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 Tuesday, December 30th, 2025.
And here you go. Here’s your daily London fix.
Staying at home with this one. Which, by the way, underlines one of the things I like most about this podcast, about London Calling.
I can do what I want to do. Go where I want to go. Nobody telling me go there, do this. Whatever strikes my fancy, whatever I want to do, I can do. I’ve got carte blanche. It’s like browsing in a great bookshop. Pick any book you want off the shelf and get acquainted with it. See what it’s got to say for itself. I can do that here with London. Its stories, its places, its people, its history, its goings on.
So, woke up this morning and thought, ‘you know what, I’m going to do a piece on London Walks at home. Or, more precisely, a piece on my home patch, my London.
So here you go. Welcome to West Hampstead. Welcome to London Walks’ home base.
First up:
West Hampstead is one of those London places that doesn’t shout. It doesn’t clang its history or flash its postcode. It sidles up to you, buys you a decent coffee, lets slip a few good stories, and by the time you’ve finished the flat white you’re thinking, hang on, this is rather good, isn’t it?
It sits there in north west London, tucked between Hampstead, Kilburn and Cricklewood, quietly getting on with being itself. Not Heath-side grandeur. Not Camden swagger. West Hampstead is cooler than that. More relaxed. More lived-in. A place that feels properly London.
Location, location, and yes, location
West Hampstead is almost indecently well-connected. Three stations within a few minutes of each other: Thameslink, Overground, Jubilee line. North, south, east, west, airport, West End, Docklands. Pick a direction and go.
And yet it never feels frantic. You’re not swimming through tourists dragging wheeled luggage. You’re passing locals, dogs, people who live here and know where they’re going. It’s one of those rare London sweet spots where the city feels both accessible and humane.
That connectivity isn’t just a convenience. It’s part of the place’s personality. West Hampstead is a meeting point. A dispersal point. A place where lines converge and then fan back out again.
Which is one reason it makes such perfect sense that London Walks GHQ is here.
A natural home for London Walks
London Walks has never been about the obvious postcard London. It’s about the city between the headlines. Back streets. Overlooked corners. Human stories. The London you only really understand when you walk it.
That sensibility fits West Hampstead like a glove.
This is not a grandstanding neighbourhood. It doesn’t posture. It doesn’t over-announce itself. It’s confident, capable, outward-looking. Knowledgeable without being pompous. Scholarly without being stuffy. Which, come to think of it, is very much the London Walks voice.
Practically speaking, it’s ideal. Guides heading out across the city. Walks radiating to Bloomsbury, Soho, Spitalfields, Hampstead, the East End, the South Bank. West Hampstead works as a launch pad. A hub. A connective tissue neighbourhood.
But it’s more than logistics. There’s a tone thing going on. West Hampstead is conversational. It’s a place where people talk. In cafes, in pubs, on pavements. Stories get knocked about here. Ideas get tried out loud. It’s a neighbourhood that encourages narration rather than proclamation.
You can see why London Walks would settle here and feel at home.
A bit of history, without the lecture
West Hampstead began as Middlesex countryside. Fields, market gardens, the occasional homestead. The name tells you that much.
The transformation comes in the 19th century with the railways. Suddenly this is no longer properly rural. London surges north. Villas go up, then terraces. Solid, respectable housing for clerks, professionals, people on the rise.
That legacy still shapes the place. The streets feel human-scaled. Tree-lined. Built for living rather than showing off. It’s handsome rather than grand, comfortable rather than flashy. The sort of architecture you don’t tire of.
A high street that actually works
West End Lane is the spine of the neighbourhood. It bends and curves, rises and dips. It feels grown rather than imposed.
And it works. Independent shops alongside useful chains. Bookshops. Bakers. Greengrocers. Cafes where the staff remember you. Pubs that feel like pubs, not theme parks.
The food scene deserves a nod. Italian, Thai, Lebanese, sushi, proper pizza, excellent brunch. West Hampstead eats very well indeed, and without ceremony. No velvet ropes. No overblown fuss. You turn up, you eat, you leave happy.
It’s very West Hampstead that way. Quality, quietly delivered.
A lived-in rhythm
What really distinguishes West Hampstead is its rhythm. It feels balanced. Morning to night, weekday to weekend, it ticks along nicely.
There’s life, but not noise. Energy, but not frenzy. People live here rather than merely pass through. You see creatives, families, long-time residents, people who planned to stay a year and never quite left.
It has that elusive London quality of feeling village-like without pretending it isn’t part of a great, sprawling metropolis.
Green space close at hand
You’re well served for greenery. Hampstead Heath is close enough to feel like part of daily life. Wild, sprawling, gloriously unkempt. Swimming ponds, ancient trees, views that remind you just how strange and wonderful London can be.
Closer in, there are leafy streets and small parks that soften everything. West Hampstead breathes easily.
Culture, without the megaphone
This isn’t a museum district and it doesn’t try to be. Culture here is understated. A cinema that programmes intelligently. Live music tucked away above pubs. Events that feel local rather than marketed.
Again, there’s confidence in not overdoing it. Big London is always a short train ride away. What West Hampstead offers is somewhere good to come home to afterwards.
What it’s got going for it
West Hampstead’s great strength is that it knows exactly what it is and doesn’t strain to be anything else. Well connected without being hectic. Attractive without vanity. Lively without loudness.
It’s a place where you can have a proper London life. Work hard. Eat well. Get home easily. Walk to things. Recognise faces. Feel anchored.
And that’s why London Walks being based here feels right. West Hampstead is not a pedestal. It’s a hub. A place of movement, conversation, curiosity. A place where stories begin and then head out into the city.
West Hampstead doesn’t demand love at first sight. It waits until you realise, quietly and contentedly, that you’ve already settled in.
And guess what? Yes, London Walks has a West Hampstead Walk. Created and guided by the Boss. Doesn’t come up very often. Maybe once a year. But you might look out for it. It’s a lot of fun. Shows you a part of London you almost certainly won’t have been to before. It’s full of delights and pleasantries. And it’s got some great surprises. It’s, well, delectable.
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 £25 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 Jack the 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.