London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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The usual salutation. A very good day to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Friday, May 23rd, 2025.
TGIF.
Let’s riff. A couple of days ago I got Oscar Wilde in on the act. Turned him into the drum major. Led with that witticism of his, “It is a very sad thing that there is so little useless information around.”
I’ve been mulling that over. As is my wont. What’s on the charge sheet in my capsule bio on www.walks.com? Well, amongst other things, I brood over words. Brooding over the word useless I’ve pretty well concluded there’s no such thing as useless information. Some examples of useful information I suppose would be directions – here’s how you get to Cannon Street Station. Or something bent – a hush hush word in your ear that points you in the right direction – let’s you make a killing on the stock market. AKA insider trading. Well, no thanks, the world would be a better place if that stuff didn’t go on. Or maybe a tip that finally puts paid to the infestation of moths that’s been plaguing you for a couple of years. No question about it, those strains of information have, shall we say, utility. They’re useful
But surely the world would be a much poorer place if the only information that passed muster was how to get from A to B directions and insider stock tips and household instructions and their ilk.
I’d say that useless information hasn’t been given a fair hearing. Anything that makes the world seem richer and stranger – that’s just as much an outcome as getting rid of moths or making a killing on the stock exchange. In many respects, a more prized outcome.
So for sure, Oscar Wilde was right. It is a sad thing there’s so little useless information around. It’s a sad thing because useless information is so useful. Let’s hear it for infusions that make the world seem richer and stranger and more wondrous. They do us a power of good.
In short, let’s hear it for trivia.
And as long as we’re at it, how rich and strange is that word ‘trivia.’ It’s two Latin words isn’t it. The Latin word via means street or road. And the first part of the word trivia – tri – well, that’s the root of the word triangle or triple or triplet or trio. All those words are cognate. And the gist of them is three. Three angles. Three singers – that’s trio. Giving birth to three babies in one go – those babies are triplets. A three-base hit in baseball, that’s a triple. And so on.
So the word trivia – you drill down to its white-hot Latin core – it means a junction where three roads or streets meet. Which means it’s a common or public place. It’s like Piccadilly Circus. Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly converge at Piccadilly Circus. And sooner or later everybody goes to Piccadilly Circus. It’s the epitome of London public places.
And now the matter gets more interesting. Perhaps even slightly sinister. The implication is the really important stuff doesn’t get said at Piccadilly Circus. Piccadilly Circus is too public. The really important stuff gets said behind closed doors in what used to be called smoke-filled rooms. Smoke-filled rooms like the ones I point out on my Old Westminster walk that are fitted up with anti-acoustic rifle blinds. That’s where power talks to power about what it’s going to do to the rest of us. And as for the rest of us, we don’t air out at Piccadilly Circus ideas we’ve got about how we might be able to turn the tables on power… we don’t witter away about that because we might be overheard, land ourselves in a spot of bother. Or worse.
So what gets said in a public place – a place where three roads meet – is safe stuff. Stuff that’s, well, trivial.
The great mock-epic London poem is John Gay’s Trivia. The full title of which is Trivia; Or the Art of Walking the Streets of London.
It takes its name from the Goddess of Crossroads, Diana Trivia. Or if you prefer, you could say Trivia is the Goddess of Streets.
So a London Walk – peripatetic and trafficking in anecdotal history and other matters, other observations – is in fact a sacred undertaking. Walking the streets of London – seeing them, hearing about them, thinking about them – that’s an act of worship.
That’s some general background. Let’s now close – as in draw nearer – let’s now close with this day, May 23rd.
One of the claims that’s made for May 23rd is that on that fine spring day in 1785 one Benjamin Franklin
Announced his invention of bifocals. He called them double spectacles. Ben Franklin, that can do, consummate American. But here’s the thing, Franklin was in France on May 23rd, 1785. He was the American ambassador to the French court. And the bifocals were made for him by a Parisian oculist named Sykes. This tale gets better, gets more international. Ben Franklin made the announcement in a letter to his English friend George Whatley. And guess what, George Whatley was a London lawyer. A hands-full London lawyer. George Whatley was a key player in the Foundling Hospital. He was Vice President and subsequently the Treasurer of the Foundling Hospital. Turns out there’s a portrait of Whatley at the Hospital. So that goes on my checklist. I’ll be rolling up at the Foundling Hospital one of these days to go mano a mano with Ben Franklin’s English friend. I’m going to stand there and murmur, “that must have been some day, getting that letter from Paris, opening it, and being the first person in the wider world to know about bifocals. I can just imagine you saying, but of course, that’s Ben for you”
It’s like a daisy chain. Ben Franklin gets the idea, goes to the man Sykes the Parisian oculist, asks him, ‘can you do this, can you make me a pair of double spectacles.’ Sykes comes up with the goods. Delighted, Ben Franklin writes to his friend George Whatley in London. Tells him about the double spectacles. And 240 years later, Franklin’s compatriot – and like Ben Franklin, a long established, as Ben Franklin was, Yank in London, c’est moi, David – adds another daisy to the chain. Tells the story. And sends it on its way. On its way to the United States and Canada and Japan and Australia and Germany and France and a dozen or so other countries. How rich and strange the world is, how wonderful it is to be alive.
