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 Thursday, October 23rd.
Curtain up on your daily London fix.
Today, well, it’s Tapas time. Or, if you prefer, a double act.
We’re going to begin with the merest soupçon – just a taster, really.
The redoubtable Jonathan, the renowned Jonathan, the ever-wonderful Jonathan –
live from Smithfield.
Doing a spot of guiding for us from that half-acre or so where London history is piled high like kindling on a bonfire.
Did I say “live” from Smithfield?
I’m not sure “live” is the mot juste – given what went on there.
Which Jonathan’s about to serve up for you.
If “serve up” is the mot juste.
Got your bib on? Utensils at the ready?
Then, once we’ve supped full of the horrors Jonathan’s bringing out of the kitchen and setting before us…
I – David – have a tray of petits fours for you.
A spot of linguistic-cultural analysis.
Contemporary linguistic-cultural analysis.
Right up my street.
And look, here we are. In Smithfield. And here he is. Here’s Jonathan.
[Jonathan guiding Smithfield piece follows]
Ah, thanks, Jonathan.
Whoa! Yes. Smithfield. London’s killing ground.
The whole frighful panopoly
Hanged.
Hanged, drawn and quartered.
Burned alive.
Boiled alive.
Now as the French say – plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Because, truth be told, the tradition – the Smithfield fun and games – haven’t entirely died out. Case in point.
The former Duke of York is currently getting the Smithfield treatment. After a fashion. So, yes, Prince Andrew is being executed in a very 21st-century way.
It’s drawn out.
It’s painful.
And there’s a howling mob watching.
He’s not being lowered into a cauldron, of course – not yet, anyway.
It’s the frog-in-the-saucepan version.
The water’s getting warmer,
and warmer,
and he’s still sitting there, blinking, wondering why.
That slow, moral, modern boiling – that very twenty-first-century execution – and that brings us, well, it’s brought me at any rate, to a series of very noticeable and fairly recent bumps in the cultural road.
What I’ve taken to calling:
The Age of Un.
He was unalived.
Andrew’s been unduked.
And now we’ve got UnLondon beaming at us from travel posters.
A green field, a stone cottage, a couple in matching wellies.
The message: this isn’t London.
This is peace and quiet.
No traffic.
No Tube.
No hurry.
Not so very long ago, un was just a modest little prefix.
It meant “not” or “the reverse of.”
Unkind, unfair, untrue.
A linguistic spear carrier. A reliable servant of the language.
Now it’s gone rogue.
It’s the prefix of our time – quick, ironic, self-aware.
My best guess is “Unalived” started it.
Born on TikTok, where algorithms bristle at words like “dead” or “kill.”
Creators began saying “unalived.”
A euphemism, a workaround, a linguistic smirk.
And it spread – half serious, half absurd.
Then “unduked.”
Prince Andrew, stripped of his titles.
Fleet Street pounced.
“Andrew unduked!”
Five syllables of tabloid delight – neat, cruel, final.
And “UnLondon” – the travel industry’s pastoral fantasy.
The great escape.
UnLondon means the opposite of city life:
not the roar but the rustle,
not the skyline but the hedgerow.
A countryside dream packaged in a single syllable.
But I think there’s something deeper going on.
These un-words suit our digital, binary world.
Everything’s a toggle now – on or off,
friend or unfriend,
followed or unfollowed,
cancelled or uncancelled,
seen or unseen.
The old shades of meaning have been replaced by switches.
Flip one way and you’re in;
flip back and you’re out.
It’s the linguistic logic of the microchip.
We like un- because it’s reversible.
It’s non-committal.
It lets us undo what we’ve done – or pretend we can.
It’s modern, ironic, and safely non-final.
And of course, it’s also very British.
We’ve always liked our rebellion polite.
Un lets us be mischievous in a minor key.
It sounds proper while it undermines everything.
So yes – welcome to the Age of Un.
A world that speaks in opposites, in on-and-off, in do-and-undo.
And where better to see it than here?
London itself – forever unbuilt and rebuilt,
destroyed and reborn –
the great binary city.
The UnCity at the heart of it all.
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 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.