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, London Walkers, wherever you are.
It’s Monday, June 2nd, 2025.
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Something in the way of a potpourri for you today. Good word, potpourri. Fascinating word, potpourri. A borrowing from the French, its original literal meaning was rotten pot. So it was a dish of mixed meats. Sort of a stew. Hazarding a guess, some of the bits of meat had probably gone off, so their yuck flavours will have been masked by mixing them with other meats in a kind of stew.
That meaning – a stew of mixed meats – is now obsolete. The Oxford English Dictionary says the first or primary meaning of potpourri today is a mixture of dried petals of different flowers mixed with spices, kept in a jar or bowl to perfume a room. So that’s some fancy linguistic footwork isn’t it, from rotten pot to perfuming a room.
The sense in which I’m using the word here is of course “a diverse collection or assortment of people or things; a miscellany, a mixture.”
So let’s say this podcast is a room. A room perfumed with a potpourri. And why not, let’s takes survey, let’s meet a few of the petals from different flowers that are the ingredients of this potpourri.
Or if you prefer, let’s have a sniff. Like a wine connoisseur. There’s a Napa Valley sommelier who insists aroma is the most important attribute of wine. She says smelling a wine sends a signal to your brain about what you’re going to taste.
So, nostrils primed, here’s one petal from today’s potpourri. I’m reading Laura Spinney’s wonderful book Proto. Her rich and rewarding study of what’s called the Proto-Indo-European language. The ancient tongue that went global, is the progenitor of the world’s largest language family. Its offspring and descendants are spoken by nearly half of humanity, from Scotland to China.
Laura Spinney says Proto-Indo-European bards sang of cattle, death, theft and glory, and of heroes, gods and kings. He sang from memory, drawing on stock phrases whose meaning his audience understood. For example, a horse was always swift, a hero was one who urinated standing up. Well, that’s a wham bang thank you ma’am of sorts. Stopped me in my tracks. Did it for me. From here on out every time I tip a kidney there’s going to be a double order of satisfaction. In addition to the relief I’m going to be thinking, “I’m a hero.”
And also from Laura Spinney a connection with the podcast I did a few days ago on Ian Fleming and his creation James Bond. I didn’t make any bones about Fleming and 007 being misogynists.
But these things are relative.
Early on in her book – in the chapter titled Genesis – we learn from Laura Spinney that where the Caucasus meets the steppe there are 6,000-year-old tombs on a monumental scale. One kurgan – that’s a word that Laura Spinney’s added to my vocabulary – Kurgan – it’s a Russian word of Tartar origin – means pre-historic sepulchral tumulus or mound.
Anyway, Laura Spinney sets out for our wonderment a 6,000-year-old kurgan nearly as high as a four-storey house and the length of a football pitch in diameter. You want some perspective, that’s nearly a thousand years older than Stonehenge.
And it is, needless to say, a show-stopper. A show-stopper that turned into a horror show when the archaeologists dug down. In Laura Spinney’s words, “beneath it lay a man, two women who had been sacrificed to accompany him to the afterlife, and a magnificent trove of treasure.”
Forget the treasure. Forget the man. The real story there is those two women who were “sacrificed to accompany him to the afterlife.” I don’t know about you but I can’t stop thinking about that. Who were the two women? The man was presumably a king. As he lay dying did the two women know that they would be sacrificed. Had they always known that this was coming, that they were foredoomed?
Or as the man lay dying was the wheel of fate still turning. Like a roulette wheel with two balls in it. However many women there were in that early experiment in urbanism, did they know that two of them would be picked out to be sacrificed when the man died. And who decided? What were the criteria? How were the women sacrificed? And while we’re at it, let’s get the word ‘decide’ into focus. Into sharp focus. It literally meant ‘to cut off’, from the part of the word, ’de’, meaning ‘off’ and ‘cide’ from ‘caedere’ meaning ‘to cut.’ Its Proto-european forbear meant ‘to strike’. And of course that Proto-european word is the tap root of words like homicide, suicide, matricide, genocide, insecticide, infanticide. And for that matter, words like scissors, incision, chisel, circumcise, and so on.
So, to draw a conclusion, there’s a scale here. Ian Fleming’s and James Bond’s misogyny was vile, repulsive – but as appalling as it was, it wasn’t all the way out to the most hideous end of that scale.
