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, January 8th, 2026.
And here it is, here’s your daily London fix.
“Not worth the candle.”
It’s January 8, 1938.
And a man called Willie Hitler is chatting to reporters on Fleet Street.
Just pause on that for a moment.
January 8. The year has barely found its footing. Europe is uneasy, but still telling itself soothing stories.
And there, tucked into the columns of the London press, is this almost throwaway item.
A German tourist called Willie Hitler has left the country after telling Fleet Street reporters that his uncle Adolf is actually a peaceful man, a man who thinks war is not worth the candle.
It’s tiny. It’s calm.
And with hindsight, it’s terrifying.
But here’s the first enrichment. January 8 is doing something clever here.
Because 20 years earlier, to the day, January 8, 1918, another man had stood up and offered the world a vision of peace.
The American President Woodrow Wilson. The Fourteen Points.
Open diplomacy. No more secret treaties. National self-determination. A rational, rules-based international order.
A blueprint for a peaceful post-war world.
Idealistic. Hopeful. Earnest.
And, as we later discover,
tragically fragile.
So January 8 gives us two visions of peace, exactly twenty years apart.
One proclaimed grandly from a podium.
The other muttered reassuringly to Fleet Street reporters.
Both overtaken by events.
Back to 1938.
Who is this Willie Hitler?
His full name was
William Patrick Hitler.
Born in Liverpool in 1911.
British by birth.
Irish by his mother.
And the nephew of Adolf Hitler by way of his father,
the Führer’s half-brother.
In January 1938, Willie is 26 years old.
Restless. Ambitious.
And already discovering that being related to the most dangerous man in Europe is a mixed blessing at best.
He has spent time in Germany. Hovering awkwardly on the fringes of Nazi power.
Trying to secure a decent job,
a bit of status, some protection.
Adolf Hitler, increasingly irritated by this English-speaking nephew with expectations,
eventually shuts him out.
So Willie leaves.
And on his way out of Europe, he pauses in London.
Not for long.
Just long enough to talk.
Fleet Street in 1938 still believes in its own importance.
Ink, cigarettes, urgency.
The sense that if you print the right words, the world might steady itself.
And Willie gives them exactly what they want to hear.
“My uncle is peaceful. He says, ‘War is not worth the candle.'”
That phrase alone is extraordinary. “Not worth the candle.” Domestic. Old-fashioned.
As if war were a slightly dull evening engagement.
As if Europe were deciding whether to stay up or turn in early.
And Britain wants to believe it. Appeasement is not yet a dirty word. It’s policy.
Hope dressed up as pragmatism.
So Willie Hitler says his piece.
And then, quietly, he leaves the country.
That line matters.
Britain in January 1938 is still a place where a Hitler can pass through, reassure the press, and move on without fuss.
That window is closing fast.
Now here’s where the long lens sharpens the irony.
In less than a year, Europe will be sliding into war.
Willie Hitler will flee to the United States.
And then history delivers one of its wicked little twists.
He joins the US Navy.
Adolf Hitler’s nephew,
born in Liverpool,
becomes an American serviceman.
A hospital corpsman.
He’s wounded in action.
He receives a Purple Heart.
And while he’s doing that,
two other men of German ancestry are shaping the war against Nazi Germany itself.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, son of German immigrants, becomes Supreme Allied Commander. He plans and leads the invasion of German-occupied Europe.
The push that will break the Third Reich from the west.
And the man in charge of the American strategic bombing campaign, the one that will devastate German industry and cities from the air, is General Carl Spaatz.
Another German American.
The regime obsessed with bloodlines and racial purity is defeated, in large part, by the descendants of German immigrants.
History does enjoy its ironies.
After the war, Willie Hitler disappears.
He changes his name to
William Stuart-Houston.
Settles on Long Island.
Runs a medical laboratory.
Marries.
Has four sons.
Lives quietly.
No memoirs. No interviews.
No longing looks back.
He dies in 1987, aged 76.
Which brings us back,
one last time, to January 8.
January 8, 1918.
A grand promise of peace.
January 8, 1938.
A casual reassurance that everything will be fine.
Both sincere in their way. Both undone by reality.
History doesn’t always announce itself with a roar.
Sometimes it clears its throat, smiles politely, and says don’t worry.
“War is not worth the candle.”
And Fleet Street prints it.
That’s January 8.
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 a former Member of Parliament, three terms at Westminster, bringing first-hand experience of power, policy and political theatre to the very streets where it all played out.
It includes two barristers, three doctors, two geologists, a distinguished museum curator and a former Time out Editor.
It includes authors, historians, national journalists, a former London Museum archaeologist, and university professors (one of them an eminent Cambridge University paleontologist).
It includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre actors, and two professional photographers. And last but not least, the creme de la creme of top flight professionally qualified Blue Badge Guides, including 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 here’s the clincher. We’re playing at home.
London Walks is London-based. Period.
We’re not an impersonal, faceless platform run from halfway round the world. There’s no chatbot. No call-centre script. When you contact us, you reach a real person. A Londoner. Someone who actually knows the streets you’re about to walk.
That’s not a detail. That’s the difference.
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.