London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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Top of the morning to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are. It’s Tuesday, November 5th, 2024.
Big day on the other side of the Atlantic. Big day for the world.
And since today’s the day – the day Americans go to the polls – well, it seems only appropriate to hear from an American. No, not this American. Not me. A fellow American of mine.The distinguished Harvard University professor Tom Underwood. Tom’s a stalwart London Walker. But more important than that, Tom’s become a chum, a pal. We’ve got a lot in common. We both suffer from an incurable case of bibliomania. We’ve got the shared English Lit academic background. We’re both Londonophiles. It was always on the cards if our paths crossed. When Tom’s in London – and pitches up a lot – we hang out. Break bread at least a couple of times every time he’s here. I drag him off on various and sundry London Walks forays I’m making. Well, you get the idea. So, in the event, yesterday, I had London Walks business that took me to the Wallace Collection. I dropped Tom a line, “hey, I’m going to the Wallace Collection this afternoon. You feel like coming along? We can have a bite to eat at the best sandwich bar in central London, have a natter and then schlep along to the Wallace. What do you say? The answer was what I hoped it would be. “Yeah, I’d love that. When and where shall we meet?” And a few hours later there we were standing in the queue – the just the right size queue, a twenty-minute queue, always a good sign – standing in the queue to get into said sandwich bar and I thought, ‘why not?’ Pulled out the microphone and got Tom talking. Interviewing a distinguished Harvard University Professor who’s a great guy and a good friend while shuffling along a queue in Marylebone Lane to get into a wunderbar of a soup and sandwich London eatery, what’s not to like. Here’s Tom.
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.