Local London, Londoners’ London

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 morning to you one and all. Wherever you are. It’s Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024.

To be or not to be in London. That is the question.

And what is it about London? That’s the other question.

A bit of background here. I’m on my knees every night thanking the good Lord that my life didn’t work out.

The game plan was to come over here. Get the Ph.D. – which I did – and then go back to the land of my birth, the United States. Go back and be an English lit professor at some American university. Which I didn’t do, which didn’t happen. The prodigal son didn’t go back. And he thanks the good Lord that it didn’t happen, that he didn’t go back.

There’s an old military axiom that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. And that’s what happened to me, that’s what happened to my battle plan. I knew after about six weeks that I’d found the place I wanted to spend the rest of my life in. That’s the long explanation. The short explanation is I’m a war bride. A little English rose thought I was her ticket to California. Well, the English rose’s battle plan didn’t survive contact with the enemy either. We ended up in London, happy as larks on the wing.

And what is it about London? The knee-jerk answer to that question would be to say what it isn’t about. And nine times out of ten that answer would be, you certainly don’t come here for the weather. That answer is wildly mistaken – an enormous fallacy. The weather – the mild climate, the lack of extremes, the fact that this is one of the driest cities on earth – Jerusalem gets more average annual rainfall than London – is one of the best things about London. Those who have their wits about them do come here for the weather. Though that’s not the first reason. For me, the first reason would be: this place is just so stimulating. You never get bored in London. Ok, I grant you, I’m never bored when I’m around. But being in London amplifies, many times over, that happy state of affairs. Bears repeating, the place is just so stimulating. And why is that? Well, an important reason is that 1) it’s so cosmopolitan and 2) it’s jammed to the gills with no end of interesting people. People who are passionate about what they do. And who excel at it. People whose personal story is very often a thing of wonder.

And the thing I’m in awe of, is there’s nothing exceptional about this. This is par for the course. Let me roll out a couple of examples. Examples immediately to hand – they happened to me this morning. First, my doctor’s appointment. My doctor’s a lovely woman from Afghanistan. She speaks five languages. Her Afghan name means “violet.” She spent a couple of years in Holland. And now she’s in London. Her life trajectory – starting out half way round the world – in that interesting country, that fulcrum of history, Afghanistan – making her way to Holland, and then to London – where today she’s a young doctor – is that trek any less remarkable than, say, Lewis & Clark’s expedition across the Continental Divide over there – in the land of my birth – a couple of hundred years ago? All things considered, I think not.

And then there’s Mark the violinist from Antwerp but nowadays a Londoner. Like me, like the Afghan violet who’s a doctor, a Londoner through and through. Immigrants in this city founded by immigrants, built and peopled by immigrants. You want a figure on these matters, 37 percent of Londoners were born abroad. Where they’re from, their stories, what they bring to this place, is a hugely important factor – arguably the critically important factor – in making London what it is, making it so stimulating, making it the best place in the world to live.

And I might just mention in passing here my London Walks colleagues. This in connection with game plan coming acropper, with my life not working out. With my not being able to resist the siren song of London. With my not being a faculty member at some American university. Well, 80 or so London Walks colleagues – doctors, two barristers, a criminal defence lawyer, a distinguished geologist, Royal Shakespeare Company actors, a musician, a London museum archaeologist, a dancer, a model, journalists, a stockbroker, a former spy, historians, a diplomat, authors, a world-leading criminologist, a photographer, a London mayor, an elephant tamer – you know something, I didn’t need to go haring off to some American-football besotted university on the other side of the Atlantic, I’ve created my own university here in London. The London Walks team of world-class guides – bringing to the party that smorgasbord of expertise and fascinating backgrounds – that team couldn’t be more collegiate. My London Walks colleagues are my fellow faculty members. As a faculty what we somehow have to endure is there’s no marking, no committee meetings, and the students are all interested.

And in a very real sense, my fellow Londoners are also part of the world’s most richly stimulating university. The university whose better-known pseudonym is…London. Yeah, you could say, I’m pleased as punch my life didn’t work out. Or if you prefer, that I fell amongst thieves. Succumbed to the blandishments of the siren known as Lady London, she of the infinite variety, she whom age cannot wither, nor custom stale.

Anyway, that’s enough preamble. Let’s meet Londoner Mark. Londoner Mark from Antwerp.

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.

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