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 Friday, September 19th, 2025.
Our warm up act, as always, the London Calling Book Club Corner. In the Chair today, London Walks’ Knight errant, Richard III. Ah, yes, the one and only Richard III.|The only London Walks guide to have made it onto the front cover of Newsweek magazine. And to throw another piece of kindling on that blaze, Richard III is the only London Walks guide who’s addressed the United Nations. For good measure, he’s the London Walks guide blessed with the driest sense of humor in the Home Counties. It’s a combination that delights and gladdens the hearts of his Soho and Notting Hill Gate and Portobello Market walkers. The which is attested to by the acclaim his walk’s receive. To go into the counting house of Richard III’s rave reviews is to come over all Shakespearean. “Hear ye, hear ye! Be it known unto all and sundry that Richard III’s rambles are resoundingly, riotously, rapturously, rhapsodically reviewed – and rightly reign unrivalled!”
But hey the guy’s an actor and a playwright, so what else would you expect?
Anyway, that’s plenty of drum roll… Here’s Richard III.
“I’m reading The Mandlebaum Gate by Muriel Spark. It is set in Israel and Jordan so… nowhere near London. I’m half-way through. It’s beautifully written and has lots of guides in it as our heroine hires private guides for historical walks round the holy land. It’s great fun for me because she complains about the guides one of whom is trying to sell her life insurance. I am seeing my own profession from the other side and it’s of course illuminating to read about Palestine in the 1960s. I think she’ll need the life insurance.”
Ok, moving on. Moving on indeed. Let’s do some knight errantry of our own. Knight errantry in London. And in Malaysia. And in ancient Rome.
I’m thinking of a favorite Latin phrase.
O tempora, o mores!
That phrase is over 2,000 years old. It came out of the mouth of Cicero, Rome’s top lawyer, statesman and drama-queen orator. He uttered those immortal words in what’s known as his First Oration Against Catiline. He was livid that Catiline – an aristocrat plotting to overthrow the Republic – was sitting right there in the Senate after being caught out.
You think about it, that 2,000 year-old episode couldn’t be more timely, could it.
Anyway, hitting the crux of his speech, Cicero thundered,
“O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit, consul videt; hic tamen vivit.”
Whoa! Yes, Translation-time. Cicero was swinging for the fences. And he connected. Here’s what he said. “Oh, the times! Oh, the morals! The Senate understands this, the consul sees it – and yet this man lives.”
It’s half lament, half rhetorical explosion. Cicero is saying: What has become of us? What kind of times do we live in, when this villain sits here unpunished?
That’s the historically accurate, hard-edged version of O tempera, o mores! I sometimes soften it. It becomes an expression of wonder that in times past or different places things were, are done differently.
So, of all things, I’m thinking about Malaysian security guards. Mary and I have both noted, we’ve both remarked, “even the security guards here are gentle.”
And what we’ve particularly noticed is that when they raise their hand by way of greeting you they first touch their hand to their heart. And then they move their hand outward and upward, palm forward, in the traditional, probably universal greeting gesture. Our read – our interpretation – I hope we’re right about this – is that hand on heart opening part of the greeting gesture means, ‘this is sincere, this welcome comes from my heart.
O tempora, o mores. The softer version thereof.
But what also floods in when you’re greeted that way is the famous expression, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
The pied beauty of human differences, they flame out like shining from shook foil.
But to continue on our merry knight errantry way, that Malaysian greeting got me thinking about saluting. A salute is surely akin to a hand raised in greeting.
Like everything else we say and do, the salute is like a meteor. Trailing behind it is a long and brilliant historical streak. A long and brilliant historical streak stretching back to medieval knights and the visors on their helmets. Meeting on the road, knights would raise their right hand to lift their visor – showing their face, signalling peaceful intent. Over time that became a formalised gesture.
In the same vein, but an even older explanation: raising the right hand (your weapon hand) shows you’re not holding a sword or dagger. It’s a gesture of trust.
Fast forward to 300 hundred years ago or thereabouts, soldiers wore hats, not helmets. It became customary to touch or remove your hat when passing a superior. Eventually the hat stayed on but the gesture remained – a quick touch to the brim.
And here’s a transatlantic cultural difference: In the British Army, the palm faces outward – because soldiers traditionally removed their hats for officers with an open-handed flourish.
In the U.S. military, the palm faces inward – possibly to avoid showing a dirty palm back in musket-cleaning days.
But what about armour, suits of armour? You didn’t know it, but that’s whither this has been tending from the get-go, from that Malaysian security guard gently touching his heart at the start of his greeting gesture.
Bit of history first. And then we’ll end with a Get to Know Your London coda. Where a London Walks guide would direct you if you’re on a London armour expedition.
Here’s the armour story. Armour – real armour, the knight-in-shining sort – was the F-35 fighter jet of its day. A game-changer. First came chainmail: little rings linked together like medieval crochet. Brilliant stuff – light, flexible, and could shrug off a sword cut. Trouble is, a bodkin arrow or a crossbow bolt would go through it like butter.
Cue the arms race. Enter plate armour – gleaming steel carapaces, first appearing in the 14th century. By the 15th and 16th centuries, it’s reached its high-fashion moment. Suits tailored like Savile Row, customised for kings. Henry VIII’s parade armours were more for show than protection — they were royal catwalk moments, steel-clad billboards shouting: ‘Look at me. I’m king. I’m rich. I’m unstoppable.
But here’s the rub. Firearms got better. Muskets, arquebuses – eventually rifles – punched straight through all that carefully hammered plate. You can thicken the steel – but then you can’t get back on your horse. By the late 17th century, full suits of armour were museum pieces waiting to happen. Cavalry kept breastplates into the Napoleonic Wars, but the age of the knight was over. Armour’s demise, in a nutshell, was gunpowder.
And then brings us to your get to know London payoff. You want to go a-hunting armour in London here’s your London Walks recommendation.
Start at the Tower of London, naturally. Make straight for the White Tower – the Norman keep – and climb the worn stone steps. Welcome to the beating heart of the Royal Armouries collection.
You’ll see Henry VIII’s chunky tournament armour (codpiece and all), Charles I’s dashing cuirass, and the gilded, almost fantastical parade armour of the young Princes. There’s armour for men, for boys, for horses – the whole knightly ecosystem. And being in the Tower, surrounded by thick Norman walls, ravens on the battlements, Traitors’ Gate just down the way – it hits different. This is where that armour was meant to be.
And for an encore, make your way to Hertford House, home of the Wallace Collection. Quick aside here, and unashamed plug, yes, we do a Wallace Collection Tour. Anyway, yes, Hertford House, the Wallace Collection. Suddenly you’re in a Regency townhouse. The Armoury galleries are pure magic – quieter, closer, jewel-like.
You can get nose-to-visor with German Gothic armour, Italian parade pieces, even Ottoman helmets. It feels like stepping into a jeweller’s cabinet – every suit a one-off work of art. Take your time here; this is where you notice the fluting, the engraving, the tiny details you’d miss in a big castle display.
And when you’ve had your fill of steel, you can have tea and cake under the glass roof of the courtyard restaurant. Bliss.
And now, well, it’s curtain call time isn’t it.
So there you go. You started on the coast of the South China Sea, in Malaysia, got whisked back in time, way back in time, and halfway round the world. To London. Where you’ve now you’ve walked through 500 years of battlefield tech and statecraft. You’ve seen armour where it was worn, and armour where it can be savoured. What’s not to like. And, hey, you’ve reviewed the armour as if it were on a parade ground. Yes, done it all on foot, which – let’s face it – is the most medieval way to travel.
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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 familiarand the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note… come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.