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 evening to you from London! It’s September 1st, 2024.
Something a little different today. Last Tuesday I went on Simon’s day trip to Cambridge. In due course I’ll do a wrap of the day, a full-on appraisal of the whole kit and caboodle. What sets it apart. Lands it in the winner’s circle. Why – and this isn’t a brazen, bare, bald-faced, unsupported opinion – no, I’ll make the case, point by point – evidence-based rather than flimsy, hot-air opinion – why this one gets the gold medal, comes in first, why you should plump for this one if a trip to Cambridge is on your dance card. Why this one reaches the parts other tours can’t reach. Why it’s the best tour of Cambridge going. And, yes, we’re coming to the end of the season. The Cambridge tea cakes trolley will be coming round just five more times this summer: on September 10th, September 24th, October 8th, October 22nd and November 2nd.
Anyway, today I thought I’d just play a short excerpt from the town. Yes, needless to say, I had the microphone along and when Simon stopped and did some guiding I hit the Record button and pointed it at him. In medias res, as the old English Lit term has it. Instead of taking it from the top I plunge you in toward the end of his guiding St John’s College. He’s just finished talking about a couple of illustrious St John’s students, Wordsworth the great romantic poet and William Wilberforce the abolitionist. Parting company with them, Simon gets us to take a good look at what we’re actually looking at at St John’s. And then he transitions to Trinity College. More in medias res, we come in on Isaac Newton waiting on the tables of the students who were his social superiors.
Simon’s guiding is like a Christmas pudding. It’s chock-a-block with plums of fact. But also he makes sure you see things you wouldn’t otherwise notice. We wouldn’t have known that right in front of there, those were Newton’s rooms. And the business of the apple tree. We absolutely would not have noticed that – how the trunk of the tree is manifestly different from the branches and what that signifies. And then making us see what we couldn’t see. The wine cellar beneath our feet. And just generally getting Trinity College into sharp focus. How and why it’s the wealthiest college in Cambridge. And Simon effortlessly and deftly fielding questions. And making connections – the Trinity College connection with the Dome in London. And Simon’s enlivening that with a personal connection. And then getting us to see the bicycle pump. Which we probably wouldn’t have noticed. And filling us in on the back story. And getting us to see the Olympic gold medal, which we almost certainly wouldn’t have noticed if we’d been doing Cambridge on our own. It’s seeing the place with Simon’s knowledgable, experienced, expert eyes rather than our undiscerning ignorant eyes. It’s just so information-rich. But at the same time, easy, laid-back, friendly – the platonic ideal of what a great tour should be. Here’s Simon. At St John’s, he’s just said goodbye to Wordsworth and Wilberforce, he wants us to see the courtyard and then it’s Trinity and hello, who do we have here. Why it’s Issac Newton.
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 Museum of London archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes
criminal defence lawyers,
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.