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 day to you, London Walkers, wherever you are.
It’s Friday, June 6th, 2025.
June 6th. Ring a bell? Yes, it’s D-Day. Well, the anniversary of D-Day. The 81st anniversary of D-Day. It’s right on the cusp, isn’t it. Not too many years from now it’ll shuffle off the mortal coil, it’s days as a living memory will be no more. It’ll just be history.
And in case you’re wondering what the D in D-Day stands for – it stands for Day. So when you say D-Day really what you’re saying is Day Day. I’m afraid it lends itself to juvenile male humour. Abbreviate the word Day in D-Day to D you’ve got DD or Double D. And by the same token D-Day in French would be J [Jzhee] Jour. Or Jour Jour. Or Abbreviate Jour to J [jzhee] you’ve got Gee Gee. As in, I suppose, Gabor. Gee Gee Gabor.
Way too puerile for what a serious, life and death for thousands, world-changing moment D-Day was.
Anyway, thinking about it, I got to wondering what D-Day was like for Londoners. They won’t have known the invasion had been launched. They will have known it was imminent. But not have known that when they woke up tens of thousands of Allied and German troops were locked in a life-and-death struggle on those Normandy beaches. The nearest of which was 210 miles as the crow flies from London. You want to get that into perspective, Leeds is 210 miles from London. Paris is 220 miles. The five D-Day beaches – Sword, Juno, Gold, Utah and Omaha – were, variously 210 to 270 miles from London. Utah and Omaha were the beaches where the Americans came ashore. Juno was the Canadian beach. Sword and Gold the British beaches. The airborne landings – the parachute drops and glider landings began just 15 minutes after midnight. H-Hour – that formulation sound familiar? It should do – H-Hour – Hour Hour – the beach landings began at 6.30 am.
It’s an extraordinary thought, Londoners have just got up, got dressed, and come down to breakfast – they’re marmalading their toast and sipping their first cup of tea – it’s a scene that’s eminently domestic, calm, quotidian, civilised – and just over 200 miles away is hell on earth, the inferno – the furor and hurly-burly and savagery, mayhem, death, bloodshed, desperation, wreckage, the pall of the stench of battle, the ear-splitting din and cacophany of bomb blasts and artillery and mortars and machine-guns and aircraft and the screams of the wounded. Whenever I try to visualise those two mornings – the one in London and the one on those Normandy beaches – taking place at the same time – just a couple of hundred miles away from each other – but also an unimaginable distance, a world away from each other – whenever I try to visualise those two mornings I can’t help but think, I’ve dropped through a trap door, I’m in a 1944 version of Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Yes, that Hieronymus Bosch, the medieval painter famous for his surreal and nightmare depictions, side by side, of heaven and hell. Except that it’s worse than Hieronymus Bosch. His depicts the afterlife. The picture I’m painting in my head isn’t the afterlife, it’s this life. Well, this life on that June day in 1944. Death, berserk, running amok on those beaches in Normandy. And life putting marmalade on the toast in London.
Anyway, I suppose that’s a scene-setter. Those Londoners on June 6th, 1944…they didn’t know. They were in something like a state of innocence. A state of innocence the fuse of which was burning down – it just had hours to go. The next day, June 7th, the scales would drop from their eyes.
So I wondered, I wanted to know, what was it like to be a Londoner on June 6th, 1944? What was going on? As they understood it. What was their outlook? What was on their minds? What were the main stories of the day? I suppose you could say, what was the calm like? Before the storm.
And needless to say, the best way to get an idea about all of that is to go to the newspapers for the day .
I looked at the Telegraph and the Times for June 6, 1944.
The Times still had that incredibly old fashioned look. Ad on the front page, not news, not headlines.
The Telegraph, though, was more like a modern newspaper.
But, here’s the thing, it was only three sheets. So six pages in total, both sides of three sheets. That was just one expression of the war. There were shortages of everything. Including paper for newsprint. The Telegraph was printed in London and Manchester. It cost a penny and a half. In today’s money, depending on how y you’re calculating, that would be anywhere from £3.50 to £4.25.
And the news – the big news, the front page news – so this is what Londoners would have been talking about at elevenses or at lunch – the news was all about Rome and Italy. The liberation of Rome.
Some of the front page headlines were: Germans Quit Tiber Bank.
And Dawn to Dusk Rejoicing in Liberated Rome. And Pope Gives Thanks. And Axis Envoys Flee to Vatican. And Parliament Today: Mr Churchill to Speak on Rome.
