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 Monday, November 11th, 2024.
November 11th. An inflection point. One of history’s inflection points.
The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.
Germany signs an armistice with the Allies and the Great War – World War I – is officially over.
I wanted to know what the world looked like to Londoners when they got up that morning.
They knew the end was imminent. They didn’t know ‘today’s the day.’
So I did what I always do in cases like this. I looked at the newspapers for that day. The morning newspapers for November 11th. The armistice hadn’t been signed yet. So the readers of, say, the Daily News on the morning of November 11th did not know what was just ahead of them. There’s something ever so poignant about historical moments like this: looking back to 1918, we know what happened on November 11th. But the people who got up that morning, sat down at the breakfast table and read their morning paper, they didn’t know that ‘an inflection point’ was just ahead of them, that in a matter of a few hours they and millions of their compatriots would be frenziedly celebrating the length and breadth of the British Isles.
And look, what you’re about to get is a sketch rather than a full portrait. To get a full portrait I would have had to look at the Monday, November 11th, 1918 edition of every London paper – and counting locals there were dozens of them. In the event, I’ve just looked at two. The Times and The Daily News. I wanted to get an impression, a snapshot of what the London newscape was like on Armistice Day. And ideally, learn something that I didn’t know before.
Famously, newspapers are the first draft of history.
And there’s no question but the armistice was in the offing.
Here’s what the run-up to November 11th looked like.
In military terms the year had begun auspiciously for the Axis. On March 3rd the Brest-Litovsk treaty had been signed and just like that Germany was no longer fighting a two-front war. The Russian surrender freed up German divisions that could now be sent to the Western front. On March 21st Germany launched a massive spring offensive against the British on the Somme. They knew they had to bring the British to their knees before the huge human and industrial resources of America could be fully deployed. In the event there were three Spring offensives and the breakthrough – the crushing defeat – Berlin desperately needed wasn’t forthcoming. On July 18th the Allies launched their counterattack, seizing the initiative, rolling back the Axis forces. In a matter of weeks Germany was facing defeat. On October 4th Berlin asked the Allies for an armistice. Ten days later the Allies had taken control of almost all of German-occupied France. And part of Belgium. On October 21st Germany ceased its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. Nine days later German navy sailors mutiny’d at the Port Kiel. They’d been ordered to launch a final suicide attack on the British Royal Navy. That was an order too far. The German sailors said we’re not going to do that. They laid down their tools, so to speak. And then that same day – October 30th – Turkey asked for an armistice. Four days later, November 3rd, Austro-Hungary signed off. Concluded an armistice with the Allies. The handwriting was on the wall. The final chapter began on November 7th. Germany began negotiations for an armistice with the Allies. The setting, famously, was Supreme French Commander Ferdinand Foch’s railway carriage headquarters at Compiègne. Two days later – November 9th – the German Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated.
Ok, let’s turn now to the Daily News for November 11th. And then the Times.
And remember that nobody had a crystal ball. So in its coverage for November 11th – what it set before its readers – the Daily News was reporting what had happened the previous day. Or even two days before.
The headlines tell the tale.
The big news was the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm.
The front page headline read: Kaiser’s Flight from the Revolution.
And then beneath that a story headlined: Kaiser’s Abdication.
And next to it a story headlined: Armistice Delays.
The other main front page story was headlined: Berlin Scenes Described. Eye witness Story of Revolution.
And down at the bottom, the King of Bavaria had also cut and run. The subtitle read Midnight Flight with Crown Prince Rupprecht. It wasn’t a flight flight. They fled from Munich in two motor cars for a destination which does not seem to be precisely known.
Turning to page 2, more on the Kaiser. A triple-headlined story:
Stories of the Kaiser
King Edward’s Warning in his Childhood
Historic indiscretions.
The Daily News apprised its readers that “from age six the future Kaiser was in the hands of a German sergeant learning his military drill.”
And Daily News readers were reminded of the famous telegram to President Kruger during the Boer War, “congratulating him on defeating the ‘invaders’ of his country.” That telegram was prompted by the Jameson Raid.
The Daily News piled it on. It recounted the tale of Wilhelm, when he was the merest child, telling his grandmother, Queen Victoria, “he wanted a broom with which to sweep the British Navy from the seas.”
And then there was cousin Edward VII’s warning ‘that young man will cause trouble, because he is no gentleman.’
No question but His Majesty got that one right.
And I very much like the paragraph under the other main story on page 2, another triple-headlined story:
The Gernan Empire’s Rise and Fall
Second headline: Nourished and killed by militarism.
Third headline: Parasite everywhere
Anyway, the graf that caught my eye reads: under a lower down subtitle, Contempt for England.
“There existed in Germany a curious mixture of contempt for, and jealousy of, England – natural in a nation the whole institution of which centred round the army and compulsory service towards a nation whose institutions were based not on military but on Parliamentary and legal institutions. It came about that in the minds of many Germans the whole national regeneration was regarded as a liberation from British influences.”
But point counterpoint because tucked away over on the right-hand side of page 2 is a one-sentence graf under the heading Roll of Honour. It reads: Latest casualty lists give the following figures: 161 officers – 45 dead, 116 wounded or missing; and 4,267 men – 1401 dead, 2866 wounded or missing.
The Times has a similar list on its front page for that day.
Nobody knows how many British soldiers were killed in the Great War. The best estimate is 880,000.
The first to die was Private John Parr. He was a Londoner, the son of a London milkman. He was killed 17 days after Britain declared war,
The last to die was Private George Ellison. He was from Leeds. He was 40 years old. He was a miner. He was shot dead while on patrol on the outskirts of Mons. Shot dead at 9.30 on November 11th, 1918. That’s 90 minutes before the armistice was signed. Any number of Londoners will have been reading the Times or the Daily News at their breakfast at the moment 40-year-old Private George Ellison – he was a husband and a father – had his life snuffed out.
Imagine, if you can bear to, the emotional storm, the cement mixer of emotions that those parents and wives and children will have experienced those last days of the Great War, what the Germans call The Mother of All Catastrophes.
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.