O jogo bonito

London calling.

London Walks connecting.

This… is London.

This is London Walks.

Streets ahead.

Story time. History time.

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And a very good morning to you, one and all. Wherever you are. It’s Saturday, October 26th, 2024.

I’m guessing there must be tens of thousands of commemorative plaques in London.

The one I’m most in awe of – even though it’s not my sport, not my game – is affixed to the Connaught Rooms at 63 Great Queen Street. It’s, well, sacred ground, that address. The Connaught Rooms – which wear the plaque like a badge of honour – stand where the Freemasons’ Tavern stood in the middle of the nineteenth century. And it was at the Freemasons’ Tavern on this day, October 26th, in 1863, that the Football Association – the FA for short – was formed.

It’s the way the plaque tells the story that gets my vote. It couldn’t be more lapidary. It’s the London plaque equivalent of Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, the Aramaic phrase of biblical fame. The show-stopping words that appear on the wall during Belshazzar’s feast. The which shiver up the spine tale is recounted in chapter five in the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament.

Anyway, there on Great Queen Street – on the wall of the Connaught Rooms – there’s a black plaque that reads: “The modern game of football was born on this day.”

And then beneath that, the plaque spells out which day: October 26, 1863.

This is October 26th, 2024 so today’s the day. The day of days if you’re a football fan.

The back story is there was no agreed-upon set of rules about how the game should be played. The mover and shaker was one Ebenezer Cobb Morley. He persuaded representatives of 11 London area football clubs and schools to meet at the Freemasons’ Tavern and form the Football Association with a view to thrashing out and agreeing on a code of football rules.

The formal wording was: “That it is advisable a Football Association should be formed for the purpose of settling a code of rules for the regulation of the game of football.” Officers were then elected, and the annual subscription was fixed at one guinea.

And that got the ball rolling, so to speak. The Beautiful Game – O Jogo Bonito as football immortal Pele called it in his native Portuguese – is now played in over 230 countries. And is, unquestionably, the most popular sport in the world. So, yes, if you’re a football fan, 63 Great Queen Street is a sacred spot. And it’s easy to find. Makes a nice add-on to our Legal London Walk, for example. That walk meets at Holborn Tube Stop. Get there ten minutes early. Come up the escalator, go through the turnstiles, go straight ahead, exit the station, turn right, ten yards along is the crosswalk. Cross Southampton Row. On the far side turn right. The second turning on the right is Great Queen Street. Turn right into Great Queen Street and the Connaught Rooms are right there, over the way, on the south side of Great Queen Street. Take that selfie. And then, since you’ve made your way to Great Queen Street, give the street itself a good once over. It was described in the 18th century as the “first regular street in London.” It’s pleasingly old. Most of its houses were built in the 1630s and 1640s. Those early 17th century houses are now gone but Great Queen Street does still rejoice in a number of early 18th century houses. Great Queen Street is rich pickings. I’m going to come back here and comb through it in a later podcast. And indeed I think we’ll pay another call on the Football story in due course. But to end, I’ve got a guest here. My friend from up north, David Ratcliffe. Better known as Rats. And he knows about football, carries the cross of supporting an unsuccessful team. So I thought just for fun, let’s draft Rats, get him to tell a little bit of his football story.

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.

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