Sacrificing women to accompany a dead man to the afterlife, that’s first-degree misogyny. In comparison, Ian Fleming and James Bond were wallowing in second-degree misogyny.
And you know something, ‘first-degree misogyny’ is soft-pedalling the matter, it’s whitewashing that terrible moment in pre-history. I’m afraid we have to assume it wasn’t an isolated incident for that ancient, pre-historic culture. And of course human sacrifice was a like a species bad gene – human beings have gone in for human sacrifice over many centuries and in many places. Think hitobashira in ancient Japan, think the Incas and the Aztecs, think of the Vikings, think of certain African cultures… and that’s just a sampling.
But what got this going was Laura Spinney’s opening up to view, so to speak, that 6,000-year-old kurgan where the Caucasus meets the steppe.
Imagining that scene, trying to comprehend it, what instantly came to my mind was Kurtz’s dying words in Conrad’s great novel The Heart of Darkness. Dying, Kurtz has taken the measure of what he’s become – his descent into savagery and his realisation of the true nature of human evil – the heart of darkness indeed. Engorged on it, Kurtz croaks out four words, “The Horror, The Horror.”
It’s English Literature’s Mene mene tekel upharsin moment, the writing on the wall words at Belshazzar’s feast in the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament.
And on that note, let’s slam on the brakes here. Head to pastures greener. And much jollier. Three months ago I put out a feeler in one of these podcasts. I said something like, we know from the analytics that London Call has got something in the way of following. It’s got an audience of sorts. An audience right around the world. And I said, if you’re of a mind to write and tell us something about yourself please do. It was putting a message in a bottle and flinging the bottle out into the ocean. In the event, only one listener wrote in. David, who works for NASA in Albama. Modest as the uptake was, we loved hearing from David. Hearing some of his story – a little bit about his family, his work, his four visits to the UK, his ongoing fascination with London, etc.
Well it was just the one response until about a week ago.
But that’s now doubled. We were delighted a few days ago when Laurie from Florida took up the torch and got in touch. We’re coming up to 400,000 listens on this podcast and to have another name and a personal story reach out, reach our way…that generates some feel-good here. It’s like a twinkle from one of the stars in the firmament. What’s not to like about that.
Which is by way of saying, here’s the best petal in today’s potpourri. Here’s Laurie. She wrote in to say, “While listening to the London Walks podcast today (I’ve been cramming them in, determined to finish by the time we visit in June), my ears perked up during the 25 Feb 2025 broadcast. David asked for personal stories related to your walks.
Here is mine:
My husband and I moved from Kansas City (US) to London in April of 2012 for a job assignment. Within a day, London Walks had been recommended and I showed up 2 days later for the Westminster Abbey tour (on St. George’s Day) and I was hooked. I did quite a number of London Walks during my 18 months there and have been sharing those experiences ever since. I also joined the American Women’s Club of London and did many London Walks with them too. From Brunel’s tunnel to a Royal walk on the day of the Queen’s speech, to Avebury, Leed’s Castle with Simon, 007 and Beatles walks, Kensington with David, and many more; each had multiple highlights. I often took my visitors on them, or I would take a London walk during the week, and then take my husband on the weekend and show him what I’d seen. We both have great memories of London Walks and they really were quite an enhancement to our living in London.
Here we are 12 years later and we are going to be visiting London for the first time since we left in 2013. We extended our original stay so that we could join your Saturday Cotswolds Day trip (21 June). After catching up with many of your podcasts I booked David’s Kensington tour since that was near where we lived and thought it might be a great re-introduction. Then I heard your podcast with Karen (Travel & Leisure top tour guide) about the Covent Garden walk and booked that one for 19 June as well. Ever since you introduced Andy Hotel’s behind the scenes of the Luxury Hotels walks, I have been checking to see if you might extend into the next week in June for us, but nothing after 14 June as far as I can see. Can you tell we really love y’all and can’t wait to see you?? And see your amazing city? I even have the Matthew Cook ‘London Landmarks’ print in my studio where I see it every day, and fondly remember my time there. We live in Florida now, and can’t think of a better way to spend our brief time in London, than to spend it on London Walks.
See you soon!
Fondly,
Laurie B.”
Ah thanks for that, Laurie.
And have you noticed yet, Andy Hotels has laid on The Secrets of London’s Luxury Hotels when you’re here. June 22nd. Laid it on specially for you. Ask and thou shalt receive.
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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.