London

London calling.

London Walks connecting.

This… is London.

This is London Walks.

Streets ahead.

Story time. History time.

So, from London – a very good morning to you. It’s August 17th, 2024. Today’s pin…

Just onpassing this. Might be of interest to somebody. A feature writer for the Telegraph says he’s stayed in over a hundred London hotels. The creme de la creme of London hotels. All the five-star jobs. And his verdict: the best of the lot is the Beaumont in Mayfair. Would be wouldn’t it. I asked Richard and Peter, our Mayfair guides, about it. They said, “yes, we skirt it – it’s just north of Grosvenor Square – a stone’s throw from that old house of John Adams fame that we pass on our way to a rather more famous London hotel, Claridges.” Richard said, “I’ll bet Claridges greeted that piece with a good sniff.” Explanatory note here. John Adams was of course the second American president. The second American president but the first American ambassador to this country. And that old Grosvenor Square house of John Adams fame was of course the first American embassy in London. Anyway, it’s all very Mayfair. Exactly what you’d expect of London’s poshest neighbourhood.

Now as for a Random, well, I think in the circumstances we have to head up past the Beaumont, get to Oxford Street, cross it, and get a taste – a poetic taste – of another swish London neighbourhood. I’m talking Marylebone of course. John Betjeman’s poem, Devonshire Street W1. Devonshire Street is part of London’s grandest medical district, the centrepiece of which is Harley Street. Here’s the poem.

Devonshire Street W1

The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen

Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet.

The sun still shines on this eighteenth-century scene

With Edwardian faience adornment — Devonshire Street.

No hope. And the X-ray photographs under his arm

Confirm the message. His wife stands timidly by.

The opposite brick-built house looks lofty and calm

Its chimneys steady against the mackerel sky.

No hope. And the iron knob of this palisade

So cold to the touch, is luckier now than he

“Oh merciless, hurrying Londoners! Why was I made

For the long and painful deathbed coming to me?”

She puts her fingers in his, as, loving and silly

At long-past Kensington dances she used to do

“It’s cheaper to take the tube to Piccadilly

And then we can catch a nineteen or twenty-two”.

Moving on,  today’s Ongoing. I’ve got an idea for a little project. I think it might have some merit. And I fancy doing it.

The idea is to do a series – they might be pieces for our blog or possibly for this podcast – or maybe both – a series of London Walks recommendations for doing London. Under some such rubric as Guide for Viewing London in Six Days Or Four Days. Or One Day. A series because I thought, yeah, why not, take it day by day. You got one day in London, here’s what we’d recommend. You got two days, these would be our recommendations. And so on, three days in London, four days, up to maybe a week. Each chunk of time – London in five days, for example – being its own set-piece for the blog. Or indeed this podcast.

Anyway, I immediately realised that London being London the thing would require an Introduction of sorts. So I bashed one out yesterday. And it’s going to get its first airing right here, right now.

Here’s what I said. Well, what I jotted down.

Let’s start by setting out a few parameters. Things to keep in mind.

