London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good day to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Monday, August 11th, 2025.
Short one today. But London through and through. London immersion. London saturation.
With a bit of razzmatazz. In short, we’re going to go bouldering. Well, London Walks bouldering. So before we start let’s inspect the crash mat. It’s where we’ll head back to and chill after we’ve done our climb. A spot of perfect repose. Where we might even wind down by reading a book. Now that’s just another way of seeing, of describing the London Calling Book Club Corner. And moderating it today, gifted Blue Badge guide Isobel. Here’s what Isobel’s been reading. Who knows, you might want to curl up with it – and of course a cup of tea – when we’ve had our bouldering fun today. Here’s Isobel:
“I’m reading The Edge of the World by Michael Pye. It’s subtitled How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are. I’ve only just started it, but it grabbed me in the opening pages ( I hope it’s going to continue to grab me to page 328). It’s a mix of social and economic history, a reminder that the people on these islands did not always see each of them as we do now. Forget the idea of Britishness. Those on the east were far more connected, and both culturally and geographically closer, to our neighbours across the North Sea.
Both they and the inhabitants of the east coast, were shaped by the sea, which provided possibilities of travel and trade. The concept of the seaside, a place of entertainment and relaxation, is pretty far away from how it was.”
Thanks, Isobel. Did the trick for me. That one goes onto my acquire and read list.
Ok, let’s shove off. First, a couple of choice London factoids for you. Red, raw, succulent London Trivia Questions fare.
Numero Uno: Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square. There’s a dwarf version of it. Where is it? It’s the lamp post in the southeastern corner of the square. It’s often described as the world’s smallest police station. There’s an old wives’ tale that the big lamp on it is a replica of one of the lamps on Nelson’s flagship The Victory. Makes a nice tale but it ain’t the case. Anyway, the point is the dwarf column – the world’s smallest police station – was cut out of the main column, Nelson’s column, the single stubborn finger of stone stabbing at the London sky.
And here’s another one for you, would you care to hazard a guess as to how many pubs there were on Oxford Street in the 1890s. If you guessed 19 you hit the jackpot. Now here’s the thing – in a lot of West End theatres the stage door staircase has exactly 19 steps from pavement to Green Room. 19 pubs, 19 steps to the Green Room, no question about it but it’s a coincidence. But it’s a pleasing coincidence. Especially if the Palladium – which is just off Oxford Street – is a 19 step job.
And to run the numbers a bit further. Oxford Street is about 2,200 yards long. 73 Nelson’s columns stacked one on top of another, that’s a 2,200 yard high Nelson’s column. Or walk from Westminster Bridge to Blackfriars Bridge. That’s 2,200 yards. That’s like walking the length of Oxford Street. My choice, every time, would be the bridge to bridge walk rather than the Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch saunter. Though who knows, when they pedestrianise Oxford Street that could be a chrysalis to butterfly metamorphosis for London’s mighty retail river.
And as long as we’re at it, bragging rights to Oxford Street. It’s fractionally longer – about 90 yards longer – than the Champs Élysées. Oxford Street is about twice as long as 49th to 60th Street on Fifth Avenue – the luxury flagship zone – the crème de la crème of designer boutiques and upscale department stores. And Yanaka Ginza – Tokyo’s smaller, nostalgic shopping street is just a minnow in comparison with Oxford Street. It’s only 185 yards long.
But it was 1890s Oxford Street and all those pubs that got us here. Nineteen pubs – nineteen watering holes along the High Street of High Streets – that’s a pub every 110 yards.
And as usual – and this is par for the course for this town, it just goes with the territory – I’m sure it has something to do with London’s instinct for expression and the sheer joy the Londoner takes in turning a phrase – anyway, yes, as usual there are any number of great nicknames for Oxford Street. They’re like a regiment’s colours, snapping in the wind.
Here’s another ten to go with River of Retail. London’s Mile of Style. The Glittering Pavement. Britain’s Retail Royalty. Bargain Boulevard. Shopper’s Speedway. The Retail Runway. Bag Street (because no one leaves Oxford Street without at least one bag). Old Tyburn Road (that’s the historic one, the ancient thread running beneath today’s retail roar).
The Emporium Mile. London’s Bazaar in a Straight Line. And so on.
But let’s end with a touch of the high brow. A flourish of literary perfection. Who would have thought it. One of the greatest London poems of all is a poem about Oxford Street. It melds, conjoins, brings together so many Londons, so many essences of London. So much London history. So many Londoners. It’s a quintessence of James Boswell’s astute observation: “How different a place London is to different people. The intellectual man is struck with it, as comprehending the whole of human life in all its variety.
The poem’s by Thomas Hardy. There’s a bit of biographical gloss attached to it. Just two words and a date: As seen 4 July 1872.
The poem’s called Coming Up Oxford Street: Evening
Here it is:
The sun from the west glares back,
And the sun from the watered track,
And the sun from the sheets of glass,
And the sun from each window-brass;
Sun-mirrorings, too, brighten
From show-cases beneath
The laughing eyes and teeth
Of ladies who rouge and whiten.
And the same warm god explores
Panels and chinks of doors;
Problems with chymists’ bottles
Profound as Aristotle’s
He solves, and with good cause,
Having been ere man was.
Also he dazzles the pupils of one who walks west,
A city-clerk, with eyesight not of the best,
Who sees no escape to the very verge of his days
From the rut of Oxford Street into open ways;
And he goes along with head and eyes flagging forlorn,
Empty of interest in things, and wondering why he was born.
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.