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.
This one’s going to be a bit reflective. Going to do some stock taking. See where we’ve got to. Look back. Look ahead.
He was before my time but like every American kid a good few decades ago I knew who Joe DiMaggio was.
The Yankee Clipper.
The New York Yankees centre fielder who hit successfully in 56 consecutive games.
That 56-game hitting streak in 1941 is legendary.
While DiMaggio was putting that streak together in the summer of 1941, London was enduring the Blitz.
One side of the Atlantic was watching a baseball miracle unfold.
The other was looking up at the night sky for rather different reasons.
And every now and then DiMaggio comes to mind when I think about what we’ve got going here at London Walks.
This current run of daily London Calling podcasts began on June 23rd, 2025.
Every single day since then.
Christmas Day.
New Year’s Day.
Sundays.
Bank holidays.
The lot.
Most podcasts come out once a week.
Some every fortnight.
We’ve chosen a different route.
If every day were a baseball game, we’ve stepped up to the plate 354 days in a row and managed to keep the hitting streak alive.
Not every hit has been a towering home run.
Some days it’s been a clean line drive into the gap.
Some days it’s been a little single punched through the infield.
And every now and then it’s been the equivalent of getting a hit in the bottom of the ninth inning.
Ten o’clock at night.
Eleven o’clock at night.
Looking around for a subject.
Looking at the clock.
Wondering if the streak is finally about to end.
And then somehow finding a way to scratch out one more base hit.
One more podcast.
One more day.
One more mark in the scorebook.
And because we’re coming up on the first anniversary of this latest streak, I found myself looking back over the scorecard.
Wondering what themes have emerged.
What roads we’ve travelled.
What stories we’ve told.
And looking back over that scorecard, something else struck me.
Joe DiMaggio is remembered.
Almost everybody listening to this podcast will know his name.
And here’s the thing: we’ve spent the last year talking about quite a few people who were every bit as famous in their day.
And today?
Almost nobody remembers them.
I’m thinking there’s something of a pattern emerging. Over the years we’ve found ourselves returning again and again to a particular sort of Londoner.
People who were once famous. Sometimes astonishingly famous.
People whose names filled newspapers. People whose faces were known. People whose books were read, whose songs were sung, whose plays were performed, whose opinions mattered.
People who were, in their day, somebody.
And yet today?
Almost nobody remembers them.
So I guess you could say we’ve been making regular visits to London’s Hall of Forgotten Fame for years without quite calling it that. And you know something, as of today we’ve decided it’s time to hang up the sign.
Because every city has history.
But London has layers.
Deep layers.
Strata upon strata of lives lived brilliantly, noisily, famously, extravagantly, obscurely.
And one of the extraordinary things about London is this: the city almost never completely throws anybody away.
It leaves traces.
A plaque on a wall.
A name over a theatre door.
A bust in a foyer.
A gravestone in a churchyard.
A blue plaque high above the traffic.
A street name.
A mention in a diary.
A faded inscription.
A memory embedded in brickwork.
London is full of ghosts with forwarding addresses.
And some of the most interesting ghosts are the people who were once household names and are now almost entirely forgotten.
That fascinates us.
Because fame is a strange thing.
Terribly loud while it lasts.
Terribly quiet when it goes away.
Take somebody like Clemence Dane.
Oscar winner.
Novelist.
Playwright.
Friend of luminaries.
A considerable literary and theatrical figure in her day.
Lived in Covent Garden.
Connected to Noel Coward and Ivor Novello and the theatrical London of the interwar years.
And now?
Almost nobody remembers her.
Or Ivor Novello himself.
Once one of the biggest stars in Britain.
Songwriter.
Actor.
Idol.
Today many people know the awards named after him but not the man.
Or Marie Lloyd.
Or George Robey.
Or Marie Tempest.
Or any number of people whose names once blazed across the London sky.
These people have not vanished entirely.
London doesn’t quite permit that.
Their fingerprints are still here.
And that, in a way, is what London Walks has always done.
We restore context.
We stand in a street and bring back the vanished world that once occupied it.
We look at a church and see the people who passed through it.
We stand outside a theatre and hear the applause that used to thunder there.
We look at an ordinary-looking doorway and realise somebody once climbed those steps who was famous beyond belief.
That’s the magic of London.
Not just what survives physically.
But what survives invisibly.
And perhaps this is also why people who really love London Walks tend to get this sort of thing immediately.
Because they understand that London is not merely a collection of sights.
It is an accumulation of human lives.
The city is a gigantic attic.
And every so often we climb up there with a lantern and open another trunk.
And inside is somebody the world once adored.
Somebody the world once argued about.
Somebody who mattered.
Somebody who shaped the city.
Somebody now sleeping quietly beneath the dust.
Not dead names.
Sleeping names.
And there’s a particular pleasure in waking them up.
A pleasure that perhaps belongs especially to London.
A city that remembers more than it appears to remember.
So yes, from time to time here on London Calling we’re going to continue making regular visits to London’s Hall of Forgotten Fame.
Because the city is full of extraordinary people who deserve to be remembered.
And because one of the things London Walks tries to do, perhaps more than anybody else, is give you the London you weren’t expecting.
Not just the headline acts.
But the supporting cast.
Not just the obvious London.
But the hidden London.
The sleeping London.
The London that still whispers if you know where to stand and listen.
See you tomorrow.
And, yes, somewhere up ahead, there’s Clemence Dane, waving to us. We’ve got a date with her one of these days. Watch this space.