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.
It’s Thursday, September 18th, 2025.
Our first port of call, as always, the London Calling Book Club Corner. Today my turn. David’s turn. And I readily ‘fess up to it. I suffer from an incurable case of bibliomania. Which means, needless to say, I’ve always got several on the go. Just finished Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile. Wonderful book, wonderful read. It’s about 1940 and London and the Blitz and the first year of Churchill’s premiership. It’s such a good read I think there’s a pretty good chance I’ll come back to it and try to do justice to it with a longer review. It’s the second Erik Larson book I’ve read this year. First one was about the sinking of the Lusitania. Another white knuckle read. And some of Erik Larson’s conclusions and informed speculations… very disturbing indeed. And as a matter of fact, I’ve just started his book about the beginning of the American Civil War. It’s titled The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War. Another gripping, can’t put it down read. And of course given the maelstrom – the torments – wracking the land of my birth in our era it couldn’t be more timely.
And what else? Well, I’m reading – completely gripped by Andrea Gibson’s slender volume of poems, The Madness Vase. Just 36 poems, every one of them makes you feel and ache from the grief inside your bones. Andrea Gibson’s line, not mine. Or her insight that the Vietnam Wall is missing the two million names of the two million Vietnamese slain. Or her line, “What we question is the idea of a heaven having gates.” That line’s done it for me. St Peter and the London gates and bars will never look the same thanks to that young Colorado poet, now sadly departed.
And also sadly departed, a few years ago, my beloved father-in-law Charles Chilton. The legendary BBC producer and writer. The Telegraph nailed it when it profiled him and described him as “the one true genius the BBC ever produced.” Anyway, I just finished re-reading Charles’ autobiography, Auntie’s Charlie. A wonderfully insightful, moving, richly rewarding read. Lots of personal showstoppers for me, not the least of which were his two close calls in World War II and Penny’s – Mary’s mum, Charles’ wife’s – one close call. They’re like three flips of Anton Chigurh’s quarter – he’s the psychopath in the Coen brothers’ great film, No Country for Old Men – any one of those coin tosses turns out differently, no Mary, no Katy, Sam and James, our three kids. And no Josephine, our first granddaughter. Josephine is heading our way… she’s going to be a Christmas baby. Auntie’s Charlie and Penny would be so interested – a great grandchild who’s going to grow up speaking four languages: Chinese, English, Thai and Breakdancing.
Anyway, that’s enough Book Club Corner palaver. Let’s move on. Thinking of Shakespeare’s great line in Julius Caesar, “there comes a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood…”
Well this man is suddenly aware of a tide in the affairs of this podcast. It’s a tide that could be ycleped – ycleped, wonderful, very old, Chaucerian English word, means name – anyway a tide which could be ycleped, be named, So You Want to Find Out About London – In that Case this Podcast is for You.
That’s the Gulf Stream – yes, mashing my metaphors here but who care – that’s the Gulf Stream that’s caught this podcast and is pushing it along.
I’ve just noticed that more and more that’s whither this project is tending. And it really should come as no surprise. It’s virtually 52 years to the day that I first set foot in London. And I remember being thrilled by it. But also completely bewildered. This is not an easy city to figure out. It’s not Manhattan with Avenues north and south and streets east and west, everything on a grid pattern. This place is a completely different cup of tea. Everything buttoned up and hugger mugger and higgledy piggledy. And for good measure, London’s almost certainly the most secretive and mysterious of all western cities.
So in 52 years I’ve worked really hard to try to figure this place out, find and read the figure in the carpet. Goes a long way toward explaining my involvement with London Walks. I got here, a naive, innocent, inexperienced Midwesterner in my 20s. Was so aware that my English and other British contemporaries had a 20 year head start on me. I had some catching up to do. Discovered London Walks – that it was ideal for helping me to read this place, understand it, get to know it, make sense of it.
So I started going on them as a paying customer. And, well, one thing led to another. That’s a tale in its own right, the difference Charles Dickens made to my involvement with London Walks.
That can wait. Today, we’re doing London squares. Think of this a necklace. A necklace I’m stringing beads on. A necklace called Here’s What I Love About London. The first bead – the bead that started this necklace – was Green London. I put that Sputnik up a few days ago. It’s up there, orbiting away. Well, here’s a second satellite shot. Get enough of these up we’ll have a constellation called What I Love About London, What Makes London So Special.
So here you go, it’s London Squares today.
So, picture this. We’re walking down a London street, maybe dodging a cab or two, and suddenly there’s an iron gate with a peep‑hole into another world – a bit of lawn, a few plane trees swaying and maybe a statue peeking over the hedge. That’s a London square. And there are more than six hundred of the things. Six hundred! For comparison, Manhattan – lovely place, don’t get me wrong – has about forty. Paris has its grand stone plazas. But London? We do squares like nowhere else.