1. London isn’t a city, it’s a world.
2. It’s impossible to do London – to see it – in a lifetime; let alone in a day.
3. London is not an easy city to figure out. As G.K. Chesterton once said, ‘Paris is an explanation, London is a riddle.’ This isn’t Manhattan with Avenues running north-south and streets east-west, everything on a ‘convenient’ grid pattern. Everything here is completely higgledy piggledy.
4. London is the most secretive, the most mysterious of all western cities..
5. London is almost impossible to conceptualise but you can take a stab at it by thinking of it as an egg with a double yolk, or a double nucleus. London and Westminster. They’re the Castor and Pollux of London. Two completely different cities. Historically different, culturally different, locationally different. As I say in the book (London Walks, London Stories) “to see London you have to hear it.” So the first faltering step anybody takes toward becoming a Londoner is learning to hear the word London. Sometimes it refers to the splod, the urban sprawl, the conurbation of over 600 square miles. At other times it refers to the historically oldest part of London – the part founded by the Romans – but at the same time the most aggressively modern part of London. Aggressively modern because today it’s the financial district, the Wall Street of Europe. It’s also known as the Square Mile. Or the Famous Square Mile. Or the City. That’s City with a capital C. When Londoners say city with a lowercase c they’re referring to the massive great splodge – the 600+ mile urban conurbation of Greater London. You just have to work out by context which London is being referred to. It’s like learning to ride a bicycle, once you get it you’ve got it. And not only have you got it, Congratulations, you’ve just taken your first faltering step toward becoming a Londoner.
6. Anyway, yes, London and Westminster are two completely different cities. Today they’re geographically conjoined. Hundreds of years ago they weren’t. They were separate entities. You had to cross fields to get from the one to the other. You can hear it – ‘to see London you have to hear it’ – crack the word Westminster open and what do you get, you get the munster in the west. Munster’s an old Anglo-Saxon, a Germanic word, meaning church or cathedral. So, Westmunster (which became Westminster) – Westminster Abbey – the munster in the west to distinguish it from the older ‘munster’ – the original St Paul’s, over in the east, in that completely different city. In London.
7. So, yes, they were separate. Linked by three ‘roads’: High Holborn, Fleet Street and the Strand – those two names also underline the matter, they’re essentially the same street but the Strand is in Westminster, Fleet Street is in London. Where they meet – Temple Bar, right by the Royal Courts of Justice, is the seam, the join, that’s where London meets Westminster. When you’re in Fleet Street you’re in London. When you’re in the Strand you’re in Westminster. Even though they’re essentially the same street. If you didn’t know better you’d say they were the same street.
8. So they were separate but they grew together. Conjoined in due course. But they also grew outward. And as they grew outward they swallowed up or subsumed outlying villages. Which is why London is also known as the City of 100 Villages. Or sometimes in these latter days, the City of 1,000 villages.
9. And it just gets more complicated. One important complication is that for administrative purposes London is divided up into 32 boroughs. The word ‘borough’ comes from an old Germanic word meaning ‘fortified place.’ It’s the same word as you get in the word Edinburgh. Uniquely, Westminster is a borough and a City. London – that’s London the Square Mile – is not a borough, it’s a City. Full stop. London Walks is located in the borough of Camden, after Westminster the most central of London’s boroughs.
10. And let’s pile on another layer of complexity: it’s been said that London is like Budapest: two cities separated by a river. There’s a huge physical, a huge infrastructural, a huge cultural difference between north London and south London. I’m a north Londoner. There’s nowhere in north London – vast as it is – where I’d get lost. I cross that river and I feel like I’m in a foreign country. And I’m told such is the case – in reverse – for south Londoners.
11. Then there’s the east-west divide. The West End and points west as opposed to the East End. I’m simplifying now but broadly it’s true: West London is posh, upmarket, bags o’money. East London is poorer. There are of course pockets in both directions that give the lie to that broad brush stroke, but by and large it’s the case. And there are interesting historical – and as it happens geographical and meteorological reasons why that split happened the way it did. But that’s for another time and place. Or maybe for a guide to explain to you.
12. And there’s even a City of London east-west differentiation. There’s intramural London and exxtramural London. Or if you prefer, Farringdon Ward Within and its alter ego, Farringdon Ward Without. Or, my favourite, there’s Alsatia. Now, again, you can hear it, can’t you. Intramural and Extramural. A mural is a wall painting. Mural – it’s an old Latin word – means wall. Londinium, Roman London, had a wall around it. So Farringdon Ward Within was the ward that was inside the wall. A thousand years later, when the Normans pitched up, London expanded. It leapt over its western boundary. Its western boundary was the Fleet River, the principal tributary to the Thames, and the wall, which ran along the eastern bank of the Fleet River. It leapt over the wall and over the river, expanded a few hundred yards in a westerly direction. It expanded to what became known as Temple Bar, where Fleet Street (which is in London, remember, meets the Strand, which is in Westminster). And because that area was outside the wall it came to be known as Extramural London. Outside the wall London. Or Farringdon Ward Without – the ward that was “without”, was outside the wall. Or, best of all, Alsatia, after that part of Europe where France meets Germany. A part of Europe that’s caused a lot of trouble throughout history. And London’s Alsatia has lived up to its name: it’s full of troublemakers: lawyers and journalists.
13. And then there are all those other Londons: Little Italy, and Petty France and various and sundry red light and entertainment districts and Irish London and Indian London and Huegeonot London. It just goes on and on.
14. And there’s tourist London and Londoners’ London.
15. To say nothing of hundreds of squares and a hundred miles of canals and depending on how you’re counting 15 or 52 rivers and five different police forces and 69,000 streets and 3,000 parks and green spaces and a dozen or so main railway stations and four airports and over 270 Underground Stations and nine million people, 37 percent of them born abroad. This is the most cosmopolitan city in the Western world and, well, you get the idea.

All of the above – and it’s just a drop in the bucket – is why you can’t see London in a lifetime, let alone in a day. So that taken on board, well, at least an approximation of it taken on board, is where we’re starting from, is what we have to take into consideration, make allowance for.

The other main point I’d make in these prefatory remarks – well, two main points, really – is that to see London you have to walk. That goes for any city. To see it you have to walk it. If you’re fortunate enough to be in a city that’s walkable. And London of course is. Now it goes without saying that I’m not a disinterested party. I’m the London Walks capo. I own and run the gold standard of urban walking tour companies. The oldest urban walking tour company on the planet. So sure, I’m going to recommend a London Walk now and then as make our merry way through this series. But we’re persuading not twisting arms. Everything’s better with a guide. He or she knows the best route. They know what it is you’re looking at. You’ve got local knowledge on tap, at your beck and call. It’s London you’re looking at not your phone or a guidebook. You’ve got someone you can pepper with questions. There’s the social side of it, which is a big plus. Your fellow walkers are invariably an interesting bunch. Everything about it is better. But it goes without saying, it’s your call. If you’d rather find your own way across the Rockies off you go and good luck to you.

And the other thing is, it’s important to do some planning. Quite a bit of that I’m going to do for you here. But ultimately you’re calling the shots about where you go and the use you’re going to make of those precious few hours. You’ll make better use of your precious time – that non-replenishable resource – if you get the logistics right, if you plan the thing properly.

End of introduction. Stage is set. Guide for Viewing London in One Day will follow in due course. To be followed by Guide for Viewing London in Two Days. Etc. Watch this space.

Ok, time for a handbrake turn. Sending up now, a best wishes rocket – from London – to the Class of 1964, marking the occasion right now in the Driftless Hills in the Land of the Gathering Waters. You go, you Hillmen!

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 Museum of London archaeologist, historians,

university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes

criminal defence lawyers,

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.