London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
—————————————
Good morning from London. It’s July 30th, 2024.
Today’s pin…It’s taken less than a month. And it was entirely predictable. The word on the street is that the streets that are fast becoming the trendiest in London are those of NW5 Kentish Town. And you can guess the reason: Kentish Town is Keir Starmer’s hood. The Evening Standard’s got the first lick in. It asks the rhetorical question, “London’s most smug area? Kentish Town could have it all…including the new Hollywood. The piece is by Dylan Jones. Here’s a taster:
“Those I know who live in Kentish Town are suddenly looking extremely smug. Having forever been in the shadow of Camden Town, a sort of Dartmouth Park-lite, a glorified cut-through on the way to Archway and beyond, it is now the most talked-about area in London.
Keir Starmer’s hood speaks volumes about the way he likes to come across: smart, but not too smart; working-class but with middle-class aspirations; rough, but not too rough. It wouldn’t have looked too good if he had been found living in Notting Hill, Kensington, or, God forbid, Chelsea, and while he grew up in the leafy splendour of Kent and Surrey, NW5 suits him just fine.”
The big question for London Walks is, are we going to go there? Are we going to create a Kentish Town walk. I hope so. I’m putting it to the guides today. Watch this space.
—————————-
Moving on, today’s Random – little bit of history, little bit of London-speak. A new word for you. A new word that’s an old word. Let’s go to Smithfield, the old magnificent old meat market that’s soon going to be the new home of the Museum of London. Now hold your nose for this one. Like every urban tribe or occupational cohort Smithfield had its own argot. Notoriously, the place sold so much bad meat Smithfield argot had a word for it: cag-mag. The Oxford English Dictionary defines of cagmag as unwholesome, decayed, or loathsome meat; hence anything worthless or rubbishy. V.S. Pritchett says “Great Britain invented this language of ours – English, the world’s lingua franca – London printed it and made it presentable.” Well, cagmag I’m not sure how presentable it is. I don’t think I’d use it in polite company – present polite company excepted – but it gets the job done. Sound reinforces sense and cagmag sounds like gristle and slurry and grit. I’ve been known to describe some of the knock-offs in our profession – especially the Ripper Walk Johnny come Latelys – as cagmag. And standing on the pier as the word cagmag sails off, let’s wave a fond farewell to it. Its flags flapping in the breeze are the various instances of its uses down the centuries. The last one – from 1942 – is my favourite. 1942, that in itself tells you the word these days is equivalent of a ghost sign – it’s fallen out of use. Anyway, one P.H. Johnson’s use of the word in his or her book Family Pattern 80 is immortalised in the Oxford English Dictionary. Johnson said, “Maudie is the best beloved woman in London, with the grandest manner. She makes Royalty look like cag-mag.”
Wow! What I wouldn’t give to know more about Maudie.
———————————
And so we come to today’s Ongoing. The Olympics are in Paris so it’s sport saturation season. So much sport news from Paris.
But given that it’s July 30th we need – just for a minute – to get away from Paris and away from now, away from today. We need to rifle back through, peel 696 months off the calendar. Get back to July 30, 1966. And drop by at Wembley Stadium. And there, coming into focus is Robert Frederick Chelsea Moore. Bobby Moore for short. The England team captain. And there he is, on this day in 1966, lifting the World Cup at Wembley. An image engraved on the minds of many people who would not have thought of themselves as the followers of football. And spool back a few seconds, another immortal image, another moment that forced itself into a nation’s collective memory. Bobby Moore – that consummate Londoner – wiping his grimy, sweaty hands on his shorts so he wouldn’t soil the white gloves worn by the queen as she presented the Jules Rimet trophy to him.
Memories. They make us rich.
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.