London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And a very good morning to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Wednesday, April 30th, 2025.
And, yes, it’s been Time Out on the field here for a couple of days. I’ve had other irons in the fire that have needed tending. The main one being getting the May newsletter shipshape and ready for launch. Which it is. It’ll go out in a couple of hours.
The newsletter down and dusted – it’s like musical chairs, this London Walks existence – here we are, back once again, revving up London Calling. Got a Guest Appearance for you today. An honoured, regular guest – one of the brightest stars in the London Walks constellation. Ann. She guides, brilliantly so, a handful of regular, weekly, mainstay London Walks. But she also turns her hand to some really snazzy niche walks. William Morris & Friends – she’ll be wheeling that one out in a couple of weeks. And a feast of four different Foodies’ London Walks. She rotates them. Does a different Foodies Walk every month. But the niche walk of niche walks is Cat Tails – A Feline Take on London History. And if you’re in London this weekend you should be purring away – because Ann’s Cat Tails walk is getting its monthly outing on May 4th. The walk’s unique. It’s the only one of its kind in the world. Probably in the universe. Cats – just as you don’t herd them, you also don’t take them for a walk. Speaks volumes about London – and about London Walks – that we can go out for a stroll with cats. Are we walking with them? Well, hanging with them is more like it. Seeing what they get up to. And got up to. The walk’s about famous London cats today and famous London cats of yesteryear.
Anyway, as usual – and they’re always welcome – always welcome because they’re fun and witty and quirky – as usual Ann has whipped up a little advancer podcast for us about the latest feline phenomena, the latest goings on, the havoc and mischief cats have been getting up to of late. It’s very Ann, very cats this podcast. A couple of one-liners that couldn’t be more telling. Their finesse is, well, feline.
Here’s Ann.
[Ann’s latest cats podcast follows]
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.