As it turns out, the American President, FDR, had already spoken out. FDR, “One up, two to go.” He was talking about the capital cities of the three Axis powers, Italy, Germany and Japan. In short, Rome is in the bag, next stop Berlin and Tokyo. But it’s a curious, dated expression isn’t it. We’d almost certainly one down, two to go.
And on the front page, this almost prescient, slightly eerie tidbit of a story. The headline was: Less Choppy in the Straits. The story read, The weather in the Straits of Dover improved slightly last night. Towards dusk the wind dropped a little and the sea became less choppy. The cloud cover became higher and the barometer showed no further loss. The temperature at 10 pm was 55 degrees.
It’s a curious matter, that story. You have to wonder if it was a plant by the intelligence services. Because the Dover Straits – which is the shortest distance across the English Channel to France – wasn’t where it was happening. But they wanted the Germans to think that was where the invasion would be mounted. Were they running stories, front page stories, that week about the Dover Straits as a feint. An attempt to keep the wool pulled over the Wehrmacht’s eyes. And related to that, there was a front-page story headlined Big Boulogne-Calais Air Offensive. Boulogne-Calais, that part of the French coast is a long way from those Normandy beaches. And there was a front-page story that Our Submarines had sunk 31 enemy ships in the Mediterranean and Aegean.
And this headline on the front page. 150,000 See War Exhibition. Sub-title: Last Five Days. The story – it was more or less filler – read: There are five more days in which the Daily Telegraph Prisoners of War Exhibition, Clarence House, St James’s Palace, The Mall, may be visited. Since its opening on May 1 it has been seen already by over 150,000 people. Including Saturday, the last day, it is open from 11 am to 7 pm. In aid of the Duke of Gloucester’s Red Cross Fund, admission for adults is 1 shilling and for children six pence.
As for the inside pages, they were this, that, and the other. For example, an Inquest on a Gassed Miner. And an announcement that shop assistants would be seeking a post-war working week of 40 hours, Saturday half-day closing and no return to pre-war shopping. The story quoted the union’s journal: “Six o’clock closing is widespread now and there seems no reason why later closing should ever be introduced again.” Little did they know, eh.
And there was an announcement of a wage claim by Women Engineers. No specifics in the story – apart from the union claim that there were about 150,000 women in its ranks. But, yes, otherwise no specifics but I think you’d be on safe ground if you surmised that women doing the same work as men were not receiving the same wage.
And there was a human interest about a British mum who’d given birth a few weeks ago to quadruplets. And that housing had been found for the young family that consequent upon the birth of the quads was now eight-strong.
And there was a war/slash human interest story out of Bethnal Green in East London. It was titled, Where Blitz has made a Garden. A children’s garden, the work of which – the clearing of bricks and debris – was done by children.
Oh and as you’d expect, the London Theatre scene on D-Day was alive and well. The offerings of some 20 London theatres were listed in the papers. Including plays by Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward.
The newspapers also carried the day’s broadcasting schedule. It was BBC Radio. Just one channel. And just seventeen hours a day. From seven in the morning to midnight. And, yes, sure enough, the Beeb was running Thought for the Day on D-Day. Eighty-one years later it’s still going strong. But think of that, just one channel. Seventeen hours a day. What would those 1944 Londoners make of today’s glut of broadcasting. Radio, television, the internet. Well, I imagine in 1944 they read rather more than we do today. And indeed maybe talked to one another – and to the neighbours – a whole lot more than we do today. And that may not have been a bad state of affairs.
But let’s end this little gallivant back to D-Day in London with the story titled “Living Oak” of Britain. Subtitle: American Tribute.
The story read, Today in Britain, overflowing storehouse and citadel of Allied power, one senses the peculiar calm that precedes a storm – a storm that will blow somewhere else, said John W Vandercook, London representative of the National Broadcasting Company, in a broadcast to America yesterday.
“This island, having resolved on the need for a major operation, has put itself in the charge of able surgeons” he went on. “it is quite sure it will pull through. The important preliminaries have been attended to with despatch and smooth efficiency.”
The capture of Rome and the victories in Italy proved that not even the fortress hills of Italy could save the Germans when the Allied armies began to march. “There is an impression in some quarters that England, twice bled by fearful wars in a single generation, will be no longer a great Power,” he continued.
“Do not believe it for a moment. One need only walk in London to be sure of it. The people are well and strong. Clear-eyed, they look forward, and not backward.
‘There is scarcely a street in London that does not bear some scar of bombs or burning. But those wounds are nicks in a living oak.
“The essential nature of the city is unchanged. The old, proud places are still here. One feels they will be here for ever. And so, too, I suspect, despite the prophets of despair, will England.”
Stirring stuff isn’t it?
Anyway, that’s the way it is, in London, on D-Day.
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.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.