The square is to London what canals are to Venice.
It didn’t start that way. Go back four hundred years and London’s idea of a square was a field where you grazed sheep and hanged villains. Lincoln’s Inn Fields – yes, the huge square over by Holborn – began life in 1618 when the Society of Lincoln’s Inn fenced off its common land. Over the next twenty years they built houses around three sides and laid out gravel walks and grass. It was still used for executions, mind you, but there’s the germ of the idea. A decade later, the Earl of Bedford thought, “I can do better than that,” and built Covent Garden. He put houses, a church and shops around a piazza and called it a day. First residential square. If you stand there today with your latte, you’re standing on the blueprint of every London square that followed.
By the 1660s the Earl of Southampton was laying out Bloomsbury Square – the first place to actually call itself a “square”. Then along came Soho Square in 1681 with its ornamental shrubs, trees and a statue of Charles II. The idea caught on. The Earl of Leicester built himself a town house and by 1670 the surrounding land was Leicester Fields. You could almost hear the developers rubbing their hands.
In the eighteenth century it was boom time. St James’s Square went upmarket and then down at heel before the residents begged Parliament for the right to tax themselves and clean it up. Picture Georgian ladies strolling past newly erected iron railings as watchmen patrolled. In Cavendish Square they actually had sheep grazing behind the railings. Imagine stepping out in your powdered wig and tricorn hat, saying “Morning, Fanny,” to a ewe. Designers like Humphry Repton came along and softened the formal lines with shrubs and meandering paths. Meanwhile, Lincoln’s Inn Fields quietly morphed into a genteel pleasure ground; it’s now the biggest public square at nearly ten acres. Hard to believe Lord Russell lost his head there in 1683.
But London being London, things got messy. During the Gordon Riots in 1780, Bloomsbury Square was a battleground; rioters burned down the Lord Chief Justice’s house. Trafalgar Square – laid out by John Nash and dominated by Nelson’s Column – turned into riot central on “Bloody Sunday” in 1887 when police on horseback charged. Fast‑forward to 1990 and the poll tax riot – same square, different anger. Today it’s more pigeons and people watchers, but you get the idea: squares aren’t always sedate.
Let’s lighten up. Ever heard of Pickering Place? Blink and you’ll miss it. It’s off St James’s Street through an oak‑panelled passage. It’s officially London’s smallest square. In the 1700s it was a gambling den; in the 1840s the Republic of Texas had its legation there. Now it’s gaslit, tiny, and deliciously atmospheric. People say the last duel in London was fought here. True? Who cares – it adds to the mystique.
At the opposite end is Vincent Square, 13 acres of manicured grass belonging to Westminster School. You can’t get in unless you’re wearing a blazer and carrying a cricket bat. Then there’s Russell Square, laid out in 1804 and still the second largest public square. Kensington & Chelsea alone has over a hundred garden squares; most of them are private, keys only, but once a year they fling open their gates for Open Garden Squares Weekend. You gotta love that weekend. You get to nose around people’s back gardens and pretend you live there.
Now for the name‑dropping. Virginia Woolf moved to 46 Gordon Square in 1904 and wrote that it was “the most beautiful, exciting, romantic place in the world”. Every Thursday she and her siblings hosted what became the Bloomsbury Group. Faber & Faber set up shop at 24 Russell Square; T.S. Eliot edited poets there. Leicester Square, now the land of red carpets, was once a who’s who of artists and scientists: William Hogarth lived on the east side from 1733 and hung a bust of Van Dyck above his door. Surgeon John Hunter built a private museum behind his house. Sir Joshua Reynolds painted on the west side. Isaac Newton lodged down the street. Add Karl Marx and his family in the 1850s and you’ve got quite a guest list.
And the quirks! Red Lion Square allegedly hides Oliver Cromwell’s body. Berkeley Square has plane trees over 200 years old. Some squares sprout blue plaques like confetti. Others hide vent shafts for the Tube disguised as pavilions. In the 1930s developers eyed them greedily until the London Squares Act of 1931 stepped in, protecting more than 400 from being built over. Thank goodness for that. Otherwise half of Belgravia would be blocks of flats.
So what’s the secret sauce? It’s the way these squares slip between public and private, chaos and calm. They’re lungs for a city that doesn’t breathe easily. They’re stages for protest, backdrops for novels and, let’s be honest, handy shortcuts when you’re running late for a pub. Next time you’re in London, duck through that mysterious gate. Peer through the railings at lawns you can’t enter. Think about sheep grazing in Cavendish Square or duelists clashing in Pickering Place. Remember Virginia Woolf writing in her Bloomsbury sitting room and Hogarth carving his “Golden Head” for Leicester Square.
Every London square is a little storybook. Do yourself a favour. Open it.
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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 familiarand the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note… come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.