But let’s end with the bifocal letter itself. Well, not quite end. For good measure, on this fine day in May, this one’s getting a quite splendid encore.
The mention of the bifocals wasn’t out of the blue. George Whatley had written to Franklin saying, “it’s been some months since My poor Dear Woman, worn out with the Rheumatism to a Skeleton, left me.” He then adds, “Pulvis & umbra sumus. I feel old Age coming; but can yet do without Spectacles.”
I love the way they casually throw in a Horace tag when the occasion calls for it. Horace was the great Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. His time was 65 BC to 8 BC. For the record, Horace is also said to be the world’s first autobiographer. Anyway, his Odes have certainly stood the test of time. Seventeen centuries on George Whatley was quoting one in a letter to Benjamin Franklin. And 20 centuries on, we’re keeping that ball in play here. That Ovidian phrase Whatley pushes toward his American friend Ben Franklin – it’s like a move on the chessboard of conversation – that Latin phrase, Pulvis and umbra sumus means, “we are shadow and dust.” Not bad at all, is it; it’s going straight into my repertory.
Anyway, Whatley’s mentioning that he as yet was not in need of spectacles was, at least in part, what Ben Franklin was responding to in his bifocal letter. Here’s the key passage, here’s Ben Franklin’s bifocals announcement:
“Your eyes must continue very good, since you are able to write so small a hand without spectacles. I cannot distinguish a letter even of large print, but am happy in the invention of double spectacles, which serving for distant objects as well as near ones, make my eyes as useful to me as ever they were. If all the other defects and infirmities of old age could be as easily and cheaply remedied, it would be worth while, my friend, to live a good deal longer.”
Ben Franklin’s letters to George Whatley are a joy. In the words of a distinguished Franklin scholar, “familiar affection glistens in their every line, and one of them is suffused with the genial warmth of his best social hours.”
Connections, connections. This time of the year and all that. Two days ago I mentioned in passing Alexander Pope’s birthday. Alexander Pope, the great English augustan poet. Ben Franklin knew Pope’s poem, The Old Man’s Wish.
On another occasion he wrote to Whatley about the Pope poem, saying what he liked best was its concluding sentiment, “wherein” – I’m quoting now – “after wishing for a warm house in a country Town, an easy horse, some good old authors, ingenious and cheerful Companions, a Pudding on Sundays, with stout Ale, and a bottle of Burgundy, etc. etc. in separate Stanzas, each [of them] ending with this burthen,
‘May I govern my Passions with an absolute sway.
Grow wiser and better as my Strength wears away,
Without Gout or Stone, by a gentle Decay…’
And then Franklin quotes the last stanza in full:
With a courage undaunted may I face my last day,
And when I am dead may the better sort say,
In the morning when sober, in the evening when mellow,
He’s gone, and left not behind him his fellow.
May I govern my passion with an absolute sway,
And grow wiser and better as my strength wears away,
Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay.
Franklin then concludes,
“But what signifies our Wishing? Things happen, after all, as they will happen. I have sung that wishing Song a thousand times, when I was young, and now find, at Four-score, that the three Contraries have befallen me, being subject to the Gout and the Stone, and not being yet Master of all my Passions. Like the proud Girl in my Country, who wished and resolv’d not to marry a Parson, nor a Presbyterian, nor an Irishman; and at length found herself married to an Irish Presbyterian Parson.”
What are we left with here? It seems to me there are three takeaways.
1. Ben Franklin – and indeed George Whatley – they were ingenious and cheerful companions. And in a sense, they still are, nearly 250 years later they’re our ingenious and cheerful companions. If we so wish. And I for one, do.
2. Ben Franklin, that greatest of Americans – certainly one of the greatest – was no isolationist. He was a citizen of the world. He would have been a champion of shared challenges and global cooperation.
3. Thinking about Franklin and those founding fathers, thinking about today – that’s some gulf. How did we get here? How did this happen? Surely, we live in fallen times.
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.