns the nickname “Jemmy Twitcher”.
It sticks. Just like the sandwich.
His private life collapses.
His wife becomes mentally ill. They live apart.
He finds happiness with Martha Ray, his long-term partner.
They have children.
Real domestic warmth at last.
And then tragedy.
Martha Ray is murdered.
Shot dead.
Sandwich is shattered. The man who could face invasion scares and cabinet warfare is undone by grief.
Still, he works. Always works.
And music.
Music matters enormously to him. Handel matters.
He bangs the drum. Literally.
He founds the Concert of Ancient Music.
He helps fix Handel at the heart of British culture.
Messiah as a national possession. That, arguably, lasts longer than most ministries.
When he finally dies in 1792, he leaves behind a navy stronger than he found it.
Copper-bottomed. Expanded. Reformed. Ready for what comes next.
And a lunch.
Think about that.
Of all the battles, the reforms, the speeches, the dispatches, the crises, the obituaries.
What survives?
“Cheese and pickle sandwich.”
“Ham sandwich.”
“Egg sandwich.”
Immortality by accident.
Which is why this is such a good place to start a series.
Londoners whose names slip their moorings.
Who stop being capitalised.
Who end up in our mouths, on our feet, in our cupboards.
Because London does this.
It grinds people down into language.
It turns lives into objects.
It turns power into habit.
So next time you eat a sandwich at your desk, or on a train,
or standing in the street,
spare a thought for the restless Earl who probably didn’t have time to sit down either.
John Montagu.
Fourth Earl of Sandwich.
Admiral.
Fixer.
Music lover.
Workaholic.
And lunch.
This… is London.
And this… is history you can eat.
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 £25 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 Jack the 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 a former Member of Parliament, three terms at Westminster, bringing first-hand experience of power, policy and political theatre to the very streets where it all played out.
It includes two barristers, three doctors, two geologists, a distinguished museum curator and a former Time out Editor.
It includes authors, historians, national journalists, a former London Museum archaeologist, and university professors (one of them an eminent Cambridge University paleontologist).
It includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre actors, and two professional photographers. And last but not least, the creme de la creme of top flight professionally qualified Blue Badge Guides, including 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 here’s the clincher. We’re playing at home.
London Walks is London-based. Period.
We’re not an impersonal, faceless platform run from halfway round the world. There’s no chatbot. No call-centre script. When you contact us, you reach a real person. A Londoner. Someone who actually knows the streets you’re about to walk.
That’s not a detail. That’s the difference